claimID
stringlengths 10
10
| claim
stringlengths 4
8.61k
⌀ | label
stringlengths 1
34
⌀ | claimURL
stringlengths 10
303
| reason
stringlengths 3
31.1k
⌀ | categories
stringlengths 3
315
⌀ | speaker
stringlengths 3
168
⌀ | checker
stringlengths 6
70
⌀ | tags
stringlengths 3
315
⌀ | article title
stringlengths 2
226
⌀ | publish date
stringlengths 1
64
⌀ | climate
stringlengths 5
154
⌀ | entities
stringlengths 6
332
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
pose-00737 | “Kill the death tax. You know the death tax, all these people who are successful, they’re moving to Florida. Florida doesn’t have a death tax. So we’ve got to get rid of that so the entrepreneurs, the job creators, stay." | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/ohio/promises/kasich-o-meter/promise/767/eliminate-ohios-estate-tax/ | null | kasich-o-meter | John Kasich | null | null | Eliminate Ohio's estate tax | 2011-01-07T15:00:02 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00835 | Did Emma González 'Admit' to Bullying the Parkland School Shooter? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/emma-gonzalez-shooter-bullying/ | null | Politics | null | Arturo Garcia | null | Did Emma González ‘Admit’ to Bullying the Parkland School Shooter? | 28 March 2018 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00062 | Kim Kardashian Divorcing Kanye West For Meeting With President Of Uganda? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kim-kardashian-kanye-west-divorce-meeting-president-uganda/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Kim Kardashian Divorcing Kanye West For Meeting With President Of Uganda? | 3:07 pm, October 30, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00094 | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Duterte’s recollection of own SONA inaccurate | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-dutertes-recollection-own-sona-inaccur | null | null | null | null | Duterte,SONA | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Duterte’s recollection of own SONA inaccurate | August 22, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
vogo-00154 | Working for the (Small Business) Man: Fact Check TV | none | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/economy/working-for-the-small-business-man-fact-check-tv/ | null | null | null | null | null | Working for the (Small Business) Man: Fact Check TV | December 18, 2012 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00216 | Golden Corral restaurants leave God out of “God Bless America” | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/goldencorral/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | null | Golden Corral restaurants leave God out of “God Bless America” | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['God'] |
snes-04562 | The Republican Party has hypocritically declared their national convention to be a "gun-free zone." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/republican-convention-gun-free-zone/ | null | Guns | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Republican Party Declares Their Convention a ‘Gun-Free Zone’ | 23 June 2016 | null | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
snes-05333 | Ten percent of college grads surveyed indicated Judge Judy was a Supreme Court justice. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/college-grads-judge-judy/ | null | Legal | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Do 10 Percent of College Grads Think Judge Judy Is on the Supreme Court? | 21 January 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-00060 | Alex Jones Appointed White House Press Secretary | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/alex-jones-white-house-press-secretary/ | null | 9-11-attack | null | null | ['conspiracy theories', 'donald trump', 'media'] | Alex Jones Appointed White House Press Secretary | Jun 22, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05190 | Overwhelming Democrat and Republican votes in 2011 for legislation in two special sessions on jobs demonstrated the bipartisan nature of the Wisconsin Legislature. | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2012/jun/13/scott-walker/gov-scott-walker-says-he-got-overwhelming-bipartis/ | Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s optimistic talk of attaining bipartisan cooperation in the wake of the June 5, 2012 recall election got a skeptical reaction from a conservative radio talk show host the day after Walker’s big win. WTMJ’s Charlie Sykes asked Walker if he really expected Democrats who have been "protesting, litigating and recalling" for 16 months to join with him on new legislative efforts. Walker said his "gut instinct" is that lawmakers and the public are "ready to move on" and agree on the need to focus on job creation. What’s more, he said there was precedent: Just check the record from legislative action in 2011. "In January and February last year, we had overwhelming Democrat and Republican votes for our special session on jobs and we had them