Datasets:

pszemraj

/

multi_fc

like 1

vogo-00458

Statement: The center span of the Coronado Bay Bridge was designed to float in the event of a bombing, according to local urban legend.

determination: false

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/news/fact-check-a-bomb-resistant-floating-coronado-bridge/

Analysis: When we asked readers to pinpoint local urban legends, this decades old storyline surfaced: The center section of the Coronado Bay Bridge is designed to float. That way, if the bridge were bombed, the Navy could easily push the largest pieces of the bridge aside and still exit the bay.

Fact Check: A Bomb Resistant, Floating Coronado Bridge?

January 6, 2011

['None']

pomt-05013

Federal regulations required the changes to Georgia's driver’s license renewal process.

true

/georgia/statements/2012/jul/17/david-ralston/house-speaker-says-911-regulations-led-new-guideli/

If you’ve had to renew your driver’s license lately, you know by now not to leave the engine running because you’ll likely have to wait. There’ve been scores of news accounts in recent weeks about Georgians waiting in long lines to renew their license, thanks to new rules that took effect earlier this month requiring drivers to present more personal records to confirm their identity. So who’s to blame for this new round of regulation? Many drivers have pointed their fingers toward the state Department of Driver Services. David Ralston, speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, told reporters he was disappointed how the state agency prepared for the changes. However, the Republican lawmaker from Blue Ridge offered an explanation for the new regulations that suggested it is beyond the state’s control. Many of the changes that the state made were required by federal law, so state lawmakers' hands were tied, Ralston said, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. Ralston’s spokesman, Marshall Guest, confirmed that’s what his boss said and suggested some paths for us to use to find more details. PolitiFact Georgia wondered if the speaker was correct, or was he incorrectly designating the new level of bureaucracy to the wrong people? Georgia DDS officials say the changes were necessitated by a 2005 law passed by Congress called the Real ID Act. The act, which took effect three years after it passed, says that federal agencies may not accept a driver’s license or other state-issued forms of identification, unless the state meets rules under the federal law to verify the person’s identity. The act says a driver’s license should include the person’s full legal name, date of birth, gender, picture, driver’s license number, address, signature and physical features. The federal government has specific guidelines about what it requires from states, and Georgia says it is trying to follow suit. States should require a person to present a document without a photo that contains the driver’s full legal name and date of birth and Social Security number, the federal law says. The Real ID Act was passed as part of a Homeland Security measure after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. States were given the opportunity to get an extension to comply with the law. In 2007, the Georgia Legislature passed Senate Bill 5, which delayed implementation of the federal law until the governor felt comfortable the law would protect Georgians from identity theft. The state bill expressed concerns that the federal law would cost states $11 billion over the first five years of the program and that the federal government had not provided any money for its implementation. The state bill also mentioned worries that the federal law didn’t mention protections for information privacy or data security. Since 2007, state DDS officials have been working to meet the federal guidelines under the Real ID Act in phases. This May, Gov. Nathan Deal’s office announced it had created a system called SecureID that will protect Georgians from identity theft and comply with the Real ID Act. "This program will give Georgians the most secure IDs we’ve ever issued in this state," Deal said in a press release. "It is our duty to protect our residents’ identities to the best of our ability." So now, you’ll need proof of your full legal name, Social Security number and address to renew your driver’s license. It may not comfort some motorists as they stand in line to renew their license, but the new guidelines do come from the federal law passed in 2005. We rate Ralston’s statement as True.

David Ralston

2012-07-17T06:00:00

2012-07-10

['None']

pomt-08605

Under Lee Fisher Ohio has lost nearly 400,000 jobs.

half-true

/ohio/statements/2010/sep/23/rob-portman/rob-portman-raps-lee-fisher-ohios-job-losses-while/

Editor's note: This item originally was rated as Mostly True, but was downgraded when job loss figures in it were updated. Like the refrain of a ubiquitous pop song, the phrase -- "Ohio lost 400,000 jobs on his watch" -- is playing over and over on the airwaves. And like any good lyric, the phrase is catchy. Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich is singing it about incumbent governor Ted Strickland, and the Republican Governors Association has made the phrase the central theme of three commercials attacking Strickland on behalf of Kasich. And U.S. Senate candidate Rob Portman sings it about his Democratic challenger Lee Fisher, who is Ohio’s lieutenant governor and former head of the state’s economic development department, in a statewide ad titled "Job Czar." "Under Lee Fisher Ohio has lost nearly 400,000 jobs," is the key line in Portman's ad. The phrase has been aired so often, it's approaching the status of an oldie. Whether it's a goodie is the question. The Republicans are referring to the state’s net job losses since Strickland and Fisher took office in January 2007. Ohio lost about 390,000 non-farm jobs from January 2007 through July of this year, the latest figure available. So Republicans are largely accurate when they say Ohio has lost 400,000 jobs since January of 2007. Job losses were as high as 438,900 at the end of February of this year. When we reviewed the Republican Governor’s Association rendition that focused on Strickland, we rated it Half True. We said then that the claim hit a clunker when Republicans suggest that the governor was responsible for the job losses. Ohio has been losing jobs since January of 2000 - 568,300 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of those, 403,800 came in the manufacturing sector. It’s also worth noting, since campaigns are trying to blame those in charge when the state lost jobs, that Republicans held the offices of governor and lieutenant governor seven of those years and held both houses of the legislatures until January 2009. Republican George W. Bush was president for eight of those years. Strickland has argued for the administration that Ohio - like Michigan and other Midwest states -- was especially hurt by forces beyond his control, namely a recession and the decline of manufacturing. Ohio and the nation have suffered through two recessions, one that started in 2001 and one that started in 2008, which triggered an avalanche of job losses here and was considered a global economic crisis. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican elected in 2004 who is in his second term, says the same thing, at least he did July 22 during an interview in Cleveland. What made Daniels’ comments worth highlighting is that the rising GOP star was in town campaigning with Kasich. The two were beating up on Strickland for the state’s job losses. But Daniels became a bit defensive when questioned about Hoosier State less than stellar performance in the last several years. Indiana lost 174,000 net jobs since January of 2007. Echoing the sentiments of other governors in defense of their states’ economic woes, he said, "To some extent, everybody is at the mercy of national and global events, and we are no different." But this claim that targets Fisher has a slightly different tune. The ad that targeted Strickland phrased the job loss as happening "on his watch," which we think implies he is at fault. This claim phrased the job loss as happening "under Lee Fisher," which we think is more neutral language that conveys the idea that it occurred while he was the director of the agency. Also, Fisher’s role here was different than that of Strickland. While Strickland, as governor, may set policy for the administration to follow, Fisher held a hands-on position of control in the Department of Development. Consider it this way: It might be unfair to blame the high school principal for unruly behavior in a classroom, but reasonable to hold the teacher in charge of that class to a higher standard. That the ad focuses on Fisher as the state's development director raises another issue. Fisher stepped down as development director in February 2009. BLS data shows that during his tenure Ohio had a net loss of about 255,000 jobs; a significant number of jobs, although not as many as the Portman ad states. The higher jobs figure in the ad reflects net jobs lost into this year. Still, at a time when Ohio lost thousands of jobs, Fisher was in charge of the state agency most responsible for bringing new jobs to Ohio. That doesn’t mean he’s responsible for the job losses, but he was in charge of the department most capable of addressing the problem. We find Portman’s claim in his Job Czar ad to be Half True.

Rob Portman

2010-09-23T11:30:00

2010-09-13

['Ohio']

snes-02141

Infamous mother Casey Anthony has died at age 29.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/casey-anthony-dead/

Junk News

David Mikkelson

Casey Anthony Found Dead at Age 29?

22 September 2015

['Death_of_Caylee_Anthony']

pomt-09029

In Rick Perry's Texas, the governor threatens to leave, to secede from the greatest country in the world.

false

/texas/statements/2010/jul/07/bill-white/bill-white-says-rick-perry-threatened-secede/

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White hearkened to a moment we’ve reviewed before when White told delegates to the Texas Democratic Party’s convention in Corpus Christi June 25: “In Rick Perry’s Texas, the governor threatens to leave, to secede from the greatest country in the” world. White spokeswoman Katy Bacon later confirmed White was referring to the Republican governor’s reply to a reporter after he spoke at a tea-party rally outside Austin’s city hall on April 15, 2009. Did Perry threaten to secede? The cited moment played out after an Associated Press reporter, Kelley Shannon, asked Perry after the 2009 rally if he thought the gathering reflected a national movement. Perry answered that it could be. He said people feel strangled by spending and taxation and they want help, according to an AP recording we reviewed in April 2010. Shannon then asked Perry about some associating him with the idea of secession or sovereignty for Texas. “Oh, I think there’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry replied. “Texas is a unique place. When we came in the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. “You know, my hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention,” Perry continued. “We’ve got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that? So. But Texas is a very unique place and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.” Perry next fielded a question from someone else about whether Texas might now be considered a natural terorrist state — no, Perry said — and the question-and-answer period closed. At the time, Perry’s comments were widely interpreted as indicating the Republican governor believed secession could legally occur; he subsequently did not back down from that conclusion. However, a constitutional expert advised at the time that the Civil War long ago vanquished secession as a legal option. Sanford Levinson, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said neither the Texas Constitution, the U.S. Constitution nor the Joint Resolution Annexing Texas to the United States of 1845, bestows an explicit right for the state to return to a Republic. Levinson said there is “no possibility whatsoever that the United States or any court would recognize a ‘right’ to secede.” Levinson noted that the 1845 resolution allows Texas to break into five new states, and it doesn’t specify whether that would require congressional approval. But, he said, that’s distinct from secession. Does Perry’s “who-knows-what-might-come” comment support White’s statement that Perry threatened to leave the union? Using the Nexis search tool, we found 169 major newspaper articles linking Perry and secede. None quoted Perry threatening to push for secession, though critics and comedians framed his words in that way. Typically, San Antonio Express-News reporter Roy Bragg wrote in an April 19, 2009 article: “The governor didn't make an actual threat to secede.” Bragg also quoted Harvey Tucker, a Texas A&M University political scientist, suggesting Perry saw political gain by speaking to secession. “He didn't intend (to) talk about it. He didn't plan it. He was just drawn into it,” Tucker said. An October 2009 article in The Dallas Morning News quoted Allison Castle, the governor's spokeswoman, saying Perry's intention in his April comment “was to point a critical finger at the federal government, not to encourage abandoning the U.S.” Bacon told us in an e-mail that Perry’s “speculation, saying the state could secede if it wanted to, is a saber-rattling threat. Think about secession and all that is associated with it. He was not talking about it in a historical navel-gazing” or constitutional-interpretive fashion. What we find: In a politically theatrical moment, Perry edged toward a secession threat. Then or since, however, he hasn’t said Texas should quit the United States. (You wudda read all about it.) White’s similarly theatrical statement at his party’s convention is False.

Bill White

2010-07-07T06:00:00

2010-06-25

['Texas', 'Rick_Perry']

pomt-09012

The top 1 percent pay over half of the entire revenue for this country.

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jul/09/trent-franks/trent-franks-says-top-1-percent-pays-over-half-ent/

It's a topic for many arguments: What's the fairest way to share the tax burden? In a July 7, 2010, appearance on MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show, U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., made clear that he feels the richest Americans pay too much. At one point in the interview, Cenk Uygur, the host filling in for Ratigan, asked Franks, "So, Congressman, if we can't cut defense spending and you don't want to raise taxes on the wealthy, where are you going to get your savings from, the poor and the middle class? Is that right?" Franks responded, "No, the fact is, you know, when you're always talking about raising taxes on the rich, I think the top -- the rich now, the top 1 percent, pay over half of the entire revenue for this country. And you don't realize that if you destroy those who have capital, you absolutely devastate those that are trying to get jobs." We won't take sides in the argument over the best tax policy, but we do think it's worth checking his statistic that "the top 1 percent pay over half of the entire revenue for this country." We found three problems with Franks' statement. 1. When it comes to the federal income tax (which is only one of many taxes -- more on that later) Frank's "over half" estimate is high. According to IRS statistics from the 2007 tax year, the last year available, slightly more than 40 percent of federal income taxes are paid by the top 1 percent. (For that year, it took an adjusted gross income of $410,096 to make it into that elite 1 percent.) 2. The federal income tax isn't the only tax levied by the federal government. It is the biggest when measured by revenue generated, but it doesn't even account for more than half of all federal tax revenue. The income tax generates 45 percent of federal tax revenue, followed by 36 percent for payroll taxes, 12 percent for corporate income taxes, 3 percent for excise taxes and 4 percent for other taxes. 3. Tax revenues aren't the only form of revenues that fund the government. As we reported in an earlier item, the federal government also collects fees paid to various agencies. In 2009, for example, the government took in the following: the U.S. Postal Service ($69 billion), Medicare premiums ($57 billion), deposits with the Federal Reserve Board ($34.3 billion), customs duties ($21.3 billion), Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. premiums and recoveries ($20.5 billion), auction proceeds from electromagnetic spectrum rights ($16.7 billion), energy sales by the Tennessee Valley Authority ($11.1 billion), natural resources royalties and revenues ($9.9 billion). Together, these non-tax collections totaled $240 billion, an amount roughly equal to 10 percent of what taxes bring in -- which is more than pocket change. So are there better yardsticks? There are. The Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution found that in 2009, the top 1 percent shouldered the burden for roughly 23 percent of all federal taxes. To get to the level Franks' cited -- "over half" -- you have to increase the window from 1 percent to 10 percent. That is, the top 10 percent of American earners paid for 52 percent of all federal taxes that year, according to the Tax Policy Center. A big reason for the difference is that the top 1 percent pay 5 percent or less of payroll and excise taxes. (They also pay more than 50 percent of corporate income taxes and more than 70 percent of estate taxes.) We'll grant that Franks' statement was an off-the-cuff response to a question during a television interview. We'll also acknowledge that the top 1 percent of taxpayers does pay a disproportionate share of taxes generally. Even at 23 percent of the total federal tax burden, that's a lot bigger than their share of the population, and also bigger than their share of income (16 percent). That's the nature of a progressive tax system. Indeed, it's worth noting that the share being paid by the top 1 percent has generally risen over time. In 1987, the first year after President Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping tax reform bill, the share paid by the top 1 percent stood slightly above 16 percent. The top one-fifth of the population -- what one might call, in Franks' words, "the rich" -- is the only fifth, or "quintile," of the population that has seen its share of the tax burden go up during that time. Still, we can't brush off the inaccuracies in Franks' statement. He makes it sound as if the top 1 percent of the country is shouldering more than half of the burden of funding the federal government, when in fact it's about half that. In addition, the top 1 percent are not even shouldering half of the burden of the income tax by itself. We rate his statement False.

Trent Franks

2010-07-09T16:20:29

2010-07-07

['None']

goop-01764

‘Big Bang Theory’ Falling Apart Over Behind-The-Scenes Drama?

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/big-bang-theory-behind-scenes-drama-cast-feud/

Andrew Shuster

‘Big Bang Theory’ Falling Apart Over Behind-The-Scenes Drama?

3:26 pm, January 22, 2018

['None']

pomt-12829

Says ExxonMobil "fought to kill" a rule requiring oil and mining companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments.

true

/global-news/statements/2017/feb/08/sherrod-brown/yes-exxonmobil-under-tillerson-fought-oil-payment-/

A resolution on President Donald Trump’s desk would kill a regulation the oil lobby has opposed for six years. The rule by the Securities and Exchange Commission requires oil, gas and mining companies to report pretty much everything they pay to governments for the right to extract resources. The rule’s goal was to prevent corruption in developing countries where top officials might feather their nests and leave their people destitute. House Republicans, joined by a handful of Democrats, voted to nullify the rule on Feb. 1, and two days later on a straight party-line vote, the Senate followed suit. During the debate on the Senate floor, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said the transparency under the regulation was an "essential tool" against fraud and abuse, but it had powerful enemies. "Since the rule’s creation, ExxonMobil, led by Mr. Tillerson -- now the secretary of state -- and Big Oil allies, such as the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Heritage Foundation, have fought to kill it," Brown said. We decided to explore whether ExxonMobil fought to kill the rule. It did, and Tillerson played a direct role. The action began in 2008. That year, then Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., spearheaded a report on corruption in developing nations rooted in their natural resources. In the most extreme cases, money from oil or other resources set off a scramble for personal wealth that left nations in Africa, South America and Asia less stable and deeper in poverty. Transparency, Lugar wrote, was crucial to beating the "resource curse." "When oil revenue in a producing country can be easily tracked, that nation’s elite are more likely to use revenues for the vital needs of their citizens and less likely to squander newfound wealth for self-aggrandizing projects," he wrote. Lugar wanted a law that would tell the SEC to craft a rule for companies to follow. He co-sponsored an amendment with Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., that became part of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul bill in 2010. Under the measure, any oil, gas or mining company listed on the U.S. stock exchange had to report "taxes, royalties, fees (including license fees), production entitlements, bonuses, and other material benefits," paid to any government. The reporting had to be done country by country and project by project. ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry trade group, opposed the proposal every step of the way. In 2010, Jay Branegan worked for Lugar as a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Now at the Lugar Center, a policy group in Washington, D.C., Branegan told us that in 2010, before Dodd-Frank passed, Tillerson himself came to Lugar’s office to argue against the amendment. "He listed a number of his and the industry’s objections to the bill, including that it would harm Exxon’s relations with Russia," Branegan said. "He was the only CEO to come in to lobby personally." We asked ExxonMobil spokesman William Holbrook for the company’s take on the accuracy of Branegan’s account. Holbrook said, "The SEC rule has been a concern for the industry at large, not ExxonMobil exclusively." Holbrook argued that the rule put ExxonMobil at a competitive disadvantage with state-owned companies and that "ExxonMobil is committed to being a good corporate citizen, and part of that commitment includes transparency in reporting payments to foreign governments." "The SEC largely ignored industry’s comments and recommendations in finalizing its rule," Holbrook said. ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute had several changes in mind but a key one had to do with the details the SEC reported to the public. Ideally, they wanted the SEC to lump all payments a government received together, rather than show what each company paid. They certainly didn’t want to report for each project. ExxonMobil voiced its objections in letters to the SEC on Jan. 31, 2011, March 15, 2011 and Oct. 25, 2011. The SEC actually went through two cycles in writing the rules. After the SEC came up with version one, a lawsuit sent the commission back to the drawing board. The second try wrapped up June 27, 2016. As recently as March 2016, ExxonMobil raised objections to the revised approach, saying the SEC plan would increase costs, harm shareholders and "sow confusion." Not all major oil companies objected so vigorously to the rule. Royal Dutch Shell wrote, "While we believe the American Petroleum Institute proposal is superior to the Commission’s re-proposal, we would support the Commission re-proposal with certain minor changes." BP took the same line. A key factor for Shell and BP was that all 28 European Union countries, plus Canada and Norway, had already adopted disclosure rules modeled on the original SEC version. The two companies wanted to be able to give the SEC the same reports they were filing in the EU. The SEC adopted that. Jana Morgan, director of Publish What You Pay, an advocacy group that supports mandatory reporting, told us the nullification of the American rule would put the country in an odd position. "Canada and countries in Europe adopted similar legislation to the United States because the United States passed it first," Morgan said. "Assuming the regulation is pulled back, the United States will be out of sync with the global transparency standard." Our ruling Brown said ExxonMobil fought to kill a rule requiring oil and mining companies to disclose payments made to governments. Former ExxonMobil CEO Tillerson personally lobbied against the measure before it became law, and the company continued to oppose it as recently as March 2016. ExxonMobil preferred a different reporting regime, rather than no reporting at all, but its opposition was steadfast. We rate the claim True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/5250a834-6ac0-4dbc-aa75-8c0c69d23997

Sherrod Brown

2017-02-08T14:20:31

2017-02-02

['None']

hoer-00610

Beware of Fake Obamacare Websites

true messages

https://www.hoax-slayer.com/beware-fake-obamacare-websites.shtml

Brett M. Christensen

Beware of Fake Obamacare Websites

October 29, 2013

['None']

pomt-13190

As executive director of the Democratic Party of Virginia there were "300 people on my payroll in 2008."

half-true

/virginia/statements/2016/oct/25/levar-stoney/levar-stoney-says-he-oversaw-300-paid-workers-va-d/

Levar Stoney, a 35-year-old political operative running for Richmond mayor, was asked at a recent debate if he has the managerial chops to lead the city. "We know you served as head of the Democratic Party (of Virginia) and as secretary of the commonwealth," said Craig Carper, news director for WCVE Public Radio. "How do these skills translate to an executive position like mayor? How many people did you manage in these positions?" Stoney replied, "Well, when I was executive director of the Democratic Party, I was able to run the day-to-day operations of a multi-million dollar organization, a multi-million dollar operation that featured 300 people on my payroll in the year 2008." There’s no doubt that millions of dollars were running in and out of the Democratic Party of Virginia in 2008, when Barack Obama was first elected president and carried Virgina, a key swing state. Federal Election Commission reports show the state party spent nearly $17 million that year, much of it coming from national Democratic campaign sources. What caught our attention is Stoney’s statement that there were "300 people on my payroll" that year. Our experience is that you can often count the state party’s staffers on your fingers. Filings with the Federal Election Commission show that when Stoney became executive director that February, the party had a paid staff of 11. The number remained constant in March and increased to 16 in April and May. Then the numbers began to surge. The party, by our count, listed 51 people on its payroll in June, 140 in July, 238 in August and 298 in September. Matt Corridoni, a spokesman for Stoney, sent us a copy of the party’s report covering the almost six-week period from Oct. 16, 2008 to Nov. 24. We counted 301 people listed as "payroll" employees. Who were these people and what did they do? Corridoni said most of them were young people, fresh out of college or taking a break from their studies, who worked on a field staff to help Obama win Virginia. They fanned out to campaign offices across the state to reach out to voters, stage local campaign events and organize get-out-the-vote efforts. About half of the workers were from Virginia, the rest came from all over the country. The field staff was funded by millions of dollars pumped into the state party by the Democratic National Committee and Obama’s campaign. The staff’s activities, Stoney told us, were jointly coordinated by those national entities and the state party. Stoney said he didn’t have a personal hand in much of the hiring but, as executive director of the state party, had "the final sign off" on who came aboard. He said he worked with the national campaign to establish goals for the field staff and assigned mid-level managers at the party to supervise the daily work. "I was executive director of the party, so I was responsible for ensuring all these people got paid," Stoney said. He said he and others spent a lot of time finding homes for the workers and that he traveled the state "rallying and galvanizing" them. "We were given a task at the beginning of the year that Virginia would be a battleground in the election and you need to get people on the ground," Stoney said. He added that he carried out the mission and it helped Obama become the first Democratic presidential candidate in 44 years to win Virginia. In December 2008, with the presidential election in the books, the state party’s payroll fell to eight people. A final note: Stoney also was asked at the debate how many people he supervised when he was secretary of the commonwealth from 2014 until this April. He didn’t provide an answer, but we will. The state budget provided funding for 17 employees in the office, including Stoney, for the fiscal year that ended on June 30. The secretary of the commonwealth helps the governor make nearly 4,000 appointments to state boards and commissions. Among other duties, the secretary also helps the governor process restoration of rights requests from felons who have completed their sentences and keeps records on state lobbyists. Our ruling Asked how many people he supervised as executive director of the state Democratic Party, Stoney said "there were 300 people on my payroll in 2008." Records show the state party’s payroll did hit 300 that fall as it hired temporary field workers to help Obama’s presidential campaign in Virginia. It was a massive effort coordinated by the state party, the Democratic National Committee and Obama’s campaign. The caveat is that there were 11 people on the payroll in February 2008 when Stoney became executive director and that didn’t begin to significantly rise until June. And in December, when the election was history, the party’s payroll shrank to eight. So the statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. That makes it Half True.