again in the fall," Walker said. Was there really a time during Walker’s tumultuous tenure when the two parties got along? Republicans held strong majorities in both the Senate and Assembly in the early session (19-14 Senate and 59-39-1 Assembly), but their Senate margin was pared to a single vote during the fall session after a series of recall elections. Walker’s office referred us to a list of votes taken during the special sessions in 2011. We checked the Legislature’s official voting records and found a decidedly mixed record of bipartisan votes. We found a decidedly mixed record of bipartisan votes. A total of 29 bills identified as part of the two special "jobs sessions" came to a vote in at least one full chamber of the Legislature in 2011: -- Of those, 12 split almost exactly along party lines, with Republicans united and able to easily push through bills despite united opposition. Democratic support was typically a smattering of one, two or three votes. On one, a tort reform measure, not a single Democrat joined the majority. -- Of the 29, the same number -- 12 -- had strong bipartisan backing. There were 5 other votes that didn’t fall neatly into either category, typically getting bipartisan support in one chamber but little or none in the other. So, at best only 12 of the 29 bills could be said to have had "overwhelming" bipartisan support. The strongest show of inter-party cooperation came on bills that were tied to helping small businesses. Those included measures on new tax credits for businesses relocating to Wisconsin (32 of the 53 Democrats from either the Senate or Assembly joined the majority), and an expansion of economic development tax credits (all but 20 Democrats joined in). Another measure that drew significant support from both sides was a major rewrite of the state’s outdated telecommunications law to reflect the realities of the cellular phone era. Some Democrats raised concerns it could hurt rural residents, but only 21 voted no. No Democrat opposed a bill that aimed to let small film projects to benefit from the state’s film tax credit program. On the flip side, accord was almost non-existent on Walker’s move to side-step environmental reviews to allow commercial development of wetlands near Lambeau Field (only one Democrat joined the majority). The same was true on a hotly contested bill that boosted protection from lawsuits for businesses. (This was a straight party-line vote). Of course, the ultimate partisan split came on the budget-repair bill Walker introduced in the January special session. It included the major limits on collective bargaining for most public employees and required that state employees pay more towards their pension and health benefits. When Republicans made plans to approve the bill in less than a week, 14 Democratic members from the state Senate left the state to block a vote, with massive protests engulfing the Capitol for weeks. Ultimately, the bill was split into two parts. No Democrats voted for the part that included the union limits, and only four joined the majority on the other portion, which delayed state debt payments to pay for rising costs of prisons and health care. Our rating Walker said bipartisanship was on display in "overwhelming Democrat and Republican votes" in 2011 for legislation passed in two special legislative sessions on jobs. If a couple Democrats join all the Republicans on a vote, is that really "bipartisan?" In a highly technical sense, maybe, but in common usage it means both parties are supportive. And that was far from the case. What’s more, Walker claimed the special-session bills had "overwhelming" support from both parties. About 40 percent had strong bipartisan backing. And the special-session vote that consumed the state for months was a bitter partisan battle for the ages. There’s an element of truth here, in that some votes were truly bipartisan, but it was far from "overwhelming." We rate Walker’s claim Mostly False. | null | Scott Walker | null | null | null | 2012-06-13T09:00:00 | 2012-06-06 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)', 'Wisconsin'] |
pomt-10397 | From Obama's book: "I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jun/10/chain-email/obama-didnt-write-that/ | An e-mail making the rounds purports to cite quotations from Sen. Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams from My Father . Most of the quotes have to do with Obama's thoughts on race relations and growing up as a black man in America. Many of the quotes are real, though taken out of context and edited for maximum negative effect. The e-mail was sent to us by 20 PolitiFact readers who said they wanted to know if the claims were true. (For more on the e-mail and a link to its full text, read our article on the e-mail and Obama's book .) One quote stands out as totally false. "I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race." We read the book, and thought this line sounded out of place. To be doubly sure, we purchased an electronic edition of the book via ebooks.com, and searched for the words solace, grievance or animosity. We were not able to find the sentence, or anything close to the sentence, in Obama's book. The quote is actually lifted from an article in the American Conservative. Author Steve Sailer wrote a detailed analysis of Dreams from My Father, describing the narrator as "a humor-impaired Holden Caulfield whose preppie angst is fueled by racial regret" but also praising it as "an impressive book" with an "elegant, carefully wrought prose style." The "grievance" quote comes from the following passage: "In reality, Obama provides a disturbing test of the best-case scenario of whether America can indeed move beyond race. He inherited his father's penetrating intelligence; was raised mostly by his loving liberal white grandparents in multiracial, laid-back Hawaii, where America's normal race rules never applied; and received a superb private school education. And yet, at least through age 33 when he wrote Dreams from My Father , he found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against his mother's race." But those are Sailer's words, not Obama's. It's an arguable point whether it's a fair characterization of the views expressed in Obama's book. The bottom line is an e-mailer somewhere took the sentence, rewrote it, and passed it off as Obama's words. For this reason, we rate this statement Pants on Fire! | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2008-06-10T00:00:00 | 2008-05-19 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-09280 | GM has "repaid our government loan, in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/apr/27/ed-whitacre/ceo-says-gm-has-repaid-government-loans-full/ | In an ad reminiscent of Lee Iacocca's "Thanks, America" commercials in 1983 after Chrysler had repaid government-backed loans, General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre has taken to the prime-time airwaves to boast that GM has paid back its government loans, in full, and ahead of schedule. "A lot of Americans didn't agree with giving GM a second chance," Whitacre says in the ad. "Quite frankly, I can respect that. We want to make this a company all Americans can be proud of again. That's why I'm here to announce we have repaid our government loan, in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule. But there's still more to do. Our goal is to exceed every expectation you've set for us." In addition to Whitacre, the loan repayment has been trumpeted by President Barack Obama and numerous members of his administration. It's true that GM has squared up on its government loans, but Whitacre isn't telling the full story. With GM in deep trouble and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the balance, the Obama administration -- through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) -- stepped forward with tens of billions of dollars worth of assistance. As of March 31, 2010, the U.S. Treasury had committed approximately $52.4 billion to GM. Only a fraction of that, $6.7 billion, was in the form of loans. Most of the government's GM investment was converted to an ownership stake in the New GM, the company that emerged from bankruptcy: $2.1 billion in preferred stock; and 60.8 percent of the company's common equity. GM had already made several installments in paying back the $6.7 billion loan. But on April 21, 2010, GM announced that it had paid back the entirety of the remaining $4.7 billion in loans from the U.S. government (and another $1.1 million to the Canadian government). GM had until 2015 to pay back those loans. So the loan portion of the GM bailout was, in fact, settled, with interest, five years ahead of schedule. But the U.S. government is still on the hook for the bulk of its investment in GM. Again, the U.S. Treasury owns $2.1 billion in preferred stock and a 60.8 percent stake in the company. GM plans an initial public offering (IPO) as soon as this summer, and the government plans to sell off its interest in the company over time. The better the company does, the more the government looks to recoup. But the prospects for the government getting all its money back don't look promising. On March 18, 2010, the government's nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected the government will end up losing $34 billion in TARP funds extended to the automotive industry. The CBO didn't break out how much of that is tied to GM, but it's fair to say most of it. While we found a GM official quoted as saying he thinks taxpayers will eventually get all their money back, few industry experts agree. In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Paul Ingrassia, the newspaper's former Detroit bureau chief and author of Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster, wrote: "It won't be easy for an IPO to raise $52 billion for the government shares. That's more than Ford Motor's current market capitalization, some $48 billion. And Ford, the only U.S. car company to avoid bankruptcy, already is profitable, which GM isn't. For GM to