Levar Stoney

2016-10-25T00:00:00

2016-10-17

['None']

bove-00228

No Night On August 12, Say WhatsApp Forwards: Separating Space News From Junk News

none

https://www.boomlive.in/no-night-on-august-12-say-whatsapp-forwards-separating-space-news-from-junk-news/

No Night On August 12, Say WhatsApp Forwards: Separating Space News From Junk News

Aug 07 2017 5:45 pm, Last Updated: Aug 16 2017 1:45 pm

['None']

pomt-13814

What the facts say is ... "the best scenario for kids is a loving mom and dad."

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/17/reince-priebus/gop-chair-wrongly-claims-facts-show-children-do-be/

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus defended the 2016 Republican Party platform ahead of its convention in a July 17 interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd. While the platform isn’t yet in its final form, many observers have said the document so far lands to the right on social issues. Todd asked Priebus about the platform’s position on same-sex marriage. He referenced one draft that says "the data, the facts lead to an inescapable conclusion that every child deserves a married mom and dad" — based on claims that children raised in a traditional household are healthier and less likely to engage in crime and substance abuse. "It’s implying somehow that children of same-sex couples are more likely to be addicts, to engage in crime," Todd said. "Do you mean to have it imply that?" Priebus replied that it’s possible for children of same-sex parents and single parents to have successful lives, but the best scenario is for children to grow up in a traditional opposite-sex household. "The best scenario for kids is a loving mom and dad," Priebus said. "However, it doesn't mean at all that single parents or same-sex parents, that any parent in America can't love a child, can't raise a child, and that child can't be successful and loved. It doesn't mean that. It just means what the facts say." Do "the facts say" that "the best scenario for kids is a loving mom and dad" as opposed to same-sex parents? We’ve rated two similar claims False in the past, and not much has changed since we last looked into it in 2014. If anything, the scholarly consensus that children can fare just as well in same-sex households has strengthened. "The consensus is overwhelming that those children do very well in those (same-sex parent) families, and there’s no harm or bad consequence that occurs because of those parents not being opposite sex," said Ellen Perrin, a professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine who has researched this question. What the research shows Researchers at Columbia Law School reviewed scholarly works about the well-being of children living with gay or lesbian parents spanning the past three decades. The researchers found 78 relevant articles, and of those, 74 concluded that children of same-sex parents fare no worse than children of opposite-sex parents. Six of these articles were published in the last three years. The studies examine topics such as adolescent well-being, child physical and emotional health, family functioning and the effect of homophobic stigmatization. "Taken together, this research forms an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on over three decades of peer-reviewed research, that having a gay or lesbian parent does not harm children," the Columbia researchers wrote. That leaves four articles that argue children face more risks with opposite-sex parents than they do with same-sex parents. However, the Columbia researchers say these studies are problematic because only a minority of the child subjects grew up with same-sex parents. Most subjects of these four studies grew up with opposite-sex parents but one of the parents eventually came out as gay or lesbian, often causing family breakup or turmoil. Some of this research conflates family composition and structure with family stability and history, said Gary Gates, an expert in LGBT demography at the University of California Los Angeles. Social science research suggests marriage — and not necessarily the gender makeup of that marriage — is associated with stability. "In other words, studies that compare children in long-term intact families with same-sex couple parents show that they generally do as well as kids in long-term intact families with different-sex parents," Gates said. Gates co-authored an overview of contemporary research about LGBT parents. The report found that LGBT parents and their children are doing "quite well," but research into the subject face problems like getting a large and diverse sample size. And there is little research into subcategories, like sibling dynamics among children with same-sex parent families or domestic violence. Perrin added that there is much more research into lesbian female parents than there is into gay male parents, but that imbalance is starting to even out, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of gay marriage and more male gay couples are having children. In any case, evidence supporting Priebus’s claim is limited and problematic. "There’s no scholarly data that suggests this is a problem," Perrin said. We did not hear back from Priebus. Our ruling Priebus said, "What the facts say" is ... "the best scenario for kids is a loving mom and dad," as opposed to having same-sex parents. The limited pieces of research that appear to support Priebus’ claim have been called into question. And overall, scholarly research shows that what matters to children is the quality and stability of the parenting, rather than the parents’ particular sex, gender or sexual orientation. We rate Priebus’ claim False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/6d388e00-e032-4283-84a1-9d3850f75429

Reince Priebus

2016-07-17T16:21:30

2016-07-17

['None']

snes-03758

Donald Trump raped his former wife and a young woman, and his modeling agency was found to be trafficking young girls.

mixture

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/are-we-not-going-to-talk-about-trump/

Ballot Box

Kim LaCapria

Donald Trump Rape and Trafficking Accusations

19 October 2016

['None']

pomt-10739

John McCain is right on that one. The line-item veto is the best tool the president has to rein in excessive spending.

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2007/nov/07/mitt-romney/budget-pros-arent-so-sure/

In attacking former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for successfully challenging the line-item veto in court, Mitt Romney asserts that the veto is a great way to cut spending. He says he used it more than 800 times as governor of Massachusetts. More than 40 governors have the power. But calling it "the best tool" for a president to cut spending is saying too much. In fact, federal budget experts are in some disagreement over how well a line-item veto would work if the power was restored to the president. President Clinton was given the power by Congress in 1996. It was declared unconstitutional in 1998. During the time that he had it, the so-called "pork barrel" special interest projects and targeted tax benefits he vetoed would have saved about $600-million over five years. The Congressional Research Service pointed out that for budget year 1998, the savings were about $355-million out of a total budget of $1.7-trillion. Congress would have to amend the Constitution to give the president the same power Clinton had. Short of that, Congress could give the president a limited power to rescind spending and force the House and Senate to vote on those proposed cuts. Currently, Congress can ignore presidential requests to rescind money. Budget analysts aren't sure what impact the line-item veto would have. "To the extent that the line-item veto act shifts power from the Congress to the president, it may change behavior in subtle ways that are difficult to observe," June O'Neill, then-director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the House Rules Committee on March 11, 1998. Louis Fisher of the Congressional Research Service agreed, writing in 2005 that as a result of deal-cutting over use of the veto between Congress and the White House, spending could actually increase. Fisher's idea is that in the reshaping of power between Congress and the White House that would occur with a line-item veto, presidents could barter for extra spending in areas they favored in exchange for letting other projects go unvetoed. It's this fuzzy picture that keeps us from going any further than Half True on Romney's claim that a line-item veto is "the best tool" for a president to cut spending.

Mitt Romney

2007-11-07T00:00:00

2007-10-09

['None']

pomt-09724

Here in Florida, I’ve slashed government by 10 percent. That's $7 billion.

mostly false

/florida/statements/2009/oct/26/charlie-crist/gov-charlie-crist-says-he-has-reduced-size-state-g/

With conservative Marco Rubio nipping at his heels in the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is trying to pump up his conservative credentials. In a new radio advertisement for his campaign, he says, "Here in Florida, I’ve slashed government by 10 percent. That’s $7 billion." It’s a statement Crist has also made on the campaign trail, and at a Hillsborough County Republican Party fundraiser earlier this month. It’s true that Florida’s budget has dropped by 10 percent, or about $7 billion, since Crist was elected governor in November 2006. The budget passed by the Legislature and approved by then-Gov. Jeb Bush in May 2006 came in at $73.9 billion. This year’s spending plan tops out at $66.5 billion. But can Crist, as his radio ad claims, really take credit for the cuts? In 2007, Crist did veto $459 million from the state budget, setting a state record with his veto pen. But the Florida Constitution requires that state lawmakers prepare a balanced budget, which is built around revenue generated by sales taxes, corporate taxes, other taxes and fees, and federal appropriations. And since 2007, that revenue has declined significantly as the nationwide recession has taken hold. State budget documents show that in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, $31.7 billion was available in the general revenue fund. This year, the fund had only $21.9 billion. (In fiscal year 2007, the fund had $28 billion, and in 2008, it had $24.3 billion.) With revenue down and a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget, Crist had to either cut spending or raise taxes. "This is not a concerted effort on the part of our governor and Legislature to cut the budget," said Dominic M. Calabro, president and CEO of Florida TaxWatch. "It is because of the worst economy Florida has had since the Great Depression." Crist has defended the budget-cut claim by saying that in other states, taxes were increased to cover shortfalls. While Crist didn’t push for tax increases to make up the entire shortfall, he did approve fee and tax increases this year — on everything from fishing licenses to initial vehicle registrations to cigarettes — that total $2.2 billion. So while it is true that state government has shrunk by 10 percent since Crist’s election, it had little to do with him, and a lot to do with the shrinking economy. For those reasons, we give Crist’s statement a Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

Charlie Crist

2009-10-26T13:10:03

2009-10-16

['None']

hoer-00380

Warning - Do Not Add 'Jason Lee' Because Its a Virus

facebook scams

https://www.hoax-slayer.com/jason-lee-virus-hoax.shtml

Brett M. Christensen

False Warning - Do Not Add 'Jason Lee' Because Its a Virus

3rd March 2012

['None']

vees-00158

VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Tagle said church leaders 'should govern PH'

fake

http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-tagle-did-not-say-church-leaders-shoul

fake news

VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Tagle DID NOT say church leaders 'should govern PH'

June 26, 2018

['None']

pomt-07440

Tim Kaine broke a campaign promise not to raise taxes.

mostly false

/virginia/statements/2011/apr/21/republican-party-virginia/virginia-republicans-say-tim-kaine-broke-campaign-/

The Republican Party of Virginia was ready to roll when Democrat Timothy M. Kaine recently announced he will run for the U.S. Senate next year. The GOP posted on its website a list of unflattering numerical milestones from Kaine’s term as governor from 2006 to 2010. One item particularly grabbed our attention. Under the subhead "7 days," the GOP wrote that’s "How long it took Tim Kaine to break his campaign promise not to raise taxes." Kaine indeed asked for a tax increase on his seventh day in office. On Jan. 20, 2006, he proposed a $1 billion-a-year transportation package that called for higher levies on vehicle sales and insurance as well as increased traffic fines and registration fees. Whether he broke a campaign promise is more complicated. Kaine held a murky position on taxes during the campaign. So how do the Republicans justify their claim that Kaine promised not to raise taxes? Garren Shipley, the communications director for the state GOP, pointed us to a gubernatorial debate on Oct. 9, 2005. Jerry Kilgore, the Republican nominee, charged that Kaine had a history of supporting tax increases that guaranteed he would try to raise levies as governor. Kilgore portrayed himself as a tax cutter. "There you go again, Jerry, just making stuff up," Kaine retorted. Shipley said Kaine’s response "very strongly" implies he would not propose tax hikes. Perhaps. But a review of the debate transcript shows Kaine could have been responding to a variety of charges and claims Kilgore made in a minute-long barrage. In any event, Kaine’s reply hardly constitutes a no-tax vow. Shipley offers a second argument that is more complex. Kaine repeatedly promised he would not seek a tax hike for transportation unless he could guarantee the revenues would be sequestered and never used for any purpose other than improving roads, rail and public transportation. Shipley says Kaine broke his campaign vow by introducing the transportation plan without the guarantee. Kaine did promise not to seek a tax increase for transportation unless the money was "locked up." He objected to a legislative practice of siphoning money from state transportation fund during lean times to help pay for schools, prisons and health care. The practice led to the 2002 defeat of local referendums that would have raised taxes for roads in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Polls showed many voters in those regions did not trust state politicians to keep their promise that the revenues would never stray from transportation. Kaine solidified his position in a July 16, 2005, gubernatorial debate while answering a tax question posed by Bob Holsworth, a political scientist. "I have pledged, Bob, as you said, that I will not support any increase in transportation taxes or revenues so long as the Transportation Trust Fund is unlocked," Kaine said. "I don’t think I can look voters in the face and ask them for more money for transportation if there is a hole in the bucket and money is going to drain out." Kaine at first advocated that road money be locked through passage of a state constitutional amendment shielding transportation money from raids. But enacting a constitutional amendment is a three-year process. Business leaders in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads weren’t willing to wait that long to ease traffic congestion. So Kaine, in August 2005, altered his position to open the possibility of raising taxes during his first year in office. While still endorsing a constitutional amendment, he gave himself wiggle room by saying he was also open to locking the transportation money through other means. Kaine was short on details. Days after his inauguration, Kaine offered specifics in his State of the Commonwealth address. He said that in lieu of a constitutional fix, he would amend any new transportation tax or revenue laws to ensure they would expire if the money was shifted to other programs. He also promised to veto any budget that diverted transportation money. Kaine’s protections would not have made the funds tamper-proof, however. The General Assembly was empowered to override any amendments or vetoes Kaine might use to safeguard the money. And future governors would not be bound by any commitments Kaine made to shield funds. When he unveiled his transportation plan on Jan. 20, the GOP criticized Kaine for breaching his campaign pledge not to raise taxes for transportation without a lock. The Richmond Times-Dispatch noted, however, in its following-day story, that Kaine as a candidate "refused to rule out new road taxes." Kaine’s bill died in the Republican-led House of Delegates, which has been and remains opposed to raising taxes. The 2005 House also killed 10 bills that would have placed before voters a constitutional amendment to put a lock on transportation money. Let’s review: The Republican Party of Virginia says that within a week of becoming governor in 2006, Kaine broke a promise not to raise taxes. Kaine indeed proposed a $1 billion transportation tax increase on his seventh day in office. There’s no evidence Kaine made a no-tax pledge during the 2005 campaign. To the contrary, Kaine set conditions under which he would seek a tax hike for transportation. Kaine did, however, leave himself open for criticism by compromising those conditions once he got into office. We rate the GOP claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

Republican Party of Virginia

2011-04-21T14:26:33

2011-04-18

['None']

abbc-00328

The claim: Andrew McKellar says the average motorist will pay somewhere in the region of $140 extra a year with an increase in the fuel tax excise from November 10.

in-between

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-10/cost-of-the-fuel-tax-indexation-exaggerated-fact-check/5853830

The claim: Andrew McKellar says the average motorist will pay somewhere in the region of $140 extra a year with an increase in the fuel tax excise from November 10.

['tax', 'government-and-politics', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'federal-government', 'liberals', 'australia']

['tax', 'government-and-politics', 'business-economics-and-finance', 'federal-government', 'liberals', 'australia']

Fact check: How much will the fuel tax hike leave you out of pocket?

Sun 8 May 2016, 8:08am

['None']

snes-06232

A letter to radio personality Dr. Laura highlights fallacies in Biblical anti-homosexual arguments.

true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/letter-to-dr-laura/

Politicians

David Mikkelson

Letter to Dr. Laura

9 March 2004

['Bible']

snes-05427

Hillary Clinton once said that "women have always been the primary victims of war."

true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-victims-of-war/

Politicians

Dan Evon

Hillary Clinton and the Victims of War

30 December 2015

['None']

tron-02621

Chase Bank Employee LBGT Loyalty Survey

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/chase-gay-loyalty-survey/

miscellaneous

Chase Bank Employee LBGT Loyalty Survey

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

pomt-11094

Says Dean Heller helped "craft a partisan repeal bill that also would have slashed coverage protections for people with pre-existing conditions."

half-true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jun/13/jacky-rosen/did-nevadas-heller-back-bill-cut-pre-existing-cond/

When the U.S. Justice Department asked a federal judge to overturn guaranteed coverage for pre-existing conditions in the Affordable Care Act, Democrats pounced. The department filed a brief on June 7, and the next day, Nevada Democratic Senate candidate Jacky Rosen tied Republican incumbent Dean Heller to the administration's move. "Last year, after Sen. Dean Heller broke his promise to protect Nevadans’ health care and caved to President Trump, he wound up helping craft a partisan repeal bill that also would have slashed coverage protections for people with pre-existing conditions," Rosen’s campaign posted June 8. The attack from team Rosen concerns the 2017 Graham-Cassidy bill that would have turned federal health care programs into block grants to the states. The bill never came up for a vote, but Heller was an original co-sponsor. (The press release that unveiled the bill came with the headline "Senators introduce Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson.") So the question is, would Graham-Cassidy have definitively "slashed" protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, as the Rosen campaign said? We dug into the bill to see. While the claim pushes too far, the legislation did open the door to a loss of the ironclad guarantee under Obamacare. The bill and pre-existing conditions The Heller campaign disagreed with Rosen’s characterization of the health care bill. Heller’s team highlighted that Graham-Cassidy left the current law on pre-existing conditions untouched. "Insurance companies would still be prohibited from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions and would still be required to ensure patients can renew their coverage regardless of their health," said Heller spokesman Keith Schipper. But the bill’s rules for state waivers from many regulations in the Affordable Care Act created some ambiguity. A state would gain access to billions of dollars in block grants if it describes how (see page 11) it "shall maintain access to adequate and affordable health insurance coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions." Heller’s office emphasized the word "shall," saying it created an imperative to retain access. But the same waiver would give states the power to allow insurance companies to charge sick people more than healthy ones (page 145). Under the current rules, insurance companies can’t do that. They can’t factor in health, period. In addition, current Affordable Care Act rules limit the range for premiums and say companies can’t charge an older person more than three times what they charge a younger person. The waiver does away with those limits (starting at the bottom of page 144 in the bill). A state’s commitment boils down to maintaining "access to adequate and affordable health insurance coverage." "That’s not nothing" in terms of protecting people with pre-existing conditions, Indiana University health care law professor David Gamage told us in 2017. But beyond that, Gamage said the protection for pre-existing conditions gets murky. "The bill says states have to do something, but what that something is is unclear," Gamage said. "And it’s overwhelmingly likely that what some states do won’t be as robust as what people have now." Heller’s staff told us that while the bill gave discretion to Washington administrators to set rules for what it meant by adequate and affordable coverage, the intent was to follow existing law. Looking at the first version of the bill, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 35 states plus the District of Columbia would see net funding cuts under the legislation. The health consulting firm Avalere, with funding from the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress, had a similar finding. One way or another, it costs money to cover people with known health conditions, and most states would have less of it under the senators’ proposal. On top of that, Gamage said, Affordable Care Act regulations spread some of the costs across the private sector. Those regulations would go away, too, meaning it would be up to the states to make up the difference. Nevada results might vary Less money could push states to leave patients with less protections than they enjoy today. We looked at how Nevada might have fared under the bill. The Heller camp said, based on an analysis from Cassidy's office, the state would get more money than under Obamacare in the 2020-2026 period. On the other hand, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated a loss of $1.2 billion lost over the period. The Avalere analysis showed the Silver State getting $2 billion less by the year 2026. When we looked at the losses compared to the number of state residents, Nevada would not have been hit as hard as some of the big losers, such as California and Minnesota. But at the end of the day, the independent estimate from the Kaiser Family Foundation still said Nevada would face constraints on how much it could do for people. Murky terms "The terms ‘adequate’ and ‘affordable’ are very much subject to interpretation," said law professor Wendy Netter Epstein at DePaul University. "What is adequate and affordable for one person may not be for another. And it almost certainly doesn’t mean that those with pre-existing conditions have to be charged the same as those without." If states fell short, Epstein said Washington regulators could try to hold their feet to the fire and press them to do better with their federal money, but "we can anticipate a whole lot of litigation." And even a win for Washington might not mean much in practice. "Folks who are sick and need health insurance coverage now don’t have the luxury of time to let these legal debates play out," Epstein said. Both Epstein and Gamage said in theory, states might find ways to squeeze much more health coverage out of each dollar. Or failing that, they might decide to put much more of their own money into health care and re-establish rules modeled on the Affordable Care Act. But they said neither outcome is likely. Epstein said there’s an underlying disagreement on what it means to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Under the Affordable Care Act, those people got the same kind of coverage at the same price as others. Under Graham-Cassidy, "insurers will have to continue to cover people, but not at the same rates. And the policies don’t have to provide the same coverage." Our ruling Rosen said that Heller backed a bill that would have "slashed coverage protections for people with pre-existing conditions." The legislation included language to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but it opened the door to insurance plans that might be more limited or less affordable than exist today. How much protection would be lost is impossible to predict. The proposal told states they had to plan to keep coverage accessible and affordable for people with pre-existing conditions. But it didn’t define those terms and that falls short of an ironclad guarantee. A full reading of the bill’s text shows that protections for pre-existing conditions would be less certain, but the statement pushes beyond the known impacts of the Graham-Cassidy bill. We rate this claim Half True. Clarification: After we published this fact-check, Heller’s office provided updated materials on the Graham-Cassidy legislation. We included that information, as well as a description of the Avalere study’s funding. The rating remained unchanged. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Jacky Rosen

2018-06-13T12:24:08

2018-06-08

['None']

pomt-13005

Under Obamacare, "premiums have doubled and tripled" in Wisconsin.

mostly true

/wisconsin/statements/2016/dec/13/ron-johnson/testing-ron-johnson-claim-under-obamacare-premiums/

President Barack Obama’s health insurance overhaul was a popular target during the 2016 campaign, as Republicans made the case change was needed and vowed to repeal it. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, was among those taking aim at Obamacare. With Republicans poised to implement changes after presidential and Congressional victories, it seemed a good time to revisit one of Johnson’s claims. In an October debate, Johnson wrapped up a six-minute answer to an Obamacare question by asserting "premiums have doubled and tripled" in Wisconsin since the law was implemented. Did health insurance costs spike in Wisconsin after the Affordable Care Act? Let’s look at the numbers. Johnson cites, expands on study The debate question Johnson was responding to asked what he would do to reduce insurance costs, while noting rates on the federal health insurance exchange were poised to increase by about 16 percent in 2017. So it’s fair to assume his answer refers to that exchange, also called the individual market. Those are independent, non-group plans not run through employers or government programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. Johnson began by citing a study by the conservative Manhattan Institute, and the "doubled and tripled" statement referred back to that study. The study, which looked only at the individual market, calculated the average premium in 2013 and 2014 (before and after the individual mandate took effect) by averaging the five least expensive plans in each county nationwide. The institute published a before and after premium for males and females ages 27, 40 and 64. Johnson then extended the study to 2017 by adding the average rate increase in Wisconsin for 2015, 2016 and 2017, as calculated by the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. That office listed increases of 3.8 percent in 2015, 8.4 percent in 2016 and 15.9 percent in 2017. The rate increase across the age and gender groups then ranged from an increase of 180 percent to 310 percent. Johnson cited those numbers at the debate, though he wrongly attributed them only to the Manhattan Institute. Yevgeniy Feyman, adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an author of the study, said Johnson’s methodology for extending the time period made sense. To make sure, PolitiFact Wisconsin used a methodology similar to Feyman’s to average the five lowest-cost plans available in each Wisconsin county from 2015-’17. That yielded increases similar to Johnson’s calculations and consistent with the claim that premiums doubled and tripled. "For all consumers, it’s clear rates increased in the first year and for some more than doubled," Elizabeth Hizmi, spokesman for the state insurance office, said in an email. "In most cases, rates significantly increased when you add in the compounding of rate increases." Hizmi said the agency didn’t do its own calculation of rates before and after Obamacare because before 2014 each insurer developed rates using different methodologies and filed their rate changes at different times. Loren Adler, associate director of the Center for Health Policy at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, said the Affordable Care Act did indeed have a significant impact in Wisconsin, which had the highest rate increase of any state in the individual marketplace. Claim applies to narrow band of people We’ll pause to note, however, that those increases apply to a relatively small group of Wisconsinites. Only 6 percent of state residents get non-group insurance such as the individual market, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Employer-sponsored insurance is the most common in Wisconsin — at 55 percent of the population — and those trends are very different from the ones Johnson cited. From 2014 to 2016, premiums for individual coverage in employer-sponsored plans rose by an average of 3 percent per year nationally, according to Kaiser. That’s a slower increase than the average of 5.2 percent per year in the three years before ACA took effect. That slowdown in rate increases also has to be put in context, though, since it is due in part to employees choosing higher-deductible plans, Kaiser notes. Study methodology questioned Adler also took issue with part of the Manhattan Institute’s methodology. The study simplified the final comparison by combining the pre-ACA rates paid by healthy people and the higher rates paid by those previously denied coverage, weighting the rates based on the percentage previously denied and how much more they typically paid. The result was a more straightforward conclusion but one that didn’t really reflect either of the two groups. Healthy people in the individual marketplace saw premiums grow by even more than the amount cited in the study, but sicker people likely saw premiums drop, or were able to get coverage when they previously couldn’t, Adler said. And that less-than-healthy group is not small: A 2009 study by the American Health Insurance Plans Center for Policy and Research said 34 percent of all policyholders were offered insurance at higher than standard rates. The Manhattan Institute study also did not factor in the subsidies that many people receive to offset the higher premiums in the individual market. PolitiFact National noted this in a 2013 fact check addressing a claim by Fox News host Sean Hannity based on the Manhattan Institute study. But both the study and Johnson were clearly referencing premiums, not out-of-pocket costs. Our rating Johnson said premiums have doubled and tripled in Wisconsin after Obamacare. That was based on extrapolating a study that looked only at 2014, but the study author said Johnson’s approach was methodologically sound. And an analysis by PolitiFact Wisconsin found similar numbers. Those increases are only true for the 6 percent of Wisconsinites buying insurance on the individual market, but that was the group specifically identified in the debate question to which Johnson was responding. And while the study did not differentiate on the health of policyholders, it did provide a general range for how premiums changed after the Affordable Care Act. We rate Johnson’s statement Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/c8000c04-45f8-4d6e-9c91-5c00e6a46cba

Ron Johnson

2016-12-13T05:00:00

2016-10-14

['Wisconsin']

hoer-00962

Janet Jackson Facebook Page Promises Free Money and Prizes

facebook scams

https://www.hoax-slayer.net/fake-janet-jackson-facebook-page-promises-free-money-and-prizes/

Brett M. Christensen

Fake Janet Jackson Facebook Page Promises Free Money and Prizes

July 11, 2018

['None']

snes-05720

Photographs show a Calderon dolphin hunt taking place in Denmark.

true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dolphin-hunt-faroe/

Fauxtography

David Mikkelson

Do These Pictures Show a Dolphin Hunt in Denmark’s Faroe Islands?

22 November 2009

['Denmark']

tron-03499

New Boeing 797 Giant “Blended Wing” Passenger Airliner

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/b797/

space-aviation

New Boeing 797 Giant “Blended Wing” Passenger Airliner

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

goop-02352

Tom Cruise “Preparing To Marry” Vanessa Kirby,

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/tom-cruise-not-marrying-vanessa-kirby/

Shari Weiss

Tom Cruise NOT “Preparing To Marry” Vanessa Kirby, Despite Reports

8:23 pm, October 12, 2017

['None']

tron-01532

Divorce Agreement Written By Young College Student John J. Wall

commentary!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/divorce-agreement-written-young-college-student-john-j-wall/

government

Divorce Agreement Written By Young College Student John J. Wall

Jun 1, 2016

['None']

tron-03647

Deputy Attorney General Designate David Ogden Drafting a Gun Ban Against Seniors

fiction! & satire!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/senior-gun-contol/

warnings

Deputy Attorney General Designate David Ogden Drafting a Gun Ban Against Seniors

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

snes-01501

A video shows a woman using her face as a paddle during a game of table tennis.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-this-woman-playing-ping-pong-with-her-face/

Fauxtography

Dan Evon

Is This Woman Playing Ping Pong With Her Face?

30 October 2017

['None']

pomt-12506

Trump has "worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any president since Truman."

mostly true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/apr/27/sean-spicer/trump-has-signed-more-bills-100-days-any-president/

Counting the number of laws he’s signed, President Donald Trump has been more productive in his first 100 days than any president since Harry Truman, according to press secretary Sean Spicer. "Despite the historic obstruction by Senate Democrats, he's worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any president since Truman, and these bills deliver on some of his most significant promises to the American people," Spicer said at the White House daily press briefing April 25. This is a new assessment of Trump’s output so far from the White House; Trump previously, wrongly, said no administration had accomplished as much as he did, period. Trump has signed 28 bills so far. Spicer’s correct that this is more than every president going back about 70 years. However, this isn’t a perfect measure — primarily because not all bills are created equal. None of the bills Trump has signed into law are particularly significant. The numbers Truman signed 55 bills in his first 100 days after his 1948 election. (Truman first became president in 1945, when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office. So we’re starting with the first 100 days of Truman’s first full term.) No president since Truman has signed as many bills in his first 100 days, according to data from GovTrack and research by political scientists John Frendreis, Raymond Tatalovich and Jon Schaff. The next highest after Trump, who has signed 28 bills, was John F. Kennedy, who signed 26. The lowest was George W. Bush, who signed seven. No president comes close to Roosevelt, who began the tradition of marking the first 100 days. He signed 76. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Note on the chart: For presidents Jimmy Carter through Trump, we did our own count using GovTrack. For earlier presidents, we used data confirmed by Frendreis, a political science professor at Loyola University Chicago. For Lyndon Johnson and Truman, who both came into office to replace a president midterm, we used the first 100 days after their re-election. We left out Gerald Ford because he did not serve a full term. Of the post-Truman presidents, Trump is "fairly typical" in terms of the number of bills signed so far, Frendreis said. The bills Spicer says that Trump has shepherded these bills through Congress. However, the 28 bills aren’t very significant and don’t appear to have required vote whipping from the White House. For example, three bills appoint individuals to the Smithsonian Institution board, two name buildings, and one designates a location for a National Desert Storm and Desert Shield Memorial. The most notable bills Trump has signed are a set of 13 that reverse Obama-era regulations on a range of issues including on internet privacy and gun control. While that was a goal for Republican lawmakers, it’s important to note these bills made it to Trump’s desk through a process made possible by the Congressional Review Act, which became law in 1996. The act gives Congress a narrow window to reverse regulations, so these 13 bills had to get through Congress within Trump’s first 100 days. Notably missing from the list of 28 bills that have reached his desk: A bill repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, along with several other laws Trump said he would try to usher through Congress within his first 100 days. Compare this to President Barack Obama, who signed 14 laws, but those laws included the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the $800 billion stimulus package. Or Roosevelt, who within 100 days signed 15 major bills including the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which established farm subsidies, and the National Industrial Recovery Act, which started public-works efforts to reverse the Great Depression. He signed bills that legalized the manufacture and sale of beer and wine and established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Tennessee Valley Authority. This doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on Trump. Generally speaking, it’s rare for a president to sign major legislation in his first 100 days, Frendreis said. "Outsider" presidents like Trump, in particular, need time to learn how to navigate the lawmaking process in Washington, and major legislation doesn’t move through Congress quickly. The first 100 days is "not necessarily an accurate reflection of how effective a president is going to be in leading Congress," he said. Our ruling Spicer said Trump has "worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any president since Truman." In the first 100 days of his first full term, Truman signed 55 bills. The president with the highest count since then is Trump with 28. None of the bills Trump has signed so far are major pieces of legislation, so it doesn’t indicate that Trump has been particularly skilled at getting his agenda through Congress so far. We rate Spicer’s claim Mostly True. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com

Sean Spicer

2017-04-27T09:29:34

2017-04-25

['United_States_Congress', 'Harry_S._Truman']

pomt-07763

Every (Wisconsin) legislator that votes for this bill will have to "give up the same amount of pay" as other state employees.

true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/feb/24/jeff-fitzgerald/fitzgerald-wisconsin-legislaors-would-have-give-sa/

Facing a budget shortfall, many legislators in Wisconsin have talked about the need for shared sacrifice to justify Gov. Scott Walker's plan to require state employees to pay more for health and pension benefits. But what about the elected officials themselves? Are they making a sacrifice? In an interview with Fox's Sean Hannity on Feb. 22, 2011, Republican Jeff Fitzgerald, speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, said Wisconsin legislators would be subject to the same cuts the governor is proposing for other government workers. "You know, we are all in this together," Fitzgerald said. "Every legislator that votes for this bill as well is going to do the same for themselves. We have to give up the same amount of pay." Amid the fiery debate over benefits cuts and collective bargaining rights -- and the potential ripple effect around the nation -- we haven't heard much about how Walker's plan would personally affect the legislators who will vote on it, so we decided to check Fitzgerald's comment. Walker's plan would require most public workers to pay half their pension costs -- typically 5.8 percent of pay for state workers -- and at least 12 percent of their health care costs. A detailed analysis of Walker's proposal by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau says that under Walker's plan any participant in the Wisconsin Retirement System, including elected officials, "would be required to make an employee contribution to the WRS in an amount equal to one-half of all actuarially-required contributions, as approved by the Employee Trust Fund (ETF) Board." Under current 2011 rates, one half of the general participant rate would be 5.8 percent and one half of the executive/elected official rate would be 6.65 percent. So elected officials would actually be paying a little more than government workers, said Robert Lang, director of the Wisconsin's Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Currently, Lang noted, most general government employees pay a slight share -- less than 1 percent of their salary -- toward their pension, and elected officials don't pay anything. As for health benefits, the bill doesn't specifically mention the effect on elected officials. It simply talks about changes related to anyone participating in the state's "group insurance board coverage." That includes elected officials, Lang said. So elected officials also would have to pay the same share for health care as all state employees covered by the health plan. (For details, see pages 29 and 30 of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau analysis). There's one other piece of the bill that would affect the benefits of elected officials, and it has to do with the way pension benefits are calculated. Pension payments are based on a formula derived from the employee's salary, years of service and a set multiplier. For general employees, that multiplier is 1.6. For elected officials, the multiplier is currently 2.0. Under the budget repair bill, however, the multiplier for elected officials would drop to 1.6, the same as everyone else (see page 3 of the budget repair bill, or page 33 of the Fiscal Bureau analysis for further details). Bottom line, they'll be getting less in their pension checks. The new, lower multiplier won't take effect until the next legislative session. We also ran Fitzgerald's statement by Jeff Leverich, senior researcher for the Wisconsin Education Association Council, and he agreed with Lang. "That is our understanding too, co-pay applies to elected officials; however, some ambiguity remains about when they might be enacted given statutory language governing timing of compensation changes for elected" officials, Leverich stated via e-mail. According to Lang, elected officials would have to start paying more toward pension and health benefits immediately, just like everyone else. Leverich, of WEAC, also argued that while co-pays may be the same for elected officials, there would still be a disparity in bargaining positions. "Please realize, however, that the elimination of bargaining rights is a different order of magnitude," Leverich said. "The effects of the legislation on the two parties (legislators/public workers) is truly dissimilar." In short, Fitzgerald said the legislators who will vote on Walker's bill would have to give up the same amount of pay. Aside from the collective bargaining issues, Walker's plan would make state employees pay more for health and pension benefits. And according to the bill, elected officials would take the same hits. We rate Fitzgerald's claim True.

Jeff Fitzgerald

2011-02-24T17:42:15

2011-02-22

['Wisconsin']

pomt-00224

Says #MeToo movement sign suggested assaulting First Lady Melania Trump.

pants on fire!

/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/oct/11/joshua-feuerstein/metoo-protester-not-pictured-2016-photo-disturbing/

A two-year-old viral photo with a disturbing sign about First Lady Melania Trump re-emerged on Facebook on Oct. 8, 2018, garnering more than 11,000 reactions and 8,000 shares. The photo caption said the sign-holder was part of the one-year-old #MeToo movement. That’s not true. The person holding the sign was planted to discredit protesters of President Donald Trump following the 2016 election, according to numerous news reports. Jack Posobiec, who is credited with planting the sign, also heavily promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory and helped organize the DeploraBall, an informal inauguration party marked by clashes between Trump’s supporters and protesters. The photo was posted more recently by Joshua Feuerstein, a former pastor who uses social media to promote his vision of evangelical Christianity. Feuerstein notably made headlines in 2015 for his viral video attacking Starbucks over its holiday cups. The reposted 2016 photo shows someone in a crowd of people holding a sign that says "Rape Melania." "This is the tolerant left #MeToo movement ... suggesting a sexual assault against the First Lady!!! Wow!!" the accompanying post read. This story was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) That photo has made waves on the internet before, originally posted a week after the 2016 election on Twitter by Alan Beck, a Trump supporter whose account has since been suspended. "DC Trump Protestor (sic) ‘Rape Melania,’" the original tweet said. People debated the legitimacy of the image and whether it was Photoshopped, but photos of the sign exist from different angles, taken by different people, confirming it was there. Response and reactions from Twitter users caused "#RapeMelania" to trend on Twitter, which prompted criticism against the social media platform for allowing such a hashtag to trend. That was all nearly a year before #MeToo took off in October 2017, reigniting a decade-old movement launched by activist Tarana Burk. We rate this claim Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Joshua Feuerstein

2018-10-11T12:05:05

2018-10-07

['None']

vogo-00606

Statement: The Unified Port of San Diego had the Convention Center’s expansion site “appraised at $4.7 million for its current use as a parking lot,” Union-Tribune reporter Craig Gustafson reported last Wednesday.

determination: false

https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/fact/fact-check-convention-center-appraisal-downplayed/

Analysis: In fact, the appraisal was based on the site’s approved use for a 250-room hotel. Had it been appraised as a parking lot like Gustafson reported, the estimate likely would have been lower than $4.7 million.

Fact Check: Convention Center Appraisal Downplayed

April 13, 2010

['San_Diego', 'U-T_San_Diego']

chct-00046

FACT CHECK: Did The GOP’s Pick To Question Kavanaugh's Accuser Work For Sheriff Joe Arpaio?

verdict: false

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/09/26/fact-check-kavanaugh-mitchell-ford-arpaio/

Emily Larsen | Fact Check Reporter

6:41 PM 09/26/2018

['Republican_Party_(United_States)']

snes-02360

President Donald Trump offered asylum to Aleksei Makeev, who was attacked in Mexico.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-asylum-white-supremacist/

Uncategorized

Arturo Garcia

Did Trump Offer Asylum to ‘Lord Nazi Ruso’?

24 May 2017

['Mexico', 'Donald_Trump']

pomt-01488

Michelle Nunn’s own plan says she funded organizations linked to terrorists.

pants on fire!

/georgia/statements/2014/sep/26/david-perdue/perdues-attempt-tar-nunn-terrorist-link-fails/

With Election Day just about five weeks away, and polls consistently showing a tight race with national implications, the battle to become Georgia’s next U.S. senator has turned ugly. In a newly released television ad that carries echoes of the late-campaign attacks that pundits said worked during the GOP runoff, Republican candidate David Perdue goes after Democrat Michelle Nunn for a supposed weakness on border security. Before he gets to that though, a narrator opens with a simple statement: "Michelle Nunn’s own plan says she funded organizations linked to terrorists." If that wasn’t clear enough, an overlay in all capital writing spells out what it calls an "exact quote" from a Nunn campaign document: "awards to inmates, terrorists." A simple sentence but serious implications. Is the ad right, that Michelle Nunn admits to financial ties to terrorists? PolitiFact Georgia decided to take a close look. The conservative National Review revealed in July that it had a 144-page series of Nunn campaign memos from last December. The story broke about a week after Perdue won the Republican nomination, in part by attacking rival U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston as "pro-amnesty" and in the pocket of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The leaked memos lay out Nunn's campaign strategy and include, among other things, detailed fundraising plans, a public relations strategy and list of anticipated attacks in the race. In those anticipated attacks and vulnerabilities is the reference to "service awards to inmates, terrorists" during her Points of Light tenure. The plan called for her team to have "pushback" documents ready for those anticipated issues as well as common, more broad attacks leveled against Democratic candidates. That means Nunn’s camp correctly predicted the GOP would attack her on the issue, not that there is a connection to be made. And about that connection? Perdue spokesman Derrick Dickey said the statement was based first on Nunn’s leaked documents and then cited a National Review story following up on the leak as evidence of the terrorist connection. "This isn’t something that we pulled out of thin air," Dickey said. The story refers to a link that PolitiFact Georgia already ruled as Mostly False when used in an attack ad from Ending Spending Action Fund. The Super PAC– which at nearly $2.8 million has injected the most outside money into the Georgia Senate race – centered its attack on MissionFish, a business that Points of Light owned until 2012 that collected donations from eBay users for about 20,000 charities. One of those charities, Islamic Relief USA, received about $13,500 in donations from MissionFish, and has partnered with the umbrella group Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) on disaster relief programs. A top Israeli defense official has accused IRW of having links to the terrorist group Hamas, and in June, the defense minister banned it from operating there. In 2012, one British bank closed an IRW account over counter-terrorism concerns. But the U.S. State Department does not consider the group a terrorist organization or front. The United Kingdom Charity Commission, which regulates IRW, also has found no such ties. The nonprofit released a statement following Israel’s ban, adamantly denying any links to terrorism. Islamic Relief USA, meanwhile, earns a perfect score from Charity Navigator for its transparency and accounting. The group does give grants to IRW for humanitarian programs in developing countries, as it does with other groups, said advocacy counsel Sharif Aly. But it also works with the American Red Cross and other charities in disaster relief, such as an ongoing effort to help with flooding in the Detroit area. "We are not terrorists and we do not support terrorism," Aly said. "Any money disbursed, inside or outside the United States, follows all regulations to ensure that." Nunn declined to be drawn into the debate this summer, when the memo was first unveiled. She did tell the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the memos, including the anticipated attacks, were more advice from supporters than a strict campaign blueprint. Nunn spokesman Nathan Click told PolitiFact Georgia that of course Nunn "absolutely" did not support terrorism or have any connections to terrorists. "That is not what the memo says," Click said. "It anticipates attacks that mischaracterize her record and distort her experience. That’s exactly what has happened." So where does that leave us with an attack that states as fact that Michelle Nunn’s own internal documents says she funded organizations that have terrorist ties? The Perdue ad plainly misconstrues what the Nunn internal memos said and why. PolitiFact Georgia has already ruled that tying Nunn’s nonprofit work to terrorism is off base. The effort to make the connection by incorrectly citing her campaign’s leaked memos verges on the ridiculous. We rate the claim Pants on Fire.

David Perdue

2014-09-26T00:00:00

2014-09-17

['None']

pomt-12267

Gas prices are the lowest in the U.S. in over ten years!

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jul/06/donald-trump/donald-trump-right-gas-prices-now-lowest-over-10-y/

All presidents like to tout their policy accomplishments, and Donald Trump is no exception. On July 4 -- one of the major travel weekends of the year -- Trump tweeted, "Gas prices are the lowest in the U.S. in over ten years! I would like to see them go even lower." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com We are fairly certain we know what Trump meant to say. But that's not what he said. (The White House did not respond to an inquiry for this article.) What Trump likely meant to say On the one hand, the American Automobile Association told PolitiFact that gasoline prices on Independence Day weekend were the lowest they have been in 12 years -- since 2005. "Gas prices have been declining since the beginning of June," said Jeanette Casselano, a spokesperson for AAA. "At $2.23, today’s national gas price average is the cheapest price we’ve seen since January. "The combination of tepid demand and increasing gasoline and crude output continues to put downward pressure on gas prices, and motorists are benefitting." There’s value in comparing gas prices using a narrow window of time like the July 4 weekend, because comparing, for example, summer prices to winter prices is like comparing apples and oranges. What Trump actually said However, the way Trump phrased his tweet was more expansive. Rather than limiting the comparison to the July 4 weekend, the tweet suggests that at no point over the last decade-plus have gas prices been lower. And that would not be correct, according to data from the Energy Information Administration, a federal office. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com There were 85 weeks in which gas cost less than $2.26 per gallon, the price it was at the time of Trump’s tweet. That means that for about one-sixth of the time over the last decade, gas cost less than it does now. (The EIA data does mirror AAA’s assessment for Fourth of July weekend prices.) The Energy Information Administration’s data set uses nominal dollars rather than inflation-adjusted dollars, so just to be certain, we ran the data through the federal inflation calculator to see how adjusting for inflation affected that number. The answer: 58 weeks. That’s still about one-ninth of the last decade. Trump's role in gas prices Then there’s the question of whether Trump deserves bragging rights. In general, presidents have rarely had a direct impact on the price of gasoline, said Philip Verleger, an economist and head of the energy consulting firm PKVerleger LLC. "The only one who had an impact was Jimmy Carter, who instituted price controls that managed to ball up the distribution of gasoline, leading to lines at gas stations," he said. Overall, presidents are "not a big factor" on gasoline prices, he said. Indeed, gas cost less during much of President Barack Obama’s last year in office than it does now. Our ruling Trump tweeted, "Gas prices are the lowest in the U.S. in over ten years!" Trump likely meant to say that gas prices on the July 4 weekend are lower now than at any point since 2005. But Trump tweeted something more sweeping -- that gas prices haven’t been lower in more than a decade. That’s not correct. As such,we rate the statement Mostly False. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com

Donald Trump

2017-07-06T10:00:00

2017-07-04

['United_States']

pose-00503

Will provide "support to domestic automakers to invest $50 billion to retool their manufacturing facilities in America to produce [fuel efficient] vehicles."

promise broken

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/523/invest-50-billion-auto-manufacturing-facilities-fu/

obameter

Barack Obama

Invest $50 billion in auto manufacturing facilities for fuel efficient vehicles

2010-04-07T13:46:55

['United_States']

pomt-02479

A Congressional Budget Office report says President Barack Obama’s executive order to raise the minimum wage for new federal contract workers "will cost the economy 500,000 jobs."

false

/punditfact/statements/2014/feb/20/kai-ryssdal/marketplace-host-kai-ryssdal-talks-cbo-report-mini/

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office re-entered the spotlight this week with a report that offered a little something for everyone on the effects of raising the federal minimum wage for workers. For those pushing for a $10.10 an hour wage, the CBO concluded 16.5 million low-wage earners would make more money a week under the proposal. For people opposing the increased federal wage, the report found that raising it to $10.10 an hour would cost the country 500,000 jobs. On American Public Media's Marketplace, host Kai Ryssdal tried to explain the developments to listeners. Marketplace is a business and economic affairs program that airs on NPR stations in many U.S. markets. "From the Congressional Budget Office today, this little tidbit: You remember President Obama's plan to raise the minimum wage for new federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour? He signed the executive order just the other day, right? Well, the CBO said today that will cost the economy 500,000 jobs by the second half of 2016. Me? I figure the partisan bickering over that starts right about ... now." A PunditFact reader flagged Ryssdal's comments and asked us if they were accurate. (You can hear them about 5 minutes into this podcast.) In this case, Ryssdal wrongly linked President Barack Obama's executive order for federal contract workers to what the CBO studied, which was the proposal to raise the minimum wage for workers nationwide. The CBO concluded if the federal government gradually increased the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour for all workers, and tied future increases to inflation, the economy would shed 500,000 jobs by the second half of 2016 (all things constant under current law). That’s about 0.3 percent of the workforce. For the record, CBO analysts also said the number of lost jobs could vary depending on a number of factors. Overall, the effect could be anywhere from a "very slight" decrease in employment to a reduction of 1 million workers, CBO found. The White House objected to CBO's findings, with economic adviser Jason Furman telling reporters the report "goes outside of the consensus view" of economists who study the effect of higher minimum wages on employment. The CBO analysis did contain good news for the White House, however. It concluded an additional 900,000 families would be pulled out of poverty and 16.5 million workers would get a raise if the minimum wage is increased to $10.10 an hour. Marketplace senior producer Sitara Nieves acknowledged the mistake in an email to PunditFact and said it would be corrected on air. Our ruling Ryssdal said a Congressional Budget Office report found that an executive order raising the minimum wage for new federal contract workers "will cost the economy 500,000 jobs." A CBO analysis did conclude that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour could cost the country 500,000 jobs by the second half of 2016. But the analysis was looking at raising the minimum wage for all American workers, not just federal contract workers as Ryssdal said. We rate his claim False.