show sustained profits means doing business in a new way and breathing new life into long-moribund brands." It likely will take years to find out exactly how the government fares in selling off its GM stock, but in an April 23, 2010, letter to congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said investments in GM "will likely result in some loss, but we currently anticipate that it will be much lower than was forecast last year." Aside from the outstanding stock issue, Whitacre's announcement has come under fire from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who notes that the loans were repaid not with GM earnings (in fact, SEC filings show GM expected to have negative net cash flows in the fourth quarter of 2009) but rather from GM tapping into a multi-billion-dollar TARP-funded escrow account. "Therefore, it is unclear how GM and the Administration could have accurately announced yesterday that GM repaid its TARP loans in any meaningful way," Grassley wrote in an April 22, 2010, letter to Geithner. "In reality, it looks like GM merely used one source of TARP funds to repay another. The taxpayers are still on the hook, and whether TARP funds are ultimately recovered depends entirely on the government's ability to sell GM stock in the future. Treasury has merely exchanged a legal right to repayment for an uncertain hope of sharing in the future growth of GM. A debt-for-equity-swap is not a repayment." Grassley's claim about the origin of the money used to repay the loan was acknowledged by company and government officials. In an April 21, 2010, interview on the Fox Business Network, GM's vice chairman, Stephen Girsky, was asked if GM is just paying the government back with government money. "That is, in effect true," Girsky said. "But a year ago, nobody thought we'd be able to pay this back. They gave us five years to pay it back, we're paying it back in nine months. ... This is one step along the way in the road to recovery here.'' Elaborating on that point, he said: "The business is stabilizing. Our performance is starting to improve. The cash flow is better. The financial condition is stabilizing. So we felt it prudent to start to get the taxpayer their money back." In a Senate Finance Committee hearing on April 20, 2010, Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the TARP, was similarly asked if GM was "taking money out of one pocket and putting it in the other to do that." "The source of that was an equity capital facility ... that's basically escrow money," Barofsky said. "Some of the money that was given to GM, it basically wasn't all given as a lump sum check, saying, here, all this money's available to you," Barofsky explained. "Some of it was put in what's called an equity capital facility, which they can draw down. And they have to sort of report to the government what they're going to do with the money . . . . If there's any money left in that account after a certain period of time, it has to be used to repay the debt. "And basically what GM is doing is it's pulling that forward, and it's taking the money out of this TARP capital facility and using it to pay off the debt, the $6.7 billion debt that was previously owed." ABC News quoted a Treasury Department spokesman saying that "the cash in the restricted account was the property of GM." "This account was expected to be used for extraordinary expenses," the Treasury official said, "and the fact that GM has decided that it does not need to reserve these funds for expenses is a positive sign for our overall investment." In an interview with PolitiFact, Lawrence J. White, economist at New York University's Stern School of Business, warned not to make too much of the source of the funding. "To me, money is fungible," he said. ''At the end of the day, it shows that GM found itself with enough of a surplus to pay back this piece of government support. The escrow was not a new government loan to pay back the old loan. "It's a genuine paying back," White said. "It does reduce the federal government's involvement." Still, he said, "it sure doesn't wipe clean the slate" with the U.S. government. Whitacre's claim may be "technically accurate," White said, "but if it was meant to give the impression that that clears GM from its financial involvement with the federal government, that's not correct." Said David Zaring, professor at the Wharton School of Business: "It’s absolutely an exaggeration based on the fact that the government owns 60 percent of the company. But yes, that’s a repayment of money by a company the taxpayer owns. In that sense, I wouldn’t really crow too much about the repayment, if I were Ed Whitacre." Several economists we spoke to said the repayment is undeniably a sign of progress for the struggling company. But nearly 90 percent of the government's investment in General Motors through TARP still hangs in the balance, and most industry experts doubt stock sales will recoup anywhere near what the government put up. In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on