Kai Ryssdal

2014-02-20T11:09:36

2014-02-18

['Barack_Obama']

pomt-09259

Numbers on illegal immigrants "are down in terms of apprehensions, which indicates fewer illegal crossings, but also up in terms of actual enforcement actions."

mostly true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/may/03/janet-napolitano/facts-illegal-immigrants-show-nuances-enforcement-/

Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, appeared on ABC News' This Week and discussed a new law in Arizona that makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime and requires immigrants to carry papers that confirm their legal status. Napolitano is not a fan of the new law, saying it could invite racial profiling and was bad for law enforcement. And, she said, statistics are against the need for a new law. "And actually, the numbers, if you step back and look at it, the numbers actually are down in terms of apprehensions, which indicates fewer illegal crossings, but also up in terms of actual enforcement actions. So the numbers actually are countered to what the action of the legislature is," Napolitano said. "But you know what? There's still a frustration out there. It's a frustration, ultimately, that will only be solved with comprehensive immigration reform." Here, we're checking Napolitano's statement that apprehensions of illegal immigrants are down while enforcement actions are up. We asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about her statement, and they sent us two sets of numbers for fiscal years 2007, 2008 and 2009. The numbers they sent us showed that border apprehensions were down. On the southern border, apprehensions dropped from 858,638 in 2007 to 705,005 in 2008 and to 540,865 in 2009. For evidence that enforcement actions are up, the department sent us statistics on removals, which include deportations as well as people who leave the country without a formal order. Those numbers increased from 291,060 in 2007 to 369,221 in 2008 and 387,790 in 2009. We then asked a couple of independent experts for their thoughts of the numbers. The numbers of apprehensions at the border are going down because there are fewer people trying to get across the border since the U.S. economy soured in 2008, said senior demographer Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization that collects statistics on Hispanics and immigration. "Immigration to the U.S. from Mexico is down, and it's down a lot," he said. Over the past several years, enforcement action on the border has tightened, he said. It is more difficult to get across the border, and people in Mexico have to pay more to smugglers to get them across. "It's harder to get in, and it's more dangerous," he said. As for the second statistic, counting removals as a proxy for enforcement action is problematic, Passel said. Some people who are being removed are in the interior of the United States, such as criminals who served a prison term and are being deported upon release. Still, those numbers have been going up, as Napolitano indicated. The Obama administration appears to be conducting fewer raids on job sites where illegal immigrants work, Passel said, because the adminsitration seems to prefer workplace audits, which result in fewer immigrant arrests. "At one level, the results are often the same, in that the workers lose their jobs," he said. "But the workers aren't getting picked up." We also spoke with Mark Krikorian, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan research group that supports lower levels of immigration. Krikorian agreed that there has been an overall drop in people trying to cross the border, and an increase in the number of removals. But he too cautioned that using removal numbers as a proxy for "enforcement action" can be misleading. "They're part of a picture, but that's all they are," he said. He also said the trend in removals may be coming to an end. The Washington Post reported that immigration officials were setting quotas for deportations because they wanted to avoid a steep drop-off in the numbers for 2010. So Napolitano said that the numbers "are down in terms of apprehensions, which indicates fewer illegal crossings, but also up in terms of actual enforcement actions." We agree that apprehensions are down, which indicates fewer illegal border crossings. Removals are also up. But we question whether removals are the same thing as "actual enforcement actions." The picture there is a little more nuanced. So we rate Napolitano's statement Mostly True.

Janet Napolitano

2010-05-03T18:02:13

2010-05-02

['None']

pomt-00765

Says Marco Rubio "voted to deport" young people known as Dreamers.

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/apr/14/people-american-way/did-marco-rubio-vote-deport-dreamers/

On the day Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., announced his presidential campaign, opponents came out with an ad attacking his record. People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, released a Spanish-language radio ad that calls Rubio "just another Republican with a dangerous plan" and claims he supports tax cuts for the wealthy and cutting Medicare funding. The ad is set to run in Denver and Miami, Rubio’s hometown. The ad also pits Rubio against "Dreamers" -- young people who arrived in the United States illegally as children who have been granted temporary status for deferred deportation under a 2012 White House program. "Instead of giving Dreamers an opportunity to go to college and build a future, Marco Rubio voted to deport them," the ad’s narrator said. Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants, has long been an advocate for changing immigration law, including a path to citizenship. Did he really vote to deport the approximately 700,000 immigrants covered by this program? The votes A spokeswoman for People for the American Way sent us evidence for the ad, which points to three instances where the group believes Rubio voted on legislation that amounts to deporting Dreamers. We also reached out to Rubio’s staff but did not hear back. To be clear: Rubio did not vote on any sort of yes-no measure that specifically called for deporting this group of individuals. Rather, these three votes had to do with an appropriations bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. In February, the fight between Democrats and Republicans over Homeland Security funding ultimately turned into a proxy war over immigration. Many Republicans, including Rubio, wanted to pass a bill that funded Homeland Security but stripped money from programs that would fund the 2012 program -- called "deferred action for childhood arrivals," or DACA -- as well as President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive action that attempts to extend deferred deportations to a larger group of people. Rubio voted in favor of this limiting funding three times this year (Feb. 3, Feb. 4 and Feb. 5). Nowhere does this version of the legislation say young people protected by Obama’s 2012 action would be deported. Though by stripping funding from the program, it’s possible that they wouldn’t be able to renew their participation in the program, meaning they could face a greater threat of deportation in the future. Politico described it as such: Gutting the program "effectively could leave more than 600,000 of the so-called Dreamers open to being deported." (Pew says there’s 700,000.) Senate Republicans also proposed a version of the bill that would have targeted Obama’s 2014 expanded executive action but continued funding for the 2012 deferred action for childhood arrivals program, protecting Dreamers from deportation. But Democrats didn’t bite, hoping instead for a bill that left both programs in tact. So that bill never came up for a vote. In any case, the votes referenced by People for the American Way were not final; they would have simply moved the bill closer to a vote on final passage. Democrats blocked the bill from moving any further, and eventually Congress passed "clean" Homeland Security funding that did not block Obama’s immigration orders. While he does not support expanding the program to apply to more recent arrivals, Rubio expressed support for maintaining Dreamers’ status in the days after the vote -- at least while Congress works on a permanent solution. "Eventually that program has to end. It cannot be the permanent policy of the United States," he said in a Feb. 18 press gaggle. "What I'm not advocating is that we cancel it right now at this moment, because you already have people that have signed up for it. They're working, they're going to school. It would be deeply disruptive. But at some point, it has to come to an end. It can't be the permanent policy. And my hope is that it would come to an end because it's replaced by a permanent solution like the one I've outlined through the three-step process." It’s worth noting that back in 2012, Rubio supported a plan quite similar to Obama’s deferred action for childhood arrivals program. A spokesman told the Tampa Bay Times that Rubio’s plan never materialized because they were concerned that it would encourage illegal immigration. Our ruling A radio ad from People for the American Way said, "Marco Rubio voted to deport" young people known as Dreamers. Rubio did not literally vote to deport young immigrants protected by Obama’s "deferred action for childhood arrivals" program. He voted in favor of an appropriations bill that would have stripped funding from the program, which might have resulted in future deportations if it had passed. But that’s only speculation. Additionally, Rubio has specifically said that he does not support affecting the status of current Dreamers, though he does oppose expanding the program and has said it should not be permanent policy. The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False.

People for the American Way

2015-04-14T10:56:32

2015-04-13

['None']

goop-02594

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt Divorce “Off,”

1

https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-divorce-not-off-brad-pitt-back-together/

Shari Weiss

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt Divorce NOT “Off,” Despite Tabloid Cover Story

12:19 pm, August 9, 2017

['Angelina_Jolie']

snes-00289

Buzz Aldrin admitted in an exchange captured on video that he never went to the moon.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/buzz-aldrin-moon-admission/

Viral Phenomena

Dan Evon

Did Buzz Aldrin Admit That He Never Went to the Moon?

27 July 2018

['None']

pomt-01195

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed became a city resident in the last annexation, opening the door to his candidacy.

mostly true

/georgia/statements/2014/dec/03/keisha-lance-bottoms/councilwoman-right-annexation-drew-reed-city/

Atlanta may have been founded as the end of the line, but it has hardly held to that designation. Founded in 1847, Atlanta’s original city limits were a single-mile radius around the Zero Mile Post, or terminus of the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Today, the city covers nearly 132 square miles of land stretched out over two counties. Terminus is little more than a marker next to the southern entrance of Underground Atlanta (and a particularly distasteful safe haven for "The Walking Dead" fans). With two more communities on the edges of the city debating whether to join Atlanta, one city councilwoman was quoted in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story talking about what recent annexations meant for the city. "You brought in a mayor with the last annexation," District 11 Councilwoman Keisha Lance Bottoms said of Mayor Kasim Reed, referring to the 2006 annexation of what is now known as southwest Atlanta. Is that right, that growing Atlanta’s borders created the opportunity for Reed, a former state senator, to become Atlanta’s 59th mayor? The AJC Truth-O-Meter spun back in time to find out. The city’s Geographic Information Systems department keeps detailed maps of Atlanta’s 133 annexations. All but 18 of those actions have been to grow the city, including the massive addition of Buckhead and Lakewood in 1952. One of the outliers was a decision to hold off on annexing Sandtown in 2006. That south Fulton community, along with the DeKalb County sections of the historic Druid Hills community, is now weighing whether to join Atlanta. If there is another round of annexations, it will be the first changing of the city’s borders since 2007, when Atlanta absorbed three Southside subdivisions. Bottoms, though, said she was referring to the much larger 2006 annexation that brought in about 2,000 residents from then-newly developed subdivisions along Cascade Road as it passes south and west out of the city. The councilwoman herself has lived in that area, also known as Midwest Cascade, since the mid-1990s. She was active in her subdivision’s homeowners association when the community was part of unincorporated Fulton County. The annexation paved the way for her to run for the council, where she has served since 2010. Reed was sworn in that same year. PolitiFact Georgia recently ruled Mostly True that Reed’s first term was marked by keeping campaign promises such as a major pension overhaul and hiring more police officers. "We both lived in the same area, in two different neighborhoods," Bottoms said. "Annexation meant there was an opportunity for people who had lived there to run for city office and get involved." Reed has said he supports annexing Druid Hills from DeKalb County and Sandtown in south Fulton, if those residents seek to join the city. But that is not because the former state senator – who represented pieces of unincorporated Fulton and Atlanta during his legislative tenure – was exactly the beneficiary of annexation the way that Bottoms described. Reed lived in Loch Lochman Estates during the 2006 annexation. That subdivision is literally down the street from what became Atlanta – but it was not included in the expansion. Today, it remains part of the unincorporated county. But Reed’s spokeswoman said that annexation did prompt him to move to Midwest Cascade, where he still lives. "He moved, but he is in the same neighborhood," spokeswoman Anne Torres said. "So the councilwoman is right to say that annexation did bring him in." So where does that leave us? We won’t quibble with Bottoms’ reference to the last annexation, considering the small size of the 2007 additions. She is not quite right on her claim that the larger 2006 annexation included Reed’s subdivision, which opened the door to his candidacy. The mayor’s office said, though, that the move did push him to a different house in the same neighborhood so he could be a city resident. To that end, her point is correct. There is some additional context needed to make sense of it all. But overall, we rate the claim Mostly True.

Keisha Lance Bottoms

2014-12-03T00:00:00

2014-11-28

['Kasim_Reed', 'Atlanta']

snes-00937

CNN invested in an industrial-sized washing machine to help their journalists and news anchors spin the news before publication.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cnn-washing-machine/

Humor

David Mikkelson

Did CNN Purchase an Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News?

1 March 2018

['None']

tron-00977

Gang-Style Photo of Michael Brown

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/gang-photo-michael-brown/

computers

Gang-Style Photo of Michael Brown

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

pomt-15086

You know our current president is (Muslim). You know he's not even an American.

pants on fire!

/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/18/town-hall-audience-member/obama-muslim-audience-member-says-donald-trump-201/

We thought (hoped, maybe) the idea that President Barack Obama is Muslim from Kenya was dead and buried. But even in 2015, it lives on. This myth has been debunked over and over and over again. We’ve been fact-checking claims about this since 2007, the year PolitiFact went live. Yet it resurfaced Sept. 17, 2015 in Rochester, N.H., at a town hall event for Republican presidential candidate and real estate mogul Donald Trump. An unidentified audience member asked the first question: What would President Trump would do about Muslims in the United States? Here’s the exchange. Audience member: "We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims. You know our current president is one. You know he's not even an American." Trump: "We need this question. This is the first question." Audience member: "Anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That's my question: When can we get rid of them?" Trump: "We're going to be looking at a lot of different things. You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We're going to be looking at that and plenty of other things." Trump was immediately criticized for not countering the man’s comments -- both the assertion that Muslims are a "problem" and that Obama is one. A recent CNN poll found that 29 percent of Americans and 43 percent of Republicans think Obama is Muslim. Let’s revisit why we know this is not true. (He’s actually Protestant.) Muslim? In 2010, we rated the statement "President Obama is a Muslim" Pants on Fire. Our fact-checking has shown that Obama is a Christian. According to the president's memoirs and independent biographies, Obama became a Christian when he was in his 20s while working as a community organizer in Chicago. (He was not raised in any particular faith as a child.) Obama said the churches there impressed him with their commitment to social justice and the hope they gave to the poor. Several independent reports have documented Obama's church membership and faith life. In office, Obama has not attended one church regularly. Instead, he has worshipped at various churches in the Washington area, including the Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, and St. John's Episcopal Church. He also has attended services at Camp David, the presidential retreat. PolitiFact has debunked claims in chain e-mails that he attended a radical Islamic school, that his political rise mirrored a biblical tale about the Antichrist, and that he took the oath for U.S. Senate on a Koran. All three earned our lowest rating, Pants on Fire. Why do so many people keep saying he's Muslim? One explanation is that there is genuine confusion about his religion because Obama has Muslim ancestors on his father's side and a traditionally Muslim middle name, Hussein. Another possible explanation is that people who disagree with him politically and dislike the Muslim religion like to associate him with something they perceive to be negative. Born in Kenya? The audience member also said Obama isn’t an American. In case you’ve forgotten, back in 2011 and 2012, Trump argued that Obama wasn’t really eligible to be president because he was born in Kenya, not the United States. This is also not true -- Obama was born in Honolulu. PolitiFact went to great lengths to document Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate. See our guide to Obama’s birth certificate. As part of his "birther" crusade, Trump said in 2011, Obama's "grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya and she was there and witnessed the birth." The claim is based on an Oct. 16, 2008, telephone call between Bishop Ron McRae of the Anabaptist Churches of North America and Sarah Obama of Kenya, Barack Obama's elderly step-grandmother. In the call, we hear a very rough Swahili-to-English translation in which an elderly woman agreed to a leading question that Obama was born in Kenya and that she was present. But the grandmother and translator immediately, clearly and repeatedly corrected the answer to say that Obama was born in the United States, and she was not present. We rated Trump’s claim False. Just this year, an image circulating on Facebook accused Obama of reaching back to his Kenyan roots for inspiration in choosing to drop President William McKinley as the namesake of America’s tallest mountain. The image said, "‘Denali’ is the Kenyan word for ‘black power.’" In reality, Denali means "high" or "tall" in a native Alaskan language and has been used by native Alaskans as a name for the mountain for generations. Pants on Fire! Our ruling An audience member at a Trump campaign event said, "You know our current president is (Muslim). You know he's not even an American." PolitiFact and others have repeatedly debunked both of these claims -- that Obama is Muslim and that he wasn’t born in America. Against all odds, they live on. Obama is Christian and was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. We rate the audience member’s claim Pants on Fire!

Town hall audience member

2015-09-18T12:24:43

2015-09-17

['United_States']

pose-00549

Will establish teacher evaluation system: "Under my plan, teachers will be evaluated based on the following five criteria: planning and preparation, classroom environment, quality of instruction, professional responsibilities, and yearly student progress. Teachers will receive an overall rating of 'ineffective,' 'needs improvement,' 'satisfactory,' or 'exemplary.' Teachers who are rated 'ineffective' two years in a row will lose their teaching license, while all teachers rated as 'satisfactory' or 'exemplary' will be eligible for bonuses."

compromise

https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/promises/walk-o-meter/promise/572/establish-teacher-evaluation-system/

walk-o-meter

Scott Walker

Establish teacher evaluation system

2010-12-20T23:16:36

['None']

pomt-11668

Says James Comey suggested and CNN reported that the basis of the wiretapping warrant for Trump adviser Carter Page was "all based on a dossier."

mostly false

/florida/statements/2018/jan/05/elizabeth-foley/taking-closer-look-steele-dossier-and-carter-pages/

Critics of the federal investigation into claims President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government have latched onto a theory that the inquiry only began after the FBI received a controversial dossier funded by Democrats and littered with unproven allegations. But that, too, is unproven. On CNN Jan. 2, Florida International University law professor Elizabeth Foley claimed that the 35-page collection of research memos, which has come to be called the Steele Dossier, started a chain of events that led to the wiretapping of Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Here’s what she said, and how CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Jeffrey Toobin reacted. "On July 7, Carter Page goes to Moscow to give a speech at a University," Foley said. "On July 19, this is 2016, (former British intelligence officer Christopher) Steele submits a salacious dossier to the FBI about some sort of quid pro quo being discussed between Page and Russian oligarchs. He submits that to the FBI on July 19. About a month later we have the FBI going to the foreign intelligence surveillance court to get a wiretap, to get surveillance of Carter Page. And this is all based on a dossier." "You have no proof of that!" Cooper interrupted. "You don’t know that!" echoed panelist Jeffrey Toobin. "That’s what Jim Comey has suggested," Foley said. "That’s what CNN reported in April (2017). And that’s also what the New York Times previously reported in April 2017. So, all of sudden now they are trying to walk back the genesis of this investigation and switch it to (Trump adviser George) Papadopoulos. If they really believe national security was at risk and there was some collusion why would they have waited four months?" "I'll double check this, professor, but I don’t believe that we reported that was the basis for this," Cooper responded. "But I’ll double check it." Cooper did look into it, and so did we. We can’t say what motivated the FBI to begin an investigation into Page, but the reporting that Foley said traced the genesis of the Page investigation to the Steele Dossier isn’t cut-and-dried. What’s been reported The dossier in question was compiled by a former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and contained numerous explosive but unverified claims. The memos were compiled by a research firm called Fusion GPS, who was first hired by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication that was reporting on the Republican primary field. After the Republican primary, Fusion GPS was hired on behalf of Clinton’s campaign. That’s when the firm hired Steele. The dossier circulated among Washington lawmakers, intelligence agents and journalists for months before becoming public knowledge, when unnamed U.S. officials told CNN in January 2017 that intelligence officers presented Trump with a summary of the document. (Then BuzzFeed published its entirety.) The dossier claims that Page met with Russians and discussed quid-pro-quo deals relating to sanctions and Russia's interference in the election. Trump, himself, has blamed the dossier for launching the FBI probe into his campaign. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Shortly after the original CNN broadcast where Foley made the claim, Cooper did his own fact-check of Foley’s claim. He read aloud an excerpt of a story CNN published on April 17. CNN reported that the FBI used the Russian dossier as "part of the justification" — not the only reason — to win approval to secretly monitor Carter. It went on to paraphrase unnamed officials "familiar with the process," who said that if information from the dossier was used, it would only be after the FBI corroborated the information through its own investigation. "The officials would not say what or how much was corroborated," CNN reported. "U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials have said U.S. investigators did their own work, separate from the dossier, to support their findings that Russia tried to meddle in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump." In other words, the dossier was part of the reported reason, but we really can’t say how much. In an interview with PolitiFact Florida, Foley said CNN offered no evidence to support this assertion that the FBI did in fact corroborate the report other than paraphrasing an unnamed source. "While the CNN report intimates that there may be other sources of information besides the dossier, neither CNN nor any of its sources proffer any clue as to what those sources may be, or even whether there is any reliable evidence that such sources actually exist," Foley said. As for the New York Times, Foley was referring to a report published on April 19 about Carter’s visit to Moscow that garnered the attention of the FBI. The report does not mention the dossier, but said the investigation spawned after his July 2016 trip to Moscow, in which he was critical of American policy toward Russia. "It is unclear exactly what about Mr. Page’s visit drew the FBI’s interest: meetings he had during his three days in Moscow, intercepted communications of Russian officials speaking about him, or something else," it said. What about James Comey? The CNN report says the dossier was cited by Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress, but that doesn’t mean he suggested it was the basis of the probe. "The dossier has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to U.S. officials briefed on the probe," CNN reported. When we showed Foley this excerpt showing Comey used the dossier "as one of" the bureau’s sources, she pushed back again, saying "innuendo is not fact." She said the only facts reported by the CNN story are that the Steele dossier was relied on to justify the collusion investigation and that Comey had relayed information about the dossier, as salient to his agency’s investigation, to members of Congress. We also looked at transcripts of Comey’s testimony in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on June 8 to see what he’s said on the record. Comey would not answer publically whether the FBI was able to confirm anything in the Steele dossier, but he did respond to several questions about it. And in one instance, Comey described some material in the dossier as "salacious and unverified." "The (intelligence community) leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming president to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified," he said. Our ruling Foley said James Comey and news reporting showed the basis of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for Carter Page was "all based on a dossier." This is not accurate. CNN and the New York Times never reported that the dossier was the basis for Carter’s probe. CNN reported that it "part of the justification" and the New York Times didn’t even mention the dossier. We couldn’t find any evidence that proved Comey suggested that Page’s warrant was "all based on a dossier." According to CNN’s unnamed sources, Comey has cited the dossier, but has not confirmed publically how much of it has been verified. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com We rate this claim Mostly False.

Elizabeth Foley

2018-01-05T15:57:17

2018-01-02

['CNN']

pomt-08814

Phoenix, Ariz., is the No. 2 kidnapping capital of the world.

pants on fire!

/ohio/statements/2010/aug/16/courtney-combs/state-rep-courtney-combs-says-phoenix-no-2-kidnapp/

A stake through the heart will kill a vampire. A silver bullet can stop a werewolf. But no known substance, it seems, can stop the monstrous notion that Phoenix has the second-highest kidnapping rate in the world -- an eye-popping claim that has more lives than even disco music. The latest conservative to parrot this line is State Rep. Courtney Combs, a Republican from Butler County and the Ohio lawmaker most involved in the debate over illegal immigration. Combs, who is drafting legislation to bring an Arizona-style immigration law to Ohio, appeared July 16 at the City Club in Cleveland to take part in a discussion on illegal immigration. Halfway through the program, after detailing a spring trip to Cochise County, Arizona, to see the impact of illegal immigration, Combs said "Phoenix, Ariz., is the No. 2 kidnapping capital of the world" to underscore how dangerous the state has become. Combs is far from alone in making this kind of claim. U.S. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona said something similar Aug. 1 on CBS News' Face the Nation. He said Phoenix is "called the kidnapping capital of the United States because the illegal immigrants who are brought to Phoenix for distribution throughout the country are held in drop houses, and they are mistreated, horribly treated." The claim has been checked several times by PolitiFact. Rhode Island talk show host Helen Glover called Phoenix the kidnapping capital of the Western Hemisphere July 9, Sen. John McCain pushed the Phoenix as No. 2 kidnapping capital stat on "Meet the Press" June 27, and Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst made the Phoenix as No. 2 claim June 18. It's been repeated so much by conservatives that Rachel Maddow poked fun at the repeated GOP mistake, saying "it's like its just too good a talking point to stop using even though its not true." She made the quip Aug. 2 in a segment of her MSNBC show dedicated to myths about illegal immigration. In fact, Combs said he made the assertion because he heard McCain say it "on one of those talk shows" as well as being told by Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever during Combs' fact-finding foray to Arizona. "I was quoting from what I thought were reliable sources," said Combs. "When I heard it from John McCain who is a US Senator from Arizona, I presumed he knew what he was talking about." PolitiFact found that, in a nutshell, the story goes back an ABC News report from Feb. 11, 2009: "Phoenix, Ariz., has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone." However, ABC never said how the kidnapping ranking was reached. Also, while ABC’s story specifies the number of kidnappings that have occurred in Phoenix since 2008, it doesn’t say how many kidnappings were reported in other cities. And ABC has yet to provide us with supporting evidence, although we first published an item on this back in June. Neither the FBI nor the U.S. National Central Bureau of Interpol, an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice that serves as the United States' representative to Interpol, could confirm that Phoenix has the second-highest frequency of kidnapping cases worldwide. It's simply not tracked. But overseas kidnapping experts say that cities in Mexico and Latin America see significantly more kidnapping cases than Phoenix. The experts list Mexico City; Caracas, Venezuela; Tegucigalpa, Honduras; San Salvador, El Salvador; Guatemala City, Guatemala; and Bogota, Columbia as places with probable higher kidnapping rates than Phoenix. Meanwhile, there are also problems that many places don't keep kidnapping data, kidnappings in places outside the Unites States are usually under-reported, and the definition of kidnapping can vary widely. While Phoenix has experienced hundreds of kidnappings over the past few years, we couldn't find reliable around-the-planet evidence to confirm they are number two in the world. In fact, experts advise that such rankings can't be made based on available information. If they could, they speculate, other cities would prove to have more kidnappings than Arizona's capital. So we have found nothing confirming Phoenix as No. 2 in kidnappings in the world, or in the Western Hemisphere, or in North America. Combs, to his credit, immediately backed away from his statement when told this claim has been thoroughly debunked. "I don't check out and verify everything that comes out, and I suppose I should if I'm going to repeat it in a debate," Combs said. "I appreciate you correcting the situation." We appreciate that Combs is willing to admit that he didn’t know what he was talking about, but he should have. This claim has been rated false repeatedly as it has made the rounds, yet here it is again. If you repeat a statement that has been proven false, it amounts to a reckless disregard for the facts. You may as well touch a match to your inseam. We move this statement to our lowest rating: Pants On Fire.

Courtney Combs

2010-08-16T08:00:00

2010-07-16

['Arizona', 'Phoenix,_Arizona']

pomt-02478

On adoption by gay couples

full flop

/florida/statements/2014/feb/20/charlie-crist/after-he-left-gop-charlie-crist-said-he-no-longer-/

PolitiFact Florida has explored former Gov. Charlie Crist’s change of positions on a number of issues, including gay rights. Here, we wanted to look at his record on gay adoption. At one time, Florida gained national attention as a state that banned gay adoption. PolitiFact’s Flip-O-Meter doesn’t pass judgment on someone’s stance change -- we simply measure if the person did indeed "flip" and to what extent. Many politicians of both major parties have "flipped" -- or gay rights supporters might say "evolved" -- in their stances on gay rights; we leave it up to readers to decide how they feel about those flips. 2006-08 In 2006, Crist was Florida’s Republican attorney general running for governor. At the time, Florida banned gay couples from adopting but allowed them to serve as foster parents. During the race, Crist often said he was against such adoptions. "I think we need to encourage the traditional family for adoption and that's what I support," Crist told reporters in February 2006. In an MSNBC debate Oct. 30, the moderator asked Crist his opinion on gay adoption. "I am opposed to it. I think that we have in our state some rules that permit adoptions within our system, but I don’t think gay adoption is appropriate," said Crist, who would go on to win the race. "I believe that the traditional family is the best means by which to raise children." Some state lawmakers pushed to drop the ban in 2007 but Crist continued to express support for it. In 2008, foster parent Frank Martin Gill of North Miami, filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban. When asked about the ban, Crist reiterated his support for it. "No second thoughts," he said, in an October 2008 Miami Herald article. In November 2008, a Miami-Dade judge struck down the ban and declared it unconstitutional. The state continued to fight for the ban in court, and Crist reiterated his stance to the Palm Beach Post editorial board in February 2010. "My belief is the best way to raise a family is in the traditional family," Crist said. "That’s how I feel. That’s what the current law is in Florida. I respect the law." But within months, his stance would change. 2010 Senate race As Crist was lagging behind in the Republican Senate primary against Marco Rubio, he left the GOP to run as an independent in April 2010. Crist needed independent and liberal voters to stand a chance. Crist told Time magazine in June 2010 that he would be open to changing Florida's law to allow a judge to determine what's best for the child. "That might be a way to go, and it's certainly something we ought to look at," he said. "A better way and approach would be to let judges make that decision on a case-by-case basis," he told the Florida press association in June 2010. On Sept. 12, 2010, Crist released a position paper on gay rights including adoption: "We need to take politics out of adoption decisions. That is why I oppose Florida's current law that requires Family Law judges to ignore what is right for a child in order to adhere to what Florida law blindly demands. There is only one question that matters: What is in the best interest of that child?" On Sept. 22, an appeals court struck down the ban, and Crist announced that Florida would no longer enforce the policy that had been in place since 1977. He called the ruling "a very good day for Florida" and "a great day for children." (That ruling is still in effect today.) "Children deserve a loving home to be in, and the opportunity for judges to make this call on a case-by-case basis for every adoption," Crist said. In a Senate debate in October, Crist was asked to explain his reversal on gay adoption. "As we get older, I call it the convergence of life experience and wisdom. When you learn through the time of life more tolerance and become less judgmental, I think that's a good place to be," Crist said. We sent a summary of our finding to Crist and former Sen. Steve Geller, a Broward Democrat who is informally advising Crist. Geller noted that "many people’s views on issues involving gays were evolving during this time. President Obama, Bill Clinton, most voters, and others evolved. Those who did so earlier versus those who have stayed opposed need some credit." Our ruling During his 2006 Republican race for governor, Crist repeatedly supported the state’s ban on gay parents adopting and argued in favor of the "traditional family" adopting. By June 2010, Crist had ditched the GOP and was running as an independent -- and made statements in support of Floridians adopting. He became vocal about his support in September in a position paper on gay rights. There's no dispute here: Full Flop.

Charlie Crist

2014-02-20T11:53:34

2014-02-10

['None']

pomt-08197

The health care reform law "reduces the deficit by nearly $1.2 trillion over the next two decades."

half-true

/virginia/statements/2010/nov/23/bobby-scott/bobby-scott-says-health-care-reform-may-cut-defici/

In his quest to see all Bush-era tax cuts expire, Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott criticizes Republicans for avoiding "tough" budgetary choices. In a recent press release in support of allowing the tax cuts to expire, Scott, D-3rd, lambastes Republican legislators and President George W. Bush for enacting them without offering ways to cover the costs. "Democrats can and have made these tough choices – most recently with the enactment of Health Care Reform, which provides the largest benefit to the middle class since the enactment of Social Security and at the same time reduces the deficit by nearly $1.2 trillion over the next two decades," Scott says. Amid all the debate over health care reform, we wondered whether the new law really would slice the deficit by $1.2 trillion. Scott, like President Obama in a similar claim check by PolitFact National, uses numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. According to the CBO, the health care act is indeed expected to trim the deficit because tax increases and cost savings in the reforms are expected to outweigh the costs of its new programs and tax credits. The projection for the first 10 years is solid. The CBO analysis says the health care act "would produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $138 billion over the 2010-2019 period as result of changes in direct spending and revenue." But the projection for the next decade is far more speculative. The CBO typically only calculates the impact of legislation's cost over 10 years. But it will create calculations for a longer period if Congress requests it, which many members did for health care reform. Here's what the CBO said about computing health reform's effect on the deficit between 2020 and 2030: "A detailed year-by-year projection for years beyond 2019, like those that CBO prepares for the 10-year budget window, would not be meaningful because the uncertainties involved are simply too great. Among other factors, a wide range of changes could occur — in people’s health, in the sources and extent of their insurance coverage, and in the delivery of medical care (such as advances in medical research, technological developments, and changes in physicians’ practice patterns) — that are likely to be significant but are very difficult to predict, both under current law and under any proposal." But the CBO was willing to estimate that in the second 10 years, the health care legislation would reduce deficits "in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP." The GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, is the amount of goods and services produced within the borders of a nation during a year. The CBO estimates the United States’ GDP will slightly exceed $22.5 trillion by 2020, up 4 percent from the year before. To arrive at the $1.2 trillion figure, Scott is assuming that the GDP will continue to rise at that rate. And if it does, he’ll be right, if not conservative, in his claim. Based on a 4 percent GDP increase each year with the deficit being reduced by half a percent, the deficit would actually be reduced to $1.4 trillion by 2030.e to the $1.2 trillion. The GDP has risen by more than 4 percent all but five times over the last 50 years. Four of those occurrences have been in the last decade, including 2008 and 2009. Last year was the only time the GDP shrank in during the last five decades, falling 7.9 percent from 2008. But looking at 20-year projections and using numbers that even the CBO says are dicey seems like shaky ground. Is Scott making a safe extrapolation or a leap of faith? "I don't think $1.2 trillion is an overstatement," said Jim Horney, director of federal fiscal policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He said translating percentages of GDP into dollars is the only way to convey it to the public. "It's perfectly reasonable to put that into terms people can understand," Horney said. Even so, CBO director Douglas W. Elmendorf noted that the projection is based on "assuming that all of its provisions would continue to be fully implemented." That's a big assumption. For example, on Dec. 10, 2009, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Servicesissued a reportconcluding that the plan to reduce payment updates to health care providers through Medicare "are unlikely to be sustainable on an annual basis" and that further reductions in Medicare growth rates through the Independent Medicare Advisory Board "may be difficult to achieve in practice." Robert Book, a health economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said a deficit reduction number extrapolated from a forecast of the GDP is dubious. "GDP estimates are extremely uncertain," Book said. "Ten years ago, who would have predicted we'd have a recession last year? Nobody could possibly have known that." And besides, he said, if the plan reduces deficits "it just means it raises taxes a lot." "So the number is probably not right, and even if it were, it's meaningless," Book said. So, let’s review: Scott says health care reform would reduce the deficit by nearly $1.2 trillion over the next two decades. While it’s true that the CBO report he relies on says the health care bill -- with the proposed reconciliation -- would continue to improve the deficit situation in the second 10 years, it does not arrive at a $1.2 trillion figure. To do that, Scott relies on speculative GDP projections to predict a number that that CBO itself says would "not be meaningful because the uncertainties involved are simply too great." So we rate the claim Half True.

Bobby Scott

2010-11-23T16:03:05

2010-11-16

['None']

pomt-09862

Page 992 of the health care bill will "establish school-based 'health' clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!"

pants on fire!

/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/aug/07/liberty-counsel/school-health-clinics-would-not-provide-abortions/

Critics of the Democratic health care proposal have been increasingly raising concerns that the plan would provide taxpayer-subsidized abortions (a claim we address here ). The Liberty Counsel, a conservative group, puts a different twist on that concern, alleging that Page 992 of the bill "will establish school-based 'health' clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!" The claim comes from a long list of items allegedly in the bill that is posted on the group's Web site and has been widely circulated in a chain e-mail. The list looks a lot like one that we checked in July, based partly on blog postings by Peter Fleckenstein on his blog Common Sense from a Common Man . In fact, the Liberty Counsel says it adapted its memo from Fleckenstein's original work. The group describes its mission as an "education and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family" and is affiliated with Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Va. The group said it was so troubled by Fleckenstein's analysis that it "doubted its accuracy, so the staff in our D.C. office compared it to the voluminous bill. What they found astonished us so much that we had to share it with you today. You can read our updated and revised overview of HR 3200 and you will be alarmed, too." It appears to us that Liberty Counsel elaborated on Fleckenstein's original take on the clinics. He wrote, "PG 993 Govt will establish school based health clinics. Ur kids wont have a chance." School-based health clinics are different from the traditional nurse's offices that schools have long had. Typically, the clinics are staffed with nurse practitioners, doctors and social workers who do everything from administer immunizations to provide nutrition advice. They can also provide counseling. Federal and state governments have long provided funding to support these clinics, which tend to crop up in areas where students have limited access to other health care services. "These clinics have been around for 30 years," said Divya Mohan Little, communications director for the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care. "They've been getting a lot of attention recently in a time of recession because fewer kids are being covered and aren't able to see doctors." Of the 2,000 clinics nationwide, none provide abortions and the bill would not change that, said Mohan Little. There are three major versions of the bill floating around the House — one in the Energy and Commerce Committee, one in the Ways and Means Committee and one in the Education and Labor Committee — and we checked all three just to make sure. All three bills have identical language when it comes to the school clinics. Basically, the bill would provide grants so the clinics can continue providing "comprehensive health assessments, diagnosis, and treatment of minor, acute, and chronic medical conditions and referrals to, and follow-up for, specialty care." The money could also be used to provide "mental health assessments, crisis interventions, counseling, treatment and referral to a continuum of services including emergency psychiatric care, community support programs, inpatient care and outpatient care." The clinics would have the option to provide, "oral health, social and age-appropriate health education services including nutritional counseling." Clinics getting federal dollars must act in accordance with federal, state and local law, according to the bills. For example, clinics in Louisiana are not even allowed to counsel students on abortion, according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. And here's the important part: the bills now before the House say nothing about the school clinics being able to offer abortions. Perplexed, we called the Liberty Counsel to see how they could make the connection from innocuous langauge about clinics that have been around for 30 years to the claim that "children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!" We spoke with Sarah Speller at the Liberty Counsel, who told us that the group had been getting a lot of calls about the memo and that everyone there was very busy as a result. However, she assured us that "as far as our office can tell, everything in the overview is accurate. That's about all I can tell you," she said. "I'm just relaying what I've been told to say." That's not persuasive. We see no language in the three main versions of the bill that would allow school-based clinics, which have a long history of providing basic health services to underprivileged students, to provide abortions. Nor would the clinics even be new — they have been around for three decades. So we rate the claim Pants on Fire!

Liberty Counsel

2009-08-07T18:20:35

2009-07-29

['None']

tron-00228

Walmart now offering halal meat

truth!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/wal-mart-now-offering-halal-meat/

9-11-attack

Wal

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

pose-01168

Many states have implemented an A through F rating system for individual campuses with great success. Each campus website should show the school's A through F rating and other indicators of success.

promise kept

https://www.politifact.com/texas/promises/abbott-o-meter/promise/1258/rate-school-campuses-through-f-scale-require-publi/

abbott-o-meter

Greg Abbott

Rate school campuses on A through F scale; require publication of campus report cards

2015-01-20T14:00:00

['None']

pomt-02431

Georgia’s civil forfeiture laws are among the worst in the country and the very worst in the South.

mostly true

/georgia/statements/2014/mar/03/americans-prosperity-georgia-chapter/georgias-forfeiture-laws-viewed-harshly/

There aren’t many issues that can bring the American Civil Liberties Union and the tea party together, but there is one matter that has them and others on the same side. A coalition of organizations -- they call themselves Georgians for Forfeiture Reform -- recently held a news conference at the Georgia Capitol to plead for changes to the state’s civil forfeiture laws. How bad are the laws? "Georgia’s civil forfeiture laws are among the worst in the country and the very worst in the South," Americans for Prosperity Georgia spokesman Joel Aaron Foster said in a press release beforehand. Lee McGrath, legislative counsel for the Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based organization that has taken a close look at the issue, repeated the talking point at the news conference. PolitiFact Georgia wondered if this claim is correct, or is this another example of some groups exaggerating the significance of a problem? Critics say some law enforcement officers unfairly keep money seized from motorists who are investigated for drug trafficking and other offenses and eventually cleared. One man spent $12,000 in legal fees to recover $43,000 police took from him when he was pulled over in South Georgia, the institute noted. The coalition wants the Georgia Legislature to pass House Bill 1, which would put law enforcement and prosecutors under greater scrutiny over how they use cash and property seized in criminal investigations. Supporters want Georgia’s forfeiture laws to be patterned after the rules in North Carolina, in which a jury can consider seizing property only after a conviction, and only if it was used for a crime. The legislation, sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Wendell Willard, R-Sandy Springs, received committee approval in early February. Its co-sponsors include House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta. The bill has yet to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives. Some law enforcement leaders, such as Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter, support the legislation after initial reluctance to do so. Others, such as the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, think Georgia laws are fine and have said no changes are necessary. To be clear, PolitiFact Georgia is not making a judgment call on whether Georgia has the worst forfeiture laws around. Instead, our goal is to see whether the claim is based on valid reports and research about Georgia’s forfeiture laws. Lawmakers worked out what they hope is a compromise to get the bill passed shortly after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published several reports last year that called into question how forfeiture funds are used. The newspaper found Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard spent thousands of dollars of forfeited funds on galas, sports tickets, staff parties and elaborate home security. Last year, Douglas County District Attorney David McDade was accused of using his forfeiture account to give side jobs and government cars to favored employees. Current state law requires agencies to file reports on their forfeiture activity with a state-run website each year, but the AJC found that few complied and that those who did gave little information. The new proposal would standardize the process and require more disclosure. The Institute for Justice released a report last year on forfeiture laws and found similar issues concerning the state’s disclosure process. A random sample of 20 law enforcement agencies found only two were providing annual reports, the institute found. Other agencies were submitting reports omitting key details. "Reports from police departments in Atlanta, Dunwoody, Marietta and LaGrange, for example, provide only dollar amounts but no descriptions of the properties taken," the institute wrote in its study. The study did not contain responses from those departments to the concerns outlined in the report. Dunwoody police Chief Billy Grogan said the department complied with all reporting requirements. Georgia’s grade on the quality of its forfeiture laws put it on the dishonor roll. D-. Thank God for Michigan, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. They received the same grade, the lowest in the nation. Another study by a three-person team of researchers on state forfeiture laws showed some of what critics such as the Institute for Justice say is troubling about Georgia’s forfeiture laws. For example, Georgia puts property owners in the position of providing the burden of proof to reclaim their property. The study, though, does not rank which states have the best or the worst laws. So where does this leave us? To sum up, Georgians for Forfeiture Reform argues the Peach State has some of the worst civil forfeiture laws in the nation and the worst in the South. The claim is based on a recent report by one of the groups lobbying for legislation they believe will be more equitable to Georgians. It does rank Georgia at the bottom nationally, with a few other states. Another report highlights what critics say are some of Georgia’s flaws. Unfortunately, there’s little independent research on how states fare on the topic. The claim is also based on an interpretation of those laws. With these caveats, we rate this claim Mostly True.

Americans for Prosperity Georgia chapter

2014-03-03T06:00:00

2014-02-20

['None']

pomt-01952

The number of terrorists out there has doubled.

true

/punditfact/statements/2014/jun/22/dick-cheney/dick-cheney-number-terrorists-has-doubled/

Former Vice President Dick Cheney continued to criticize President Barack Obama over foreign policy during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. While the focus is currently on Iraq and the growing prominence of ISIS, Cheney said Obama’s miscues are broader and potentially dangerous. One statistic that he said supported his point: The sharp rise in the number of terrorists operating worldwide. "We’ve got a much bigger problem than just the current crisis in Iraq," Cheney said. "The Rand Corporation was out in the last week with a report that showed that there’s been a 58 percent increase in the number of groups like al-Qaida, Salafi-jihadists, and it stretches from West Africa, all across North Africa, East Africa, through the Middle East, all the way around to Indonesia -- a doubling of the number of terrorists out there." In other words, he said we’ve got "a hell of a problem." PunditFact wanted to look into Cheney’s point about the stark rise in the number of terrorists in groups like al-Qaida in recent years. His claim is nearly verbatim the findings of a report released June 2014 and prepared for the Secretary of Defense by the Rand Corporation, a nonpartisan think tank whose work is cited by Democrats and Republicans. The report focused on Salafi-jihadist groups, which are a specific category of militant Sunni Islamists marked by their emphasis on reclaiming a "pure" Islam and the belief that violent jihad is required as part of religious duty. The report focused on these groups because most deem the United States an enemy and are willing to kill civilians on a large scale. The findings in the report are based on publicly available documents, such as internal memos, statements and other writings obtained from al-Qaida and other leaders by counterterrorism groups and news organizations like the Associated Press. Members of al-Qaida are an example of Salafi-jihadists, but not all jihadists are considered as part of al-Qaida or as formal members of its affiliates. The group taking over cities in Iraq, ISIS, is no longer part of al-Qaida after leader Ayman al-Zawahiri dismissed them in January 2014. Other groups in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Caucuses may occasionally work with or are allied with al-Qaida but are not members, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, which gained worldwide infamy for kidnapping about 250 Nigerian schoolgirls. Still, others operate as lone wolves inspired by the movement, such as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who shot and killed 13 people in an attack at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, and the Tsaernev brothers who executed the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. The report did not include other groups trying to build an Islamic state and presenting a threat to the United States and its interests, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Taliban and Hezbollah, whose religious views are sometimes contradictory to Salafi-jihadists. All that said, the number of Salafi-jihadist groups (al-Qaida, its affiliates, other violent Islamists) jumped 58 percent, as Cheney said, from 31 groups in 2010 to 49 in 2013. The growth primarily happened in North Africa and countries along the Mediterranean Sea, known as the Levant, which includes Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, Lebanon and Israel. Figuring out how many jihadist fighters that amounts to is tricky, as the groups don’t report their membership and their numbers can fluctuate. Still, the report says the population of fighters more than doubled between 2010 and 2013 looking at estimates both low (under 20,000 fighters to more than 40,000) and high (about 50,000 to more than 100,000). So, while the number of groups has increased 58 percent, the number of fighters in those groups has doubled, the report states. Here's a chart that shows the estimated increase: \ (Source: Rand Corp.) The biggest increase was in Syria amid the rebellion to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Further, Libya is "perhaps the most active Salafi-jihadist sanctuary in North Africa" as a result of groups forming after the killing of its longtime leader, Muammar Qaddafi, wrote Seth Jones, the author of the report and director of Rand’s International Security and Defense Policy Center. Membership has flourished partially because of weak governments in the Middle East and Africa, which not surprisingly has led to more attacks in recent years. Most, though, have been directed locally and not toward the U.S., its embassies or allies. There were roughly 400 attacks carried by al-Qaida and its affiliates in 2010, which rose to more than 900 in 2013, according to Rand. The report classifies the groups among three threat levels to the United States. Those presenting a high threat, meaning they are working on plots that target the United States and its embassies and citizens abroad, include core al-Qaida, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and "inspired" individuals we mentioned earlier. Groups with a "medium" threat, or plotting against overseas targets, are al-Shabaab (the Somali group behind the mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya) and Ansar al-Sharia Libya. The big question, of course, is what to do to address it. Jones’ report urged U.S. military leaders to be more aggressive in targeting Salafi-jihadist groups in Syria, home to more than half of the jihadists in the world. The problem is the Assad government is not an ally. He also warns that a complete exit from Afghanistan could backfire by creating ‘breathing space" for al-Qaida and other groups to regroup and spread. "The American departure from Afghanistan will most likely be a boost for insurgent and terrorist groups dedicated to overthrowing the Kabul government, establishing an extreme Islamic emirate, and allowing al Qaeda and other groups to establish a sanctuary," Jones wrote for the Wall Street Journal. "As in Iraq, the withdrawal of U.S. troops does not make the terrorism problem go away." Our ruling Cheney referenced a Rand Corp. report that showed "a doubling of the number of terrorists out there." The report he mentions does not look at all terrorism -- just a branch that has the United States and its interests in its crosshairs and is on the rise. We think it’s clear from his comment that he was referencing the report’s finding that members of Salafi-jihadist groups -- who engage in violent jihad activities -- have doubled. That’s true from 2010 to 2013 based on Rand’s low- and high-end estimates. We rate his statement True. Update (10:45 a.m. June 24): We've updated this item to make more clear that Cheney was talking about the total number of terrorists, not the number of terrorist groups. Our rating remains True.