the day of the loan payoff announcement, Whitacre at least noted the issue of the remaining equity in GM still held by the U.S. government -- though even there he didn't quantify the government's financial stake. But we bet many more people saw the television ad we're fact-checking here. We think the TV ad would leave most reasonable viewers with the impression that GM has fully settled up with the government. Whitacre can accurately claim that GM has retired its $6.7 billion in loans from the U.S. government. But with the government still owning 60 percent of the company and the prospects slim for getting all its money back, we think that's highly misleading. And so we rate Whitacre's statement Half True. | null | Ed Whitacre | null | null | null | 2010-04-27T16:59:38 | 2010-04-21 | ['None'] |
snes-00573 | A photograph shows millions of Germans abandoning their cars in protest over high gasoline prices. | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/german-fuel-protest-image/ | null | Fauxtography | null | David Mikkelson | null | Does a Photograph Show Germans Protesting High Fuel Prices? | 20 May 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14482 | Building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border "will take literally years." | true | /texas/statements/2016/feb/27/rick-perry/rick-perry-claims-donald-trumps-wall-southwest-bor/ | Donald Trump says part of the answer to the complicated question of immigration has a seemingly simple solution: Build a "great, great" wall along the southern border and make neighboring Mexico pay for it. The logistics of that idea leave many people, including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, agog. "Building a wall" on the border "will take literally years. I don’t care how good of a builder you are," Perry said about 40 minutes into an interview on the Jan. 15, 2016, edition of the Simon Conway Show on WHO in Des Moines. "And plus the private property rights," Perry said. "This is an issue that really gets complex in a hurry. I know because I’ve had to deal with it." Perry’s assertion got us thinking, what would go into building a wall from southernmost California to the southern tip of Texas? And would Trump’s wall indeed take years to build? We didn’t take Perry’s claim as an uncheckable prediction in that when he spoke, there already existed exhaustive studies and reports on building a border fence as ordered by Congress in 2006, particularly those conducted by the General Accounting Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress. We failed to connect with Trump’s camp about this statement while a Perry spokesman, Stan Gerdes, said by phone that while the former governor didn’t send a crew to the border to estimate how long a wall would take to build, it’s Perry’s experience-rich opinion it would definitely take more than a year. Some assumptions Before assessing Perry’s claim, we have to make assumptions in part because Trump’s plan for the wall is pretty vague. We’re also going to share declarations by Trump and others that occurred after Perry spoke. Typically, we wouldn’t do so out of fairness to the person making a claim. But not doing so here might leave us short of being up to date. What we know of late is that Trump told MSNBC on Feb. 9, 2016 the wall would be a "real wall," likely 35 to 40 feet tall and 1,000 miles long. The U.S.-Mexico border is actually just less than 2,000 miles long, but Trump said there are natural barriers over a portion of the border, meaning the U.S. would only need a wall along 1,000 miles of it. Some perspective: A 1,000-mile wall would be about one-13th the length of the Great Wall of China, but more than twice the proposed length of the concrete and fence barrier that separates Israel from the West Bank, according to a Nov. 11, 2014 Washington Post news article. Trump has also conceded the wall will cost billions. He’s been quoted saying costs will total up to about $8 billion, all out of Mexico’s pocketbook. At the Feb. 25, 2016, GOP debate, he upped that speculated price tag to $10 billion to $12 billion. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón opposes Trump’s idea, according to a Feb. 8, 2016 CNN news article, where Calderon called Trump’s wall "stupid," as does former Mexican President Vicente Fox, who said in a Univision interview posted online Feb. 25, 2016 that Mexico is "not going to pay for that f****** wall." Trump’s response to Fox’s declaration? "The wall just got 10 feet taller," he said at the Republican presidential debate in Houston the same day. In August 2015, Trump told New Hampshire residents the wall would be made using "beautiful nice precast plank" (see the video above this story). So we know it’s going to be a solid wall. And if Trump becomes president, is it feasible to have a wall up in a year or less? The existing fence There’s currently about 670 miles of fencing along the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border. That is, the fence is not a fluid structure from point A to