Dick Cheney

2014-06-22T16:11:07

2014-06-22

['None']

chct-00059

FACT CHECK: Was Rick Perry In Russia On 9/11?

verdict: false

http://checkyourfact.com/2018/09/13/fact-check-rick-perry-russia-9-11/

Emily Larsen | Fact Check Reporter

9:12 AM 09/13/2018

['Russia']

snes-02152

A half-human, half-lamb was born in South Africa.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/half-human-half-lamb-born-south-africa/

Fauxtography

Dan Evon

Was a Human-Lamb Hybrid Born in South Africa?

23 June 2017

['South_Africa']

tron-01439

Chick-Fil-A Fed Stranded Motorists in Snowstorm

truth!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/chick-fil-a-fed-stranded-motoris/

food

Chick-Fil-A Fed Stranded Motorists in Snowstorm

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

snes-02146

Account describes the horrific results of a "Russian Sleep Experiment" from the late 1940s.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-sleep-experiment-orange-soda/

Horrors

David Mikkelson

Russian Sleep Experiment (Orange Soda)

28 August 2013

['None']

snes-02490

A photograph showing a group of astronauts without their helmets on indicates that the moon landing was staged.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/astronauts-helmets-moon/

Fauxtography

Dan Evon

Did Astronauts Remove Their Helmets on the ‘Moon’?

4 May 2017

['None']

pomt-15088

The Iran deal "trusts the Iranians to inspect themselves."

false

/texas/statements/2015/sep/18/ted-cruz/ted-cruz-says-iran-deal-trusts-iranians-inspect-th/

With a dash of imagined dialogue, Ted Cruz of Texas made his case for the United States not to support the agreement backed by most Democrats, including President Barack Obama, that would allow Iran to develop nuclear energy but not nuclear weapons and bring an end to longstanding economic sanctions. The Republican senator and presidential candidate told the Greater Houston Partnership on Sept. 1, 2015, that the Iran deal doesn’t lead to independent inspectors marching in. "This deal," Cruz said, "doesn’t send in American inspectors; this deal doesn’t send international inspectors. This deal trusts the Iranians to inspect themselves. Let me repeat that: This deal trusts the Iranians to inspect themself." Cruz said as much again at the Sept. 16, 2015, GOP presidential debate in California. "And most astonishingly," Cruz said, "this agreement trusts the Iranians to inspect themselves. That makes no sense whatsoever." In Houston, Cruz likened the self-inspection element to a scene from "Scarface," the 1980 movie starring Al Pacino as Tony Montana, a Cuban immigrant intent on taking over a drug cartel. "This is the equivalent," Cruz said, "of law enforcement picking up the phone and calling Tony Montana and saying, ‘Hey Tony, you got any drugs?’ "‘I don’t got no drugs.’ "‘Thank you, Tony.’ "That," Cruz said, "is essentially the Iranian nuclear inspection regime." Setting aside Cruz’s cinematic vignette, is he right the Iran deal, which the Senate fell short of rejecting in a Sept. 10, 2015, vote, trusts the Iranians to inspect themselves? Cruz’s office told us he concluded as much based on reporting by the Associated Press on a confidential "side agreement" about how an international agency will check conditions at a longtime Iranian military-industrial site. Spokesman Phil Novack also said by email that Cruz "has participated in multiple intelligence briefings -- both classified and unclassified -- about this Iranian deal. Without revealing the details of those briefings, they are entirely consistent with the public reports that the so-called inspections regime simply entrusts Iran with inspecting itself." We’ll get to more of Cruz’s backup. Longstanding safeguards First it’s worth noting international inspections of Iranian facilities date back decades. By phone, Jeffrey Lewis, publisher of armscontrolwonk.com, which presents blogs on arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, told us that like many nations, Iran has previously committed to "safeguards" agreements reached with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations entity entrusted with monitoring nuclear non-proliferation commitments. The agreements confirm the IAEA’s power to check on the possible development of nuclear weapons. A 1974 agreement, for instance, gives the agency authority to monitor "all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities within the territory of Iran, under its jurisdiction or carried out under its control anywhere, for the exclusive purpose of verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." Separate from that, Lewis said, the UN agency maintains confidential agreements with the many nations it monitors, including, he said, details on where cameras might be placed inside specific facilities. Typically, the IAEA says, its negotiated safeguards exist to "to deter the spread of nuclear weapons by early detection of misuse of nuclear material or technology, thereby providing credible assurances that states are honoring their legal obligations. The IAEA plays a crucial independent verification role," it says, "aimed at assuring the international community that nuclear material, facilities and other items subject to safeguards are used only for peaceful purposes. A 24-page agency safeguards booklet, dated June 2015, notes the agency won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. The booklet calls the safeguards a "set of technical measures that allow the IAEA to independently verify a state’s legal commitment not to divert nuclear material from peaceful nuclear activities to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." Some 182 countries have safeguards agreements, the booklet says. "Nuclear material subject to safeguards includes special fissionable material from which nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices could readily be made (e.g. plutonium-239; uranium-233; uranium enriched in the isotopes 235 or 233) and source material (e.g. natural uranium, depleted uranium or thorium), which cannot be directly used for nuclear weapons," the booklet says. But there’s room for suspicion. We noticed a passage suggesting the agency earlier caught Iran not complying with its oversight--and that was addressed: In 2002, information came to light regarding previously undeclared nuclear material and activities that the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran) should have declared but had not declared to the IAEA. At time of writing, while the IAEA continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and LOFs declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement, the IAEA is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities. In November 2013, the IAEA and Iran agreed on a Framework for Cooperation, within which verification activities are being implemented by the IAEA to resolve all present and past issues. The 2015 agreement The July 14, 2015, agreement, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was negotiated with Iran by world powers including the United States and Russia. And far as we can tell, it’s silent about Iran getting to inspect its own facilities. Per the agreement, the IAEA will have Iran’s permission for 15 years to "implement continuous monitoring, including through containment and surveillance measures, as necessary, to verify that stored centrifuges and infrastructure remain in storage, and are only used to replace failed or damaged centrifuges." A section in the nearly 160-page deal on modern technologies and the IAEA’s long-term presence states Iran will permit the agency to use equipment that relays changes in nuclear enrichment to IAEA inspectors plus other technologies. Also, the agreement says, Iran will facilitate automated collections of measurements from nuclear sites. That section goes on: Iran will make the necessary arrangements to allow for a long-term IAEA presence, including issuing long-term visas, as well as providing proper working space at nuclear sites and, with best efforts, at locations near nuclear sites in Iran for the designated IAEA inspectors for working and keeping necessary equipment. Iran will increase the number of designated IAEA inspectors to the range of 130-150 within 9 months from the date of the implementation of the JCPOA, and will generally allow the designation of inspectors from nations that have diplomatic relations with Iran, consistent with its laws and regulations. Cruz cites a news story In an email to Novack, Cruz's spokesman, we noted the inspection mentions in the agreement. Novack replied by pointing out other language in the agreement that he said shows Iran will be providing information to the IAEA to create a baseline for future action. "This does not mean the information Iran initially reports is complete. In these circumstances, we are trusting Iran to give us necessary information," Novack said. Novack singled out references in the agreement to Iran providing information enabling the international agency to verify production of "uranium ore concentrate" and to track centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows as well as "heavy water stocks" associated with nuclear power. The sections also provide for the IAEA to verify and continuously monitor such items. The spokesman earlier said that Cruz reached his conclusion about the deal trusting Iran to inspect itself from an August 2015 AP news story indicating the IAEA agreed to let Iran inspect Parchin, a military-industrial site in the country that critics once accused Iran of using to develop nuclear weapons. The AP’s Vienna-datelined Aug. 20, 2015, news story said its reporter had obtained "one of the side arrangements between the IAEA and Iran in regards to inspecting Parchin" in Iran. The story presented what the AP described as the transcript of the original draft agreement between the IAEA and Iran "covering inspections at the Parchin military site, where Iran has been accused of pursuing nuclear weapons development a decade ago." The story also noted the Parchin agreement was "separate from the much broader Iran nuclear deal signed by Iran, the U.S. and five other world powers in July" 2015. Below is most of the transcript of the draft document which the AP says that two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed as not differing from the final agreement between the IAEA and Iran: Separate arrangement II agreed by the Islamic State of Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency on 11 July 2015, regarding the Road-map, Paragraph 5 1. Iran will provide to the Agency photos of the locations, including those identified in paragraph 3 below, which would be mutually agreed between Iran and the Agency, taking into account military concerns. 2. Iran will provide to the Agency videos of the locations, including those identified in paragraph 3 below, which would be mutually agreed between Iran and the Agency, taking into account military concerns. 3. Iran will provide to the Agency 7 environmental samples taken from points inside one building already identified by the Agency and agreed by Iran, and 2 points outside of the Parchin complex which would be agreed between Iran and the Agency. 4. The Agency will ensure the technical authenticity of the activities referred to in paragraphs 1-3 above. Activities will be carried out using Iran's authenticated equipment, consistent with technical specifications provided by the Agency, and the Agency's containers and seals. A day earlier, an AP news story said the Parchin agreement allowed Iran to use its own inspectors on the site rather than leaving that to the IAEA, which "normally carries out such work." That story said the Parchin agreement was worked out between the IAEA and Iran, with the U.S. and the other world powers involved in the larger Iran deal not being party to it, though the nations were briefed, the story said, and they "endorsed it as part of the larger package." The Parchin agreement, the AP story said, "diverges from normal procedures by allowing Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence of activities it has consistently denied — trying to develop nuclear weapons. Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran probe as deputy IAEA director general from 2005 to 2010, said he could think of no similar concession with any other country." IAEA says ‘safeguards standards’ not compromised We emailed the IAEA about Cruz’s claim and didn’t hear back. But after the AP story broke, the agency’s director general, Yukiya Amano, issued a statement saying he couldn’t release separate agreements with countries without violating confidentiality. Suggestions the agency had given responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran, Amano added, "misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work." Amano also said the side arrangements "are technically sound and consistent with our long-established practices. They do not compromise our safeguards standards in any way." Other analyses In August 2015, Heinonen, a Harvard University researcher who spent more than 25 years with the IAEA, wrote an oped article about the described Parchin side deal stating that if "the reporting is accurate, these" inspection "procedures appear to be risky, departing significantly from well-established and proven safeguards practices. At a broader level, if verification standards have been diluted for Parchin (or elsewhere) and limits imposed, the ramification is significant as it will affect the IAEA’s ability to draw definitive conclusions with the requisite level of assurances and without undue hampering of the verification process." Heinonen called for the described document to be made public by the IAEA and Iran, with U.S. support, accompanied by explanations responding to concerns about the Parchin process. To our inquiry, Heinonen pointed by email another confidential side agreement as noted by the IAEA in its "road-map" to clarify outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program. That July 14, 2015, document says the IAEA and Iran agreed on a "separate arrangement" premised on Iran this year answering agency questions per "possible ambiguities" leading up to the general agreement taking effect. Heinonen told us observers need to be able to see relevant side agreements before concluding Iran is being allowed to inspect itself. "To this end, we are missing facts...By having such facts on the table, we can assess the IAEA approach on this issue," Heinonen wrote. To our inquiries, other arms control experts mostly told us the side agreement described by the AP doesn’t show Iran is going to be left to inspect itself. Lewis, referring to the reported Parchin agreement, said: "This is a one-time managed access to a single facility by the IAEA. It is not the procedure for any other inspection. It is specially designed to answer questions relating to work carried out at this site between 1996-2002." Similarly, Justin Logan, director of foreign policy studies at the libertarian-oriented Cato Institute, told us by email it’s worth keeping in mind it takes ample "fissile material" to make a nuclear weapon and "large infrastructure." At Iran’s known facilities where uranium enrichment is taking or has taken place, Logan said, IAEA inspectors will be present and have daily access. By phone, Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, which has encouraged Congress to support the agreement, called Cruz’s claim an "absolutely incorrect" mischaracterization. Kimball said that even at the Parchin site, he believes the IAEA will provide information "about where they want to sample at the site, which areas they want to soil or surface samples to see if there is individual radioactive material in these areas." Then, Kimball said, "the Iranian specialists in the presence of the IAEA inspectors will actually do the scooping, the swiping." After that, Kimball said, whatever is collected will be "put into packages the IAEA will take possession of (and) take to their labs for testing. By email, Kimball also pointed us to an Aug. 21, 2015, opinion article in The Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, headlined: "No, Iran is not allowed to inspect itself." In the piece, Mark Hibbs and Thomas Shea, experts on IAEA safeguards, spell out their expectation that IAEA officials would keep a close watch on Iranian staff gathering samples at Parchin and ensure the samples reached U.N. labs without being tainted. Iran, the two wrote, "will not be allowed to inspect itself." Another association official, Kelsey Davenport, followed up with an email noting that NBC News, citing unidentified senior U.S. officials, said in an Aug. 19, 2015, news story that Iran would be allowed to inspect Parchin itself only regarding signs of past military activity and still, U.N. inspectors "would be on site to supervise the Iranians at every step of the way," NBC said. Davenport also pointed out an Aug. 20, 2015, post on the Arms Control Association’s website by Tariq Rauf, director of the Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In the post, Rauf asserted that even if Iranians were permitted to collect samples at Parchin, IAEA officials would be present to ensure no monkey business. Rauf went on: "It would be unusual but by no means technically compromising to have Iranian technicians collect swipe samples at sites and locations at Parchin in the physical presence and direct line of sight of IAEA inspectors, including filming, and using swipe kits and collection bags provided by the IAEA. The agency inspectors then would seal the bags containing the swipe samples; they could leave behind one sealed bag at the IAEA office in Iran as a ‘control’ to be used if there is a dispute later about the results. The other three or four bags of swipe samples would be taken by the IAEA" to UN laboratories for testing. We also reached Fred Fleitz, author of a July 2015 National Review article stating Iranians would be permitted to collect samples for the IAEA at Parchin. Fleitz, a senior official with the conservative Center for Security Policy, which focuses on national security in the belief that national power must be preserved and properly used, said by phone that Cruz‘s Houston claim implied "the Iranians are going to do all the inspections. That's inaccurate. Iranians will be doing some inspections," he said, including at Parchin. Fleitz later said by email that Cruz proved "exactly right" in a Sept. 15, 2015 National Review commentary by saying "in certain circumstances, Iran will inspect itself." In his Houston stump speech, he speculated, Cruz left out such caveats. Our ruling Cruz said the Iran deal "trusts the Iranians to inspect themselves." A confidential side deal might allow Iranian staff to take photos and video and collect samples at the Parchin site yet the IAEA has generally insisted its protective protocols aren't being compromised. The Parchin uncertainty aside, Cruz didn’t offer nor did we find evidence the overall agreement trusts Iranians to inspect themselves. In contrast, his statement left the impression Iran would be conducting all inspections under the agreement by itself. That’s not so. We rate the claim False. FALSE – The statement is not accurate. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.

Ted Cruz

2015-09-18T10:00:00

2015-09-01

['Iran']

tron-02634

Budweiser is Ditching its Clydesdales

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/budweiser-ditching-clydesdales/

miscellaneous

Budweiser is Ditching its Clydesdales – Fiction!

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

wast-00080

The head of U.S. Steel called me the other day, and he said, \xe2\x80\x98We're opening up six major facilities and expanding facilities that have never been expanded.' They haven't been opened in many, many years.

4 pinnochios

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/06/28/president-trump-announces-a-major-u-s-steel-expansion-that-isnt-happening/

Donald Trump

Glenn Kessler

President Trump announces a major U.S. Steel expansion \xe2\x80\x94 that isn't happening

June 28

['None']

pomt-05962

Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years.

mostly true

/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/24/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-us-oil-production-eight-year-hig/

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 24, 2012, President Barack Obama talked up U.S. oil production. "Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy," Obama said. "Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years. That’s right – eight years. Not only that – last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years." This passage includes a number of claims, but here we’ll focus on the one that "right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years." We looked at a similar claim on March 15, 2011, and rated it Mostly True. But we will update our assessment based on new data. We turned to the Energy Information Administration, the federal government’s official office for energy statistics. Since Obama said "oil production," we will only look at crude oil extracted from U.S. territory, rather than natural gas or other petroleum products. Here are the annual totals, in barrels produced, going back to 2003: 2003: 2,073,453,000 2004: 1,983,302,000 2005: 1,890,106,000 2006: 1,862,259,000 2007: 1,848,450,000 2008: 1,811,817,000 2009: 1,956,596,000 2010: 1,998,137,000 The full-year data is available only through 2010, but 10 months of data from 2011 have been made public. Through the end of October 2011, production totaled 1,713,038,000 barrels. If that pace continues, the year-end total should be around 2,055,646,000 barrels -- higher than any year since 2003. That’s eight years ago, just as Obama said. The last time we looked at this question in March 2011, we noted that production levels actually have been quite stable over the period in question. The estimated level for 2011 is only about 13 percent higher than for the lowest year in that eight-year period. So the increase the president is referring to is not particularly dramatic. In addition, levels of production were typically higher from the 1950s to the 1990s. However, one caveat we mentioned in our last analysis -- that the Energy Information Administration projected that production totals were poised to fall over the subsequent two years -- no longer appears to be accurate. The most recent "Short-Term Energy Outlook," published on Jan. 12, 2012, forecast increases in total crude oil production in 2012 and 2013, thanks to increases in onshore production in the Lower 48, which overshadow declines in production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. The last issue is whether Obama and his administration claimed credit for this achievement and whether they deserve it. The government does play a role in shaping oil production, but many other factors, including private-sector business imperatives and the domestic and international energy market, are factors as well. We think Obama’s phrasing suggests that he thinks the administration’s policies have played a role, saying, for instance, that "over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration." But we also think he does so cautiously. Our ruling Obama was correct when he said that "right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years." We think he may have overstated his administration’s role in achieving that, but not wildly so. We rate the claim Mostly True.

Barack Obama

2012-01-24T23:49:18

2012-01-24

['United_States']

pose-00909

Bob Buckhorn will establish a Landlord Training Program, which will train the city’s landlords on code requirements, code enforcement procedures, and techniques for maintaining their properties in a manner that will help prevent code violations in our rental communities.

promise kept

https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/buck-o-meter/promise/941/establish-a-landlord-training-program/

buck-o-meter

Bob Buckhorn

Establish a landlord training program

2011-05-18T14:33:25

['Bob_Buckhorn']

pose-00077

Will mandate insurance coverage of autism treatment and will also continue to work with parents, physicians, providers, researchers, and schools to create opportunities and effective solutions for people with ASD (autism spectrum disorders).

compromise

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/80/mandate-insurance-coverage-of-autism-treatment/

obameter

Barack Obama

Mandate insurance coverage of autism treatment

2010-01-07T13:26:47

['None']

snes-00995

A baseball team for third-graders in Neosho, Missouri is raffling off an AR-15 rifle even after it was used to commit the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/are-third-graders-raffling-off-an-ar-15-after-the-parkland-shooting/

Politics

Arturo Garcia

Are Third-Graders Raffling Off an AR-15 After the Parkland Shooting?

19 February 2018

['Missouri', 'AR-15']

snes-03936

Donald Trump expressed strong opposition to the war in Iraq before it began in 2003.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-iraq-war/

Politics

David Emery

Was Donald Trump Against the Iraq War from the Beginning?

27 September 2016

['Iraq']

pose-00200

Barack Obama and Joe Biden will introduce a new Rapid Response Fund – a seed fund that will provide a shot of adrenaline to young democracies and post-conflict societies, through foreign aid, debt relief, technical assistance and investment packages that show the people of newly hopeful countries that democracy and peace deliver, and the United States stands by them.

promise kept

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/215/create-a-rapid-response-fund-for-emerging-democrac/

obameter

Barack Obama

Create a rapid response fund for emerging democracies

2010-01-07T13:26:51

['United_States', 'Joe_Biden', 'Barack_Obama']

pomt-13408

Sixty percent of Americans now support legalizing marijuana.

mostly true

/wisconsin/statements/2016/sep/23/gary-johnson/do-6-10-americans-back-legalizing-marijuana-presid/

In a TV interview during a campaign visit to Milwaukee, Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson was asked about his support for the legalization of marijuana. He replied by making a claim we want to check. "And let’s see, 60 percent of Americans now support legalizing marijuana," Johnson said on the Sept. 4, 2016 edition of the "Upfront with Mike Gousha" public affairs show on WISN (Channel 12). Only a month earlier, the former Republican governor of New Mexico had made a less aggressive claim, saying "most" Americans supported legalization. PolitiFact National’s rating was True, as multiple polls generally showed support in the low 50s. It seems unlikely that in a few short weeks it would jump to 60 percent. But let’s take a look. Previous factcheck When Johnson made his earlier claim, our colleagues found that in 12 of 14 national polls taken since the start of 2014, 50 percent or more of Americans supported legalization. The information, covering a period of more than 2.5 years, was taken from the PollingReport.com database As for the other two polls, legalization led in one by 48 percent to 47 percent and in the other by 49 percent to 48 percent. In the three latest polls in the database, the numbers crept closer to 60 percent, with support at 54 percent, 56 percent and 58 percent. But averaging the 14 polls, legalization led 53 percent to 44 percent. Another poll Johnson’s campaign, however, pointed us to another relatively recent poll that wasn’t included in the database. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, conducted in February 2016, found that 61 percent of Americans said the use of marijuana should be made legal. (Interestingly, 53 percent said marijuana use in their communities was a moderately serious, very serious or extremely serious problem, compared to 45 percent who said it was not at all serious or not too serious.) Reporting on the poll, the Washington Post’s Wonkblog said the 61 percent support, a notch above Johnson’s claim, was an all-time high. A parting note, though it doesn’t bear on our rating of Johnson’s claim about national numbers: In a July 2016 poll of registered voters in Wisconsin, the Marquette Law School Poll asked: When it comes to marijuana, some people think that the drug should be fully legalized and regulated like alcohol. Do you agree or disagree with that view? The results: 59 percent agreed, 39 percent disagreed. Our rating Johnson said: "Sixty percent of Americans now support legalizing marijuana." A March 2016 poll found 61 percent support, but that is the only recent survey we could find showing support that high. Fourteen other polls going back more than two years show a majority of Americans back legalization, but generally support was in the low 50s. We rate Johnson’s statement Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/2c688f18-7afd-43e2-926c-6d8b8a1654cd

Gary Johnson

2016-09-23T10:25:00

2016-09-04

['United_States']

farg-00217

We don't understand why the Democrats are so wholeheartedly against [President Trump's border wall]. They voted for it in 2006.

misleading

https://www.factcheck.org/2017/04/democrats-support-border-wall/

the-factcheck-wire

Mick Mulvaney

Robert Farley

['border security']

Did Democrats Once Support Border Wall?

April 26, 2017

[' Fox News Sunday – Sunday, April 23, 2017 ']

['Democratic_Party_(United_States)']

snes-04071

Ann Scott, the wife of Florida's governor, owns a Zika mosquito spraying business.

mixture

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-governors-wife-has-zika-mosquito-spray-business/

Conspiracy Theories

Brooke Binkowski

Florida Governor’s Wife Has Zika Mosquito Spray Business

8 September 2016

['None']

pose-00801

Create a $100 million T-STEM Challenge Scholarship for students at universities, community colleges and technical colleges pursuing degrees and certifications in the science, technology, engineering, math or medical fields.

compromise

https://www.politifact.com/texas/promises/perry-o-meter/promise/832/create-100-million-texas-science-technology-eng/

perry-o-meter

Rick Perry

Create $100 million Texas-Science, Technology, Engineering and Math scholarship fund

2011-01-13T12:33:38

['None']

hoer-00887

Death From Poisoned Rhino Horn Rumour

unsubstantiated messages

https://www.hoax-slayer.com/poisoned-rhino-horn.shtml

Brett M. Christensen

Death From Poisoned Rhino Horn Rumour

31st August 2010

['None']

pomt-10414

It doesn't make sense "historically" to drop out because the 1968 race was still competitive when "Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

mostly false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/may/26/hillary-clinton/campaign-in-68-didnt-start-until-march/

Sen. Hillary Clinton has dismissed arguments that she should drop out of the race for the Democratic Party nomination, saying past races were competitive into the summer. "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," Clinton told the editorial board of the Argus Leader, a South Dakota newspaper, on May 23, 2008. "Historically, that makes no sense," she said of the idea that she should drop out. The remarks caused controversy because some people interpreted them to mean she was suggesting she should stay in the race because Sen. Barack Obama might be assassinated. In the context of the full exchange, however, Clinton is making an argument she's made previously, that it's too early for her drop out because nomination races in years past have extended into June. We previously examined her claim that the 1992 nomination fight didn't end until June, when her husband, Bill Clinton, won in California. We concluded that Sen. Clinton overlooked some key facts in making that argument, and gave her a Barely True. In this case, she mentions Robert Kennedy's attempt to win the Democratic nomination of 1968. His quest ended tragically when he was assassinated hours after winning the California primary on June 5, 1968. We decided to look into the details of the 1968 campaign to see if Clinton's Kennedy analogy holds up any better than her Clinton analogy. In short, it doesn't. We found that the timetable for the 1968 race diverges from the current race in several important ways that make her comparison not very accurate. For one thing, the 1968 race started much later than the 2008 race, in terms of both when candidates declared to run and the primary calendar. In 1968, incumbent President Lyndon Johnson was widely expected to seek another term. But dissatisfaction with the Vietnam War prompted talk of a challenger. Kennedy's friends urged him to run, but Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota entered the race first. McCarthy exceeded expectations dramatically when he took 41.9 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary on March 12, 1968, compared with Johnson's 49.6 percent. With Johnson's vulnerability revealed, Kennedy entered the race. Johnson then surprised everyone by withdrawing on March 31. "I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office — the presidency of your country," Johnson said in an address to the nation. "Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president." The race between Kennedy and McCarthy was tumultuous. Kennedy seemed to be outpacing McCarthy, but lost to him in Oregon on May 28. The California primary, set for June 4, was widely seen as a crucial turning point. Kennedy won the primary, but was assassinated shortly after midnight on June 5 by Sirhan Sirhan. Ultimately, Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, secured the nomination at a chaotic convention in Chicago that August, and then lost to Republican Richard Nixon. So, the chronology of the 1968 race has some important distinctions from 2008. The 1968 race didn't start in earnest until the middle of March. One might even argue that it didn't begin until the very end of March, after the sitting president announced that he wouldn't seek re-election. Compare that to this cycle, when the field of candidates was largely settled nearly a year before the first primary vote in January 2008. Clinton and Obama were declared candidates for their party's nomination in early 2007 with no national figure around to cloud the picture. Also, the 1968 New Hampshire primary, the first significant vote of the year, was March 12. In 2008, New Hampshire had its primary on Jan. 8, and Iowa held its crucial election five days before that. If you calculate days between the New Hampshire primary and June 3 of each year, the distance was 81 days in 1968, but 141 days in 2008. So Clinton is right that the 1968 contest was still going on in June of that year, and it was still competitive. But she ignores important facts that make her comparison between that election year and this one inaccurate. We are not evaluating the question of whether Clinton should drop out of the race, but we find her historical argument that there's nothing unusual about a Democratic primary still being contested in June to be technically accurate but completely misleading. We rate this claim, like the last one, 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.

Hillary Clinton

2008-05-26T00:00:00

2008-05-23

['California', 'Robert_F._Kennedy']

pomt-14243

The Katy Freeway, or Interstate 10 west of Houston, is the widest freeway in the world, with up to 26 lanes, including frontage road lanes.

false

/texas/statements/2016/apr/13/sylvester-turner/worlds-widest-highway-not-where-sylvester-turner-t/

You don’t have to look hard in Texas to find supersized variations of everything from donuts to state fair mascots to steak-eating challenges. According to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turne,, there’s a category Houstonians alone can claim. Twice in two months, Turner singled out one of Houston’s major highways. At a March 4, 2016, press conference, Turner said: "The Katy Freeway, or Interstate 10 west of Houston, is the widest freeway in the world, with up to 26 lanes including frontage road lanes." Turner went on to hammer that an expansion of I-10 that finished in 2008 still left drivers sitting in traffic during peak drive times, saying cities should consider other methods to control congestion beyond expansion. Houston’s 14 expressways are all big, of course. But is the Katy Freeway really the widest on the planet? For starters, the mayor counting main lanes along with frontage roads to judge width struck us as unusual. To our inquiry, Brad Eaves, principal at the Houston firm TEI, agreed, saying that from a traffic standpoint, he’d consider main lanes of a freeway and the frontage roads separately since each one serves a different function: Main lanes are high-speed, long-trip roadways while frontage roads serve a purpose that’s a little different. While he’s heard this stat before, since he’s "obviously not familiar with every freeway in the world," he could not confirm whether Turner’s claim is true or not. We could have wandered many ways to check this claim. For starters, a Google search of "widest freeway in the world" pulled up more than 92,000 results. The first, a May 2015 Chron.com article that also included this claim. Turner’s spokeswoman, Janice Evans, also sent us a link to the same story as the source for Turner’s claim. That Houston Chronicle story called the Katy Freeway the world’s widest, at 26 lanes including managed lanes and frontage roads near the interchange with Beltway 8. This wasn’t the newspaper’s judgment, however. Rather, the story referred to an August 2012 Business Insider web post listing the "11 wildest highways to drive before you die," with the Katy Freeway chunk of I-10 (which runs from Jacksonville, Florida to Los Angeles) designated the world’s widest. Here’s the full Business Insider entry, which appeared between mention of Bolivia’s treacherous Yungas Road and mention of the Karakoram Highway in the Himalayas: "With 26 lanes in certain parts, the Katy Freeway, or Interstate 10, is the widest highway in the world. It serves more than 219,000 vehicles daily in Texas. Built in the 1960s, Interstate 10 expands across a 23-mile stretch from its intersection with Interstate 610 to the city of Katy in Texas." In the entry, the words "Katy Freeway" link to a web page sponsored by Webinfolist.com, "Civil Engineer," presenting definitions including: "Highway is defined as the main road intended for travel by the public between cities and towns. The Pan-American Highway is the longest international highway which connects many countries. It is nearly 48,000 kilometers long. "Whereas," the definition continues, "the Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas, USA, is the widest highway, having a total of 26 lanes in some sections." We saw no sourcing for the characterization and our attempts to draw elaboration, repeatedly by email, proved a dead end; no replies. At the least, then, we know where the mayor’s wording likely originated. Our own width search Our search for fuller perspective started with TXDOT data indicating that in 2014, I-10 just west of the 610 loop saw a daily average of 316,182 cars. One thing that is clear: the freeway’s designation as the world’s widest folds in its frontage lanes. The freeway alone is 13 lanes at its widest, with most sections consisting of 10 to 12 lanes, Doug Hecox, a public affairs specialist with the Federal Highway Administration, told us via email. The FHWA uses the Highway Performance Monitoring System, a database that collects information on the nation’s public roads. Congress uses data from the system in reports that determine highway funding, and states and local governments use data to assess everything from highway condition to air quality trends. We’d reached out to the agency to gauge how I-10 compares in width to other major U.S. roadways -- never mind highways of the world. When comparing freeway lanes alone, I-10 doesn’t appear to be especially wide. In fact, as of July 2010, at least eight sections of other U.S. freeways had more lanes. A section of I-405 in Los Angeles had 14 freeway lanes, parts of I-75 in Atlanta had 15 lanes, and we spotted stretches of freeway in more than 10 other cities with 12 or 13 lanes. This means, according to the agency, highways in six other states had more lanes than the Katy Freeway. Hecox told us the agency doesn’t include frontage roads nor does it have a way to include them. And in Canada… Considering highways globally starts to make the Katy look picayune. As of 2016, for instance, Highway 401 near the Toronto Airport ran 18 lanes across. And, the Hong Kong-Macau Expressway, otherwise known as the G4, made headlines in October 2015 when a newly-installed checkpoint funneled 50 lanes -- yes, 50 lanes, to accommodate multiple toll booths-- into 20, causing an hours-long traffic jam. Our ruling Turner called the Katy Freeway, a Houston portion of I-10, the widest freeway in the world, with up to 26 lanes, including its frontage roads. If frontage and managed lanes are included, I-10 is quite the behemoth. Problem is, hardly anyone includes frontage roads when measuring American freeways. Get rid of the frontage roads and the Katy drops to 13 lanes at its widest, not much different than several other freeways across the country. As for the rest of the world, we found a wider freeway in Canada, and a reported 50-lane highway in China that makes the Katy look like a country road. 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.

Sylvester Turner

2016-04-13T11:47:32

2016-03-04

['Houston', 'Interstate_10_in_Texas']

wast-00052

The reason that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act is because they ruled that each of these monthly payments that everyday American make is a tax."

false

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/08/10/fact-checking-alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-media-blitz/

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Glenn Kessler

Fact-checking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's media blitz

August 10

['United_States']

tron-01963

The aircraft carrier that thought a lighthouse was another ship

fiction!

https://www.truthorfiction.com/lighthouseandaircraftcarrier/

humorous

The aircraft carrier that thought a lighthouse was another ship

Mar 17, 2015

['None']

goop-01448

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt’s Kids Do Want To Live With Jennifer Aniston,

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-brad-pitt-kids-live-jennifer-aniston-untrue/

Shari Weiss

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt’s Kids Do NOT Want To Live With Jennifer Aniston, Despite Reports

9:39 am, March 5, 2018

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

pomt-14358

Says Senate Republicans are "following a longstanding tradition of not filling vacancies on the Supreme Court in the middle of a presidential election year."

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/22/mitch-mcconnell/mitch-mcconnell-exaggerates-tradition-not-confirmi/

Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said his party is following a longstanding tradition by vowing not to consider any Supreme Court nominee until after a new president is inaugurated in 2017. McConnell has said he won’t even meet with federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February — let alone hold hearings or a vote on Garland. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked McConnell if it would be hard to maintain such a rigid argument over the next several months. McConnell responded by listing prior comments from several Democratic senators. "We're following the Biden rule," he said, referring to comments made by Vice President Joe Biden in 1992. "And Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 1992, in presidential election year, he said the Senate should not act on filling a Supreme Court vacancy if it had occurred that year. Harry Reid when he was back in 2005 said the president nominates, but the Senate doesn't have to vote. Chuck Schumer, who will be the next Democratic leader, said in 2007 they wouldn't confirm. The Democrats were in the majority in the Senate, they wouldn't confirm a Bush appointment to the Supreme Court if one occurred within 18 months of a presidential election. "So, all we're doing, Chris, is following a long standing tradition of not filling vacancies on the Supreme Court in the middle of a presidential election year." It is more than a stretch for McConnell to say it’s a "tradition" for the Senate not to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year. In the past century, there have been 25 presidential elections. Just four Supreme Court seats opened up in those election years. In three of those instances, the Senate confirmed the president’s nominee, and just once — the only election-year court opening in the past 80 years — did the Senate refuse a nominee. So the scenario McConnell described has happened exactly once in the past century, in 1968, and that decision did not actually leave a vacancy on the court for any period of time. "This is entirely a matter of circumstance," Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University, previously told PolitiFact. It’s "certainly not a norm or tradition by presidents refraining from nominating in a presidential election year, or by senators refusing to consider such nominations." One-time 'tradition' In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren told President Lyndon Johnson he planned to retire. Johnson nominated sitting justice Abe Fortas to succeed Warren as chief. Fortas hit strong bipartisan Senate opposition and asked that his name be withdrawn for chief justice (though he stayed on the court as an associate justice). Johnson had also nominated Homer Thornberry to take Fortas’ place on the court. But that nomination, too, was withdrawn, as Fortas never became chief justice. While there was some opposition to the Fortas nomination based on the fact that Johnson was a lame duck, Fortas’ failed confirmation primarily resulted from ethical questions over fees he received, his prior decisions and his closeness with Johnson. In any case, the Senate’s decision not to confirm didn’t actually leave a vacant seat on the court because Warren chose to stay on the bench. Scalia’s seat, however, will remain vacant for as long as the Senate refuses to confirm a nominee. Without a ninth justice to break ties, it’s possible that many decisions will result in a 4-4 deadlock, which would mean the decisions of the lower court would stand. There are more examples in the past century of the Senate confirming Supreme Court nominees for seats that open up in election years, though it is still a rare occassion. You have to go back about 80 years, as McConnell correctly noted on Fox News Sunday. In 1932, President Herbert Hoover nominated, and the Senate confirmed, Benjamin Cardozo. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson nominated John Clarke and Louis Brandeis, and they both made it through the Senate. McConnell’s talking point also ignores the two instances in the past century when the Senate confirmed Supreme Court nominees in election years, even though the seat opened up in the year prior. In 1988, the Senate confirmed Ronald Reagan’s nominee, Anthony Kennedy, though the seat became vacant in 1987. And in 1940, the Senate confirmed Franklin Roosevelt’s nominee, Frank Murphy, though the seat became vacant in 1939. A few 19th century presidents also nominated Supreme Court justices in election years, though not all of them were successful, according to a February 2016 article in the Cook Political Report by University of Georgia political scientist John Anthony Maltese. Maltese found that since the country’s founding, soon-to-depart presidents have made 32 Supreme Court nominations. Those nominations came within a period ranging from within 365 days of a successor’s election through the successor’s inauguration. Of those 32 nominations, the Senate confirmed 18 — hardly proving that McConnell or his Democratic opponents have reason to claim tradition. The record shows that Republicans’ inaction on Obama’s nominee is not rooted in some longstanding tradition, especially in the past century. SCOTUSblog editor Amy Howe wrote, "The historical record does not reveal any instances since at least 1900 of the president failing to nominate and/or the Senate failing to confirm a nominee in a presidential election year because of the impending election." Our ruling McConnell said Senate Republicans are "following a longstanding tradition of not filling vacancies on the Supreme Court in the middle of a presidential election year." McConnell’s use of the phrase "longstanding tradition" is misleading, as the Senate has chosen not to fill a Supreme Court seat that opens up during an election year just once in the past 100 years. The reality is that, at least in recent decades, the Senate has rarely been presented with the opportunity to consider a Supreme Court nominee in an election year. It’s so rare that there’s no fully analogous scenario to compare with the current debate over filling Scalia’s seat. McConnell’s statement is not accurate, so we rate it False.

Mitch McConnell

2016-03-22T16:47:08

2016-03-20

['None']

pomt-00926

Says she has opposed measures to weaken the Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulatory bill and campaign-finance legislation when they were offered as stand-alone bills.

half-true

/new-hampshire/statements/2015/feb/26/ann-mclane-kuster/did-kuster-flip-flop-when-voting-cromnibus/

Evoking the old cliche about lawmaking and sausage, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ann Kuster faces questions about whether she changed her stance on two votes, going one way when faced with a pair of stand-alone bills and the other way after those measures were wrapped in a much larger package. The dispute involves two policy measures tacked onto a massive spending bill known as the "CRomnibus." That bill, passed in December 2014 by the outgoing Congress, approved enough money to keep the federal government in operation through September 2015. One of the "riders" – that is, unrelated amendments – rolled back some of the protections enacted after the Wall Street bailouts in 2008 by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The other amended the Federal Election Campaign Act to increase the amount of money that individual donors can contribute to national political party committees. The White House urged Congress to approve the bill despite continued objection to those two provisions. The two U.S. House members from New Hampshire split their votes on the bill. Then-Rep. Carol Shea Porter, a Democrat, voted against the spending measure, while Ann Kuster, also a Democrat, voted for it. In an interview with the Concord Monitor in January, Kuster said she didn’t agree with the riders but felt it was her duty as a member of Congress to keep the government running. She said it was bad form to make such policy changes in an appropriations bill, and she wished she’d been given the chance to vote against them without risking a government shutdown in the process, she said. "As standalone bills, I would be opposed," she said. We wondered: Has Kuster ever had the opportunity to vote on those issues outside the context of a spending bill? On the campaign finance issue, Kuster co-sponsored a bill in the days after the interview to undo the changes adopted in the spending bill that increased the amount of money a single donor can give to national party committees each year. (The spending bill raised the limits from $97,200 to as much as $777,600.) So while she hasn’t voted contrary to the campaign-finance rider in the past, she acted almost immediately to undo what was passed in the spending bill. This gives her claim a ring of truth. On bolstering the provisions of Dodd-Frank, however, Kuster’s record is mixed. Recently, she’s defended the law, but in earlier votes, she supported softening some of its provisions. In October 2013, for instance, Kuster voted in favor of a bill to repeal a provision of Dodd-Frank that would require banks to keep risky investments away from holdings that receive government backing through federal deposit insurance and Federal Reserve discount window lending. The legislation, called the Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act and co-sponsored by Reps. Randy Hultgren, an Illinois Republican, and Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat (and former vice president of Goldman Sachs), would have eliminated a prohibition against certain types federal assistance to swaps entities. The measure passed the House Financial Services Committee in February 2012 and made it to the House Agriculture committee – on which Kuster sits – in March 2013. (The bill went before the agriculture committee because the risk involved in loans to farmers is often mitigated through commodity-based derivatives.) Kuster was among the 31 representatives on the committee to vote for the bill in committee, while 14 lawmakers disagreed. Then, the bill came before the full house as H.R. 992 in October 2013. Kuster was among 70 Democrats who joined 222 Republicans to pass the bill. All told, 119 Democrats – including Shea-Porter – and three Republicans opposed the measure on the floor. This bill was never heard in the Senate, but much of its substance was eventually folded into the CRomnibus. In addition, Kuster was among a minority of Democrats last September who supported a bill to exempt a segment of the market for derivatives from Dodd-Frank’s new rules. Only after the November election, in which Democrats lost seats, did Kuster join all but 29 Democrats in January when she voted against the Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act. The legislation was essentially the same as the September bill, along with a two-year delay of a provision that would restrict banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments. Kuster and other Democrats proposed 14 amendments to that bill – hers was to strike the delay altogether – but House rules, which heavily favor the majority, didn’t allow them to be taken up on the floor. Kuster’s camp acknowledged she voted for the swaps amendment and other measures related to Dodd-Frank. "She has voted in the past, through standard House procedure, for bills that would improve the Dodd-Frank law by addressing parts of the law that could unintentionally harm middle class families and main street small businesses," Kuster spokeswoman Rosie Hilmer said. It’s worth noting that the securities and investment industry was one of the most prominent contributors to Kuster’s campaign in 2014, according to the nonpartisan campaign-finance clearinghouse OpenSecrets.com. With $143,041 in donations from that sector, she trumped her opponent, Marilinda Garcia, by nearly three times over. She also raised more than three times as much from that sector as Shea-Porter, the Democrat running for New Hampshire’s other House seat, and Republican Frank Guinta, who beat Shea-Porter to win that seat. Kuster raised $90,000 more from the securities and investment industry in her 2014 campaign than she did in her 2012 campaign. Our ruling Kuster says she has opposed measures to weaken campaign-finance restrictions and financial-services protections when they were offered as stand-alone bills. She can make a plausible case on campaign finance, but her record on financial-services protections is more mixed. Early on, she voted for several measures that would weaken the Dodd-Frank act; only recently has she taken a firm stance against efforts to ease provisions of Dodd-Frank. Her statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so we rate Kuster’s claim Half True.

Ann McLane Kuster

2015-02-26T16:01:23

2015-01-06

['None']

pomt-10678

If we went back to the obesity rates that existed in 1980, that would save the Medicare system a trillion dollars.

false

/truth-o-meter/statements/2007/dec/17/barack-obama/a-trillion-is-too-much/

A trillion dollars? Really? That's a lot of money — $1,000,000,000,000, to be exact. Obama is accurately quoting that number from a report issued by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. The report states, "If we were able to reduce obesity to 1980s levels, Medicare would save $1-trillion." It attributes the number to the Centers for Disease Control and the Commonwealth Fund. At issue is the increased prevalence of obesity. The percent of the U.S. population considered to be obese has roughly doubled since the 1980s. Researchers have documented that these people need more health care due to complications from obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancers and other illnesses. Researchers have also developed models to calculate costs for obesity-related health care. We agree that obesity drives up health costs, but getting to $1-trillion just doesn't add up, according to our estimates. (Factcheck.org, a political fact-checking Web site at the University of Pennsylvania, found the same thing; check out their analysis here . ) The Centers for Disease Control cites a study on health spending due to obesity and overweight that shows numbers significantly less than $1-trillion. We tracked down one of the authors of the study the CDC cited: Eric Finkelstein, a health economist with the research group RTI International who has studied the issue extensively and written several papers on the topic. Finkelstein said obesity accounts for excess health spending of about $90-billion a year. About half of that — about $45-billion — is billed to Medicare and Medicaid together. Medicare's share of obesity spending therefore is between $20-billion and $25-billion. If obesity rates rolled back to 1980s levels, Medicare spending would be about half that, or about $12-billion a year. Now we get to the slipperiness of Obama's quote. He says if obesity rates rolled back, Medicare would save $1-trillion. But he doesn't give a time frame, and neither does the report he's quoting from. Maybe he meant it would have saved $1-trillion since the 1980s. But that doesn't make sense either. At the rate of $12-billion of savings per year, it would take more than 80 years to reach $1-trillion. Let's say our estimate is too conservative and it's $20-billion per year. It would still take 50 years to reach $1-trillion in savings. Inflation might get you there a bit faster, but not by that much. The number $1-trillion is just so big that increments of $10-billion won't get you there very quickly. "I think it's a stretch," Finkelstein said. We think so, too, and rate Obama's obesity claim False.