point B. Rather, it’s a fragmented barrier of metal posts and fencing standing about 18-feet tall, according to a Jan. 1, 2016, Associated Press news article. When he was governor and running for president the first time, Perry voiced opposition to the fence, expressing a sentiment perhaps echoed in his skepticism about Trump’s promised wall. "No, I don’t support a fence on the border," Perry said in New Hampshire, according to a Sept. 3, 2011 news story in the Dallas Morning News. "The fact is, it’s 1,200 miles from Brownsville to El Paso. Two things: How long you think it would take to build that? And then if you build a 30-foot wall from El Paso to Brownsville, the 35-foot ladder business gets real good." Earlier, the fence was started as a result of the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which approved the construction of an about 700-mile fence stretching from parts of Tecate, California to Brownsville. Five years later, President Barack Obama said the fence is "now basically complete" – a claim PolitiFact deemed Mostly False on May 16, 2011. Around that time, the vast majority of the mandated fencing had been answered with vehicle barriers and single-layer pedestrian fence even while the act called for double-layer fencing, of which there was about 36 miles in place. As of 2012, the fence and fence-related costs totaled about $6 billion. A 2009 Government Accountability Office report said that on average, the cost had run between $1 million and $3.9 million per mile of fence, depending on things like "type of fencing, topography, materials used, land acquisition costs, and labor costs." Raul Meza, a structural engineer and El Paso’s state director for the Structural Engineer’s Association of Texas, who lives about four miles from a portion of the border fence, told us by phone he thinks a wall would be even more expensive to build because it requires more time and labor. In January 2016, PolitiFact Florida found estimates for the wall’s cost ranging from $5.1 billion to $25 billion, with additional costs for maintenance. There’s been little announced in terms of a timeline for the wall’s construction. Trump told Meet the Press on Aug. 15, 2016 construction would be "under budget and ahead of schedule." Constructing Trump’s wall By telephone, Sharon Wood, dean of the University of Texas’ Cockrell School of Engineering and a former chair of UT’s civil engineering department, told us a wall, like the one Trump is suggesting, would likely be made using steel-reinforced concrete. "You can buy small reinforcement bars if you just go to Home Depot… Obviously for a larger structure, you’re going to use larger sizes," Wood said. "You don't buy it from Home Depot, but it’s the same type of process." A Feb. 17, 2016, CNN news article backs up this idea. Engineers asked to speculate about the envisioned project suggested precast concrete panels reinforced with steel would likely be used. They also came to the conclusion that building the wall would take around 339 million cubic feet of concrete and 5 billion pounds of steel. Meza told us two ways to build a reinforced concrete wall would entail either building it along the border on site, or building concrete panels at different construction firms -- which Trump seemed to endorse in his August 2015 remarks -- and having the panels transported and installed. Meza said precast panels would save time but add to the bill due to transport costs. Yet there’s more to building a large project than outright construction. James Jirsa, a UT-Austin civil engineering professor who specializes in concrete structures, told us there’s usually a planning period, lasting at least a year, to survey terrain and settle design issues. That period, he said, is followed by a bidding period for land that can also be time-consuming. The federal government has the right to build on private property when it deems projects a public necessity, though it is required to offer compensation – a process, celebrated by Trump, called eminent domain. This part of pre-construction can take years, depending on whether or not landowners dispute it. "Every piece of land is different," said Paul Barkhurst, an eminent domain litigation lawyer based in San Antonio. "You’re talking about a massive project across many, many states. It just depends on how much resources they want to put on it. One case could drag on for years because the land owner can challenge the right to take and the landowner can challenge the amount of compensation." Wood said an environmental impact and hydrological study may also be necessary, to see how the wall would affect nearby water and the flow in the Rio Grande. Then comes the raw building of the wall. Wood said there aren’t many structural loads to consider, but the builders would have to find a way to make sure the foundation is solid, even if the Rio Grande floods. This involves digging out the foundation and putting in casts of the concrete foundation and then building. "To be honest, that’s pretty straightforward," Wood