Barack Obama

2007-12-17T00:00:00

2007-12-13

['None']

pomt-06579

The Atlanta Beltline paid nearly $3.5 million for less than a quarter-acre.

false

/georgia/statements/2011/sep/28/john-sherman/did-beltline-overspend-land/

In recent years, most political and business leaders in the city of Atlanta have hailed the Atlanta Beltline project as a marvel of modern development. The vision: safe, vibrant neighborhoods with more parks and trails along a 22-mile loop of mostly abandoned rail lines that will be connected to existing MARTA and future transit systems. It’s expected to be several years before the Beltline is fully developed. "The Atlanta Beltline is the most comprehensive economic development effort ever undertaken in the city of Atlanta and among the largest, most wide-ranging urban redevelopment projects currently under way in the United States," Atlanta Beltline Inc., the operational arm of the effort, says on its website. Some government watchdogs are not so impressed. They see the Beltline as a project fraught with overspending. One group recently put out a newsletter with what it says is an inexcusable example of government waste. A PolitiFact reader asked us to check it out. The Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation’s September newsletter, titled "The Atlanta Beltline: Is It Feasible?," contained a claim that Beltline officials wildly overspent on the purchase of a small piece of land in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward. "Several parcels were purchased by Georgia Power from the city of Atlanta and then sold back to the Atlanta Beltline Inc. for seemly huge profits," the group’s president, John Sherman, wrote in the newsletter. "O Dallas Street, .1756 acre, was sold to Georgia Power on Nov. 30, 2002, by the city of Atlanta for $350,000 and resold to the Atlanta Beltline Inc. on Dec. 21, 2007, for $3,485,000." In an e-mail, the foundation called it "the highest price ever paid for land." Did the Beltline really pay nearly $3.5 million for less than a quarter-acre? Beltline spokesman Ethan Davidson said Sherman was way off track on that point and several other claims in his newsletter, such as how many people are on the Beltline payroll. He presented us a settlement statement that shows it was slightly more than 2 acres purchased. Sherman countered with Fulton County tax records of his own to claim he’s correct. So who’s right here? For much of the past decade, Sherman has been one of the most vocal critics of spending practices at City Hall. He’s argued that Atlanta should more frequently consider "managed competition," the idea of allowing private companies to bid for government contracts if they can do the work as well as the city and for less money. The foundation says its newsletters go out to tens of thousands of readers. The newsletter was mentioned in an Atlanta Progressive News article. Stan Anderson, a former manager at the Fulton County tax assessor’s office, noticed the Beltline was buying land for more than what he believed it is worth. Anderson, who helps people appeal their property assessments for the foundation, alerted Sherman to some of these purchases. The land in question lies near a portion of the Beltline located close to the old City Hall East site, the massive brick building that was once the headquarters for Atlanta’s police and fire departments. After years of effort, the city finally sold the property this summer to developers who plan to convert it into a mix of residential and office space. Georgia Power did indeed sell land for nearly $3.5 million in late 2007 to the Atlanta Beltline Inc. That was before the Great Recession and when Atlanta’s intown real estate market was considered a great investment. It’s been converted into trails and green space and now called the Historic Fourth Ward Park. The big question: Was the land less than a quarter of an acre, as Sherman wrote in the newsletter? Or was it 2.1 acres, as Beltline officials told us? Georgia Power spokeswoman Konswello Monroe said the sale included several parcels that totaled more than 2 acres. Sherman connected us with Anderson, who said the Beltline and Georgia Power were correct. Anderson believes Sherman may not have added all six parcels before hitting the send button on his newsletter. "I don’t think Mr. Sherman had any intention of misleading anybody," Anderson said. "He was upset about the amount [the Beltline was] paying per acre." Sherman stressed those concerns in some of his conversations with us after learning of the error. "Even if you took their figures, the cost of the land is more than $1.5 million an acre," he said. "This is absolutely crazy." Sherman also wonders why the Beltline paid nearly 10 times what Georgia Power bought the land for five years earlier. Did the Beltline overpay for the land? "No, because that was fair market value in 2007," Davidson, the Beltline spokesman, said. Davidson also argues the project has saved the city money. The city initially wanted to use the property as part of a tunnel to manage sewer overflow that Atlanta Watershed Management officials wrote in one document would have cost $40 million. The creation of a stormwater retention pond at the park cost less than $30 million, city officials say. The bottom line here is Sherman’s newsletter correctly stated how much the Beltline purchased the property for, but was wrong about the size of the property, creating a false impression for anyone who read it. We rate his claim False.

John Sherman

2011-09-28T06:00:00

2011-09-12

['None']

goop-00203

Prince William, Kate Middleton Being Crowned Next King And Queen?

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/prince-william-kate-middleton-next-king-queen/

Gossip Cop Staff

Prince William, Kate Middleton Being Crowned Next King And Queen?

3:00 am, September 29, 2018

['Catherine,_Duchess_of_Cambridge', 'Prince_William,_Duke_of_Cambridge']

goop-02150

Kim Kardashian “Jealous” Of Jennifer Lawrence?

0

https://www.gossipcop.com/kim-kardashian-jealous-jennifer-lawrence/

Shari Weiss

Kim Kardashian “Jealous” Of Jennifer Lawrence?

10:42 am, November 24, 2017

['Kim_Kardashian']

pomt-14939

The federal government owns about half of the West, yet it continues to acquire more land.

mostly true

/florida/statements/2015/oct/27/jeb-bush/washington-owns-half-us-western-states-jeb-bush-sa/

GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush has announced he wants a sea change in the federal government’s land management practices. In his Western Land Resource Management plan, which Bush released Oct. 21, 2015, the former Florida governor said federal land holdings are out of control — and therefore, so are expenses and Washington’s influence across the region. "The federal government owns about half of the West, yet it continues to acquire more land," Bush said in the plan, which calls federal holdings "a liability to economic freedom and growth." He advocated more state and local control over these lands. Does Washington really own half of Western states, and is it looking for more? We decided to survey this for ourselves. The West vs. Washington There’s no exact total of how much land Washington owns and manages, partly because the total is constantly changing, but it’s a lot. According to the most recent data in a 2012 Congressional Research Service report, the government owns about 635 million to 640 million acres, or about 28 percent of all the land in the country. Most of that land is administered by three agencies in the Department of the Interior: the National Park Service (80 million acres); the Bureau of Land Management (248 million acres); and the Fish and Wildlife Service (89 million acres, plus another 217 million acres of marine refuges and monuments). In the U.S. Agriculture Department, the U.S. Forest Service is in charge of another 193 million acres. The Defense Department runs another 19 million acres in bases, training ranges and more. The rest is divided among several other departments and agencies. There is not an equal split among states, however. To Bush’s point, the federal government owns about 47 percent of the land in 11 Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. If we head east of the Mississippi River, Washington owns and manages only about 4 percent. This disparity is partly because of history. Most land in the West was at one time public, ranging from purchases from France, Mexico and Russia to land seized from Mexicans and Native Americans. The federal government has transferred land to private interests over the years and has focused on conservation during the last century, but these vast holdings have long been a contentious issue. Many Republicans in Western state legislatures would prefer to keep land-use decisions local. One group called the American Lands Council, headed by Utah Republican state Rep. Ken Ivory, is leading the charge in pushing for transferring federal land to states. The Council did not get back to us for this fact-check, but their website says the group wants federal lands transferred to states to "provide better public access, better environmental health, and better economic productivity." Bush’s plan calls for local control and a smaller federal footprint in general. Conservationists and researchers fear the real reason states want these transfers is to sell or lease public lands to private developers for ranching, mining or forestry. This land is our land As Bush says, the federal government is looking to make more acquisitions. His campaign pointed out the Interior and Agriculture departments made a fiscal year 2016 budget request that asked for almost $575 million for land acquisitions (plus $325 million for state conservation grants). The money was earmarked for acquisition projects across several federal agencies that ranged from national park lands to scenic trails to wildlife refuges. That doesn’t necessarily mean those agencies will get that money. The 2016 budget request is dependent on the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a pot of cash pooled from fees on offshore oil and gas leases. Authorized in 1965, the fund is the main mechanism for land purchases and broad conservation efforts. Congress is authorized to set aside as much as $900 million per year from this fund for land acquisition — note the 2016 request is for $900 million in all — but lawmakers rarely give conservation efforts that much. They usually shift the bulk of the money to other expenses and leave little for conservation efforts. Congress authorized $306 million total after a similar $900 million request in 2015. Complicating matters this year is that Congress failed to reauthorize the fund when it expired on Sept. 30. Bush said in his plan he supported a permanent reauthorization of the fund. "There are additional funding sources for federal land acquisitions, but they are not as significant as LWCF," said Martin Nie, director of the Bolle Center for People & Forests at the University of Montana. "And yes, federal agencies are often in the process of both acquiring more land and conveying (or exchanging) other federal lands." Greg Zimmerman, policy director at the pro-conservation Center for Western Priorities, also pointed out that total federal acreage has fallen some over the years. That same CRS report concluded the five government agencies we mentioned earlier shed about 18 million acres between 1990 and 2010. Most of that change is from the Bureau of Land Management getting rid of land in Alaska, where the federal government still owns about 62 percent of the state. Our ruling Bush said, "The federal government owns about half of the west, yet it continues to acquire more land." He’s right that Washington owns about 47 percent of the land in the 11 most Western states. Government agencies also continue to request funds for land acquisitions, although the major source for these transactions recently expired. The federal government routinely acquires and disposes of land, but overall has less acreage now than it did 25 years ago. We rate his statement Mostly True.

Jeb Bush

2015-10-27T16:54:40

2015-10-21

['None']

pomt-06238

It’s legal to "sign a recall petition (against Gov. Scott Walker) even if you have already signed another recall petition," but only one signature counts

true

/wisconsin/statements/2011/dec/02/one-wisconsin-now/one-wisconsin-now-says-its-legal-sign-walker-recal/

The liberal group One Wisconsin Now, worried about possible confusion over who can sign petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker, issued a "recall petitioners’ rights" memo in late November 2011. The group said you only have to be a qualified voter in Wisconsin; you don’t have to have voted here before or even have registered to vote. Mildly surprising to some perhaps, but the next claim really jumped out. The group wrote: "You can circulate or sign a recall petition even if you have already signed another recall petition (note, however, that only one signature per person will be counted)." Can you really sign a petition twice? And will it count for one signature -- or none, or two -- if you pen your name on separate petitions? It’s one of many points, from both sides, that has prompted confusion -- and accusations that opponents are misleading folks for their advantage. We already looked at a few process-related questions. Here’s one more. In state statutes, the recall law (Section 9.10) lists eight ways a signature could be nullified. Among them: It’s not dated, was too early or late, the signer lives out of state, the address can’t be confirmed. There was nothing noted about a case of multiple signatures. But deeper in the statute, we found an answer: "If a challenger can establish that a person signed the recall petition more than once, the 2nd and subsequent signatures may not be counted." That means the first signature is still good, but duplicates can be thrown out, said Reid Magney, spokesman for the Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections the recall process. That doesn’t guarantee they will be. It’s up to the incumbent to challenge the validity of signatures. The state Accountability Board will review the petitions, but isn’t staffed to systematically check for duplicates, Magney said. That puts the onus on the gatherers or Walker’s side. If people do sign more than once, they face no penalties. "There are no legal restrictions," Magney said. That doesn't speak to practical concerns. Magney, for instance, noted that people signing more than once could put their own cause in jeopardy because that falsely inflates the true number of signatures. Magney said the Government Accountability Board is not encouraging people to sign multiple times. But he added there is an instance in which they could be justified in doing so. "People should not sign a petition more than once unless they have some good faith reason to believe that the first petition was somehow fraudulent and believes the circulator doesn’t intend to file it," Magney said. Magney said the agency has tried to make that clear after an anonymous Facebook group (Operation Burn Notice) said it believed "burning recall petitions is fun and games." One Wisconsin Now’s executive director, Scot Ross, cited the same motive for publicizing the fact that signing twice is not illegal. The group is concerned about fraud, especially illegal destruction of recall petitions. Ross said One Wisconsin Now supports but is not directly involved in gathering signatures as the Democratic Party and allied groups push to get 540,208 valid signatures by Jan. 14, 2012, when the 60-day period closes. On the right, recall critics including the Republican Party of Wisconsin, and the MacIver Institute for Public Policy, have raised a different set of concerns. Also citing Facebook chatter, they have raised alarms about fraud and double counting, contending that some duplicates will not be weeded out by state officials. "Without a systematic review of signatures, how will we know if the proper process was followed and the threshold for recall was reached legally?" Brett Healy, president of the MacIver Institute, told us. "What is to stop someone from signing a petition three times or 30 times?" Magney said the state agency will look for obvious cases of fraud. Our conclusion We can’t predict whether all multiple signers will be found, but state law makes clear that one -- and only one -- signature is to be counted. And it’s perfectly legal to sign more than once. That was the focus of the statement from One Wisconsin Now. We rate it True.

One Wisconsin Now

2011-12-02T09:00:00

2011-11-22

['None']

snes-05339

A photograph shows a "super moon" resting atop a radio telescope.

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/moon-on-radio-telescope/

Fauxtography

David Mikkelson

Super Moon on Radio Telescope

20 January 2016

['None']

pomt-10990

In 1984, the New York Times said Trump would be our BEST president.

pants on fire!

/punditfact/statements/2018/jul/13/bling-news/fake-headline-says-new-york-times-said-trump-would/

There was a time decades ago when the New York Times praised the idea of a President Donald Trump, a viral story on Facebook said. "This is amazing: In 1984, the New York Times said Trump would be our BEST president...They forgot...," said a July 9 headline by Bling News, a website with clickbait headlines that lacks original reporting. Facebook users flagged this story as part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on Facebook's News Feed. Read more about our partnership with Facebook. The story mischaracterizes what the New York Times magazine wrote about Trump in 1984 in an article headlined "The expanding empire of Donald Trump." At the time Trump, was the 37-year-old owner of the New Jersey Generals, a franchise in the upstart United States Football League. He was also the owner of many other businesses and properties. The Times wrote: "Donald J. Trump is the man of the hour. Turn on the television or open a newspaper almost any day of the week and there he is, snatching some star form the National Football League, announcing some preposterously lavish project he wants to build. Public-relations firms call him, offering to handle his account for nothing, so that they might take credit for the torrential hoopla." Nothing in the article declared that Trump would be the best president. The article did include a line that Trump said he didn’t want to be president: "He is constantly asked about his interest in running for elective office. Absolutely not, he answers," the Times wrote. "All of the false smiles and the red tape. It is too difficult to really do anything. He dislikes meetings and paperwork and is in the enviable position of being able to avoid both." Bling News drew its report from another website, 100percentfedup. That website posted this update and correction following an article by Factcheck.org: "We like to think our readers can think subjectively and ‘get’ our nuanced titles once they read the article. We give you credit for understanding where we’re coming from. Factcheck.org has claimed that the New York Times didn’t say Trump would be our BEST president. To clarify, if you read the intro paragraph of the article we hope you’ll think subjectively and understand what we said about the article. We believe that the New York Times INADVERTENTLY DESCRIBED HOW TRUMP WOULD BE A PERFECT FIT FOR THIS TIME IN AMERICA, therefore, THE BEST PRESIDENT ‘FOR THIS TIME IN AMERICA.’" We found no contact information on Bling News’ website. The New York Times magazine story in 1984 didn’t say that Trump would be our best president; instead, it was an in-depth profile of Trump the businessman. We rate this statement Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com

Bling News

2018-07-13T09:55:50

2018-07-09

['The_New_York_Times']

vees-00081

VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Marcos admonishing Cory on Bataan nuclear power plant

none

http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-marcos-admonishing-cory-bataan-nuclear

unproven

VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Marcos admonishing Cory on Bataan nuclear power plant UNPROVEN

August 30, 2018

['None']

snes-02147

Health officials announced in June 2017 that Donald Trump's health is "deteriorating."

false

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-health-deteriorating-pressures/

Junk News

Dan Evon

Is Trump’s Health Deteriorating as White House Pressures Mount?

25 June 2017

['None']

pomt-08112

The Bush-era tax cuts failed to increase employment and "work-force participation fell in 2001 and has never returned to the record level set in 2000."

mostly true

/virginia/statements/2010/dec/11/jim-moran/rep-jim-moran-says-bush-tax-cuts-did-not-improve-e/

Democratic Congressman Jim Moran didn’t want tax cuts then, and he doesn’t want them now. Explaining his vote against any extension of the Bush-era cuts, Moran paints the acts in 2001 and 2003 as abject failures. "When the Bush plan was first proposed in 2001, the great cost of those tax cuts was sold to the public as a means of generating economic growth. That has proven to be false. The decade that followed the 2001 tax cuts featured the slowest average annual growth since World War II," he said in a Dec. 2 press release. Moran continues: "Nor did lower taxes increase employment. Work-force participation fell in 2001 and has never returned to the record level set in 2000 – before the tax cuts took effect." We were intrigued by the Congressman’s correlation between employment and the tax cuts. So we looked into the numbers. Asked for a source, Moran’s chief of staff, Austin Durrer, sent us a New York Times business blog post by David Leonhardt, which does reinforce the congressman’s statement. Getting to the bottom of Moran's claim required us to examine two contentions in the congressman's statement: 1) That overall U.S. employment was not increased by the Bush tax cuts; 2) That work-force participation actually fell. These two contentions may sound similar, but in the specialized world of economists they are defined differently and involve separate sets of statistics. Employment "Nor did lower taxes increase employment," Moran said. There were 132 million Americans employed when the first round of Bush tax cuts passed in June, 2001, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. There were 130.5 employed at the end of last month. That’s a decrease of 1.5 million workers. So technically, Moran is correct. But he omits an important consideration: After the more-sweeping second round of tax cuts took effect in June 2003, there was a significant increase of jobs that lasted until recession’s onset at the end of 2007. There were 129.8 million Americans employed in June, 2003 and almost 138 million with jobs in December, 2007. That’s an increase of 8.2 million workers. The recession at the end of the decade is the great equalizer that makes Moran’s statement factually accurate. But you can’t dismiss that the number of workers steadily increased for better than four years after the second Bush tax cut. So we’d rate Moran’s statement that lower taxes did not increase employment Half True. Work-force participation "Work-force participation fell in 2001 and has never returned to the record level set in 2000 -- before the tax cuts took effect," Moran said. Work-force participation is the percentage of the population 16 and older that is employed. Most economists regard it as a more meaningful measure of employment than the total number of Americans working. Here’s why: The total employment figure does not take into account that the United States’ population is growing and additional workers enter the job market every day. The U.S. has to create about 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep its employment and unemployment rates steady. The measure of work-force participation includes population growth. Moran is correct in saying work-force participation peaked in 2000. The high-water mark came in April that year when 64.7 percent of the U.S. population -- 16 and older -- had jobs. In June, 2001, when the first Bush tax cuts were approved, participation was at 63.7 percent. Last month, it was 58.2 percent -- the lowest measure since mid-1983. The participation percentages varied slightly from passage of the second Bush tax cuts to the start of the recession. In June, 2003, participation was 62.3 percent; it was 62.7 percent in December, 2007. Economists caution against measuring the success or failure of tax cuts by employment figures. "The point of the tax rate cuts was to increase incentives for working, saving, and investing -- and therefore productivity and growth," said Brian Riedl, lead budget analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation. "Labor Force Participation is just one variable. There is also job totals, work hours, investment, productivity, etc. Those variables all responded well." Gary Burtless, a senior fellow specializing in labor market policy with the left-leaning Brookings Institution, says Moran’s point is valid. But he, too, says labor force growth is a small component in measuring the effectiveness of tax cuts. "Tax changes can affect participation rates, though their impact has often been greatly exaggerated, especially by folks self-identifying as supply siders," he said. So it’s fair to argue that the merits of tax cuts should not be reduced to employment figures. But Moran is accurate when he says work-force participation fell after 2000 and the tax cuts did not restore them to previous highs. We rate this part of his statement True. Summary Moran says the Bush tax cuts failed to boost jobs. He cites two measurements. As he notes, total employment didn’t go up over the decade. But he neglects to mention numbers were on the rise before the advent of the worst economic downturn in 80 years. He’s half right here. He’s correct in saying work-force participation fell since a record in 2000. When you put both parts of his statement together, we rate it Mostly True.

Jim Moran

2010-12-11T17:45:02

2010-12-02

['None']

snes-05005

Getting your hair washed at a beauty salon can, in rare cases, increase the chances of a stroke.

true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/woman-stroke-beauty-salon/

Uncategorized

Brooke Binkowski

Beauty Salon Visit Caused Stroke?

25 March 2016

['None']

thet-00077

Has the SNP overseen the biggest in-work poverty increase since devolution?

none

https://theferret.scot/snp-overseen-biggest-work-poverty-increase-since-devolution/

Fact check

Has the SNP overseen the biggest in-work poverty increase since devolution?

April 28, 2017

['None']

hoer-00628

Naked Mole Rats Not Susceptible To Cancer

true messages

https://www.hoax-slayer.com/naked-mole-rats-cancer.shtml

Brett M. Christensen

Naked Mole Rats Not Susceptible To Cancer

June 21, 2013

['None']

pomt-01686

Far more children died last year drowning in their bathtubs than were killed accidentally by guns.

pants on fire!

/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/15/tucker-carlson/carlson-guns-dont-kill-people-bathtubs-do/

Gun safety advocates are pushing laws to make it harder for children to play with guns kept at home. A bill in the New York Legislature, for instance, would require gun owners to secure their weapons by either keeping them locked up or installing a trigger lock. Failing to do so could warrant fines, loss of a firearms license or potentially jail. Behind the New York proposal lies the tragic story of a 12-year-old boy who was accidentally killed by his friend when he went over to the friend’s house. Fox News discussed the New York story on Fox and Friends Weekend on Aug. 9, 2014. Tucker Carlson, show co-host and editor of the Daily Caller, a conservative news website, challenged the basic premise behind the bill. While the death of a child is "the worst tragedy imaginable," Carlson said there’s a deeper truth. "Far more children died last year drowning in their bathtubs than were killed accidentally by guns," Carlson said. "I’d like to see a package on ‘Do you have a bathtub at home because I want to know before I let my child go over to your house.’ A little perspective might be helpful." We reached out to Carlson to learn the source of his claim about deaths in bathtubs and deaths from guns. We didn’t hear back. We went to the federal government’s Center for Health Statistics to get some of that perspective that Carlson recommended. The data we found undercuts Carlson’s assertion. As the following table shows, total deaths for children 17 and under due to drowning in a bathtub were 95 in 2011, the latest year the numbers are available. Total deaths from accidental gun shots were 102. The one age range where Carlson might be able to make a case is for children 0 to 4 years old. For that group, 73 died in a bathtub and 29 were killed by guns. But in every other age group, guns are more deadly than bathtubs. Age Drowned in a bathtub Accidental gunfire 15-17 years 7 28 10-14 years 12 29 5-9 years 3 16 0-4 years 71 29 Total 93 102 Carlson didn’t say what age children he had in mind, but in the context of the story he was responding to — and his rhetorical question about something "I want to know before I let my child go over to your house" — this is not about children under 4 years old. Parents don't let toddlers "go over" to a friend’s house. For that age range, Carlson’s comparison is off by a factor of three. Bathtubs caused 22 deaths for kids 5 and older and guns caused 73 deaths. The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a 2012 report on bathtub drownings. From 2006 to 2010, total deaths were 434 for an average of 87 per year. The bulk of those deaths, 348, involved children under 4 years old. Most of the time, 62 percent, the immediate cause was a parent or other caretaker leaving the room. Our ruling Carlson said far more children died last year drowning in their bathtubs than were killed accidentally by guns. First, there is no data for last year. The most recent data is from 2011. What that shows is that children 17 and under are more likely to die from accidental gunfire than from drowning in a bathtub, although the difference is small. However, for children 5 years old and up, government data show that guns are three times more deadly than bathtubs. Carlson was not just wrong, but with his phrase, "far more children died," he was emphatically wrong. We rate the claim Pants on Fire.

Tucker Carlson

2014-08-15T10:04:44

2014-08-09

['None']