said, saying the excavation of the foundation would probably take the most time. So how long would it take? Wood said that when just looking at the building the wall, pre-construction steps aside, it’s possible though highly unlikely that the wall could be completed in a year, say, if it were a "national priority and all of the resources were put in one place." If "you were to mobilize every single construction worker in the country," Wood said, "and take them down to the Texas border, I bet they could get it done very quickly." Separately, Jirsa opined that he and most engineers would probably agree that such a wall could not be built in under a year while Meza said the time it takes to build the avowed wall hinges largely on how much money goes toward construction. If money were no object, he said, the best-case scenario from the initial design phase to the wall’s completion would be five to 10 years. "I think that would be reasonable," he speculated. Our Ruling Perry said: "Building a wall" on the U.S.-Mexico border "will take literally years." If Trump has a fast-track plan to plan the wall, purchase required land, complete needed studies and erect the wall in a year or less, it’s not public. Meantime, engineering experts agree the wall would most likely take years to complete. Keep in mind, too, it took more than six years to build roughly 700 miles of fence and barriers along the roughly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. We rate this speculative claim True. TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2016-02-27T18:00:00 | 2016-01-15 | ['None'] |
snes-00950 | Federal authorities are calling senior citizens and asking for personal information, before sending out a new Medicare card | scam | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-medicare-card-scam/ | null | Fraud & Scams | null | Dan MacGuill | null | New Medicare Card Telephone Scam | 28 February 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-05654 | Every 1 percent increase in the cost of health insurance today causes about 30,000 Georgians to be uninsured. | mostly false | /georgia/statements/2012/mar/20/judson-hill/health-insurance-coverage-loss-claim-need-overhaul/ | We all know how rough the economy has been in Georgia in recent years. Personal bankruptcies in the state are among the highest in the nation. Job growth is near the bottom. Georgia has more bank failures than any state. But a state senator from Cobb County offered up a statistic earlier this month that added a different dimension to the economic troubles. "Every 1 percent increase in the cost of health insurance today causes about 30,000 Georgians to be uninsured," said Sen. Judson Hill, a Republican from Marietta. Hill said this during a Georgia Senate debate of a bill he wanted passed. Senate Bill 471 is aimed at authorizing the state’s Insurance Department to work with other states to create a more competitive health insurance market that will result in lower costs for customers. The Republican-led Senate passed the bill by a 2-1 ratio. The Georgia House of Representatives has not yet voted on the bill. Hill told us that the state loses millions of dollars a year when it has to pay for medical costs of uninsured Georgians who use emergency rooms as their first source of primary medical care. "[The state is] saving a lot of money by helping the uninsured get health insurance," the senator said. Still, PolitiFact Georgia wondered whether Hill was right about this claim. Do 30,000 Georgians lose their health insurance when there is a 1 percent increase in cost? Hill said the numbers came from a study he read several years ago. Hill offered some more details through a Senate spokeswoman. The senator pointed to a few national statistics on how many Americans lose their health insurance and estimated what the numbers would be in Georgia. Health insurance cost experts believe there is a correlation between rising insurance costs and more people losing their insurance. Rising health insurance premiums are generally a result of increased quantity and quality of medical services, some researchers have found. The numbers of how many lose their insurance when costs rise 1 percent varies from the studies we’ve seen and Hill sent us. Some of these estimates are based on data that’s in some cases more than a decade old. In 2005, a Harvard University professor, a University of Michigan professor and a researcher from the National Bureau of Economic Research produced a study that examined the increase in health insurance costs and the decrease of those insured in the 1990s. "Our estimates suggest that a 1 percent premium increase results in a net increase in uninsured of 164,000 people. This compares with an estimate by the Lewin Group of 300,000 individuals losing employment-based coverage because of a 1 percent premium increase," the study found. We did not hear back from any of the researchers. The Lewin Group, through a spokesman, declined to comment. Georgia has 3.15 percent of the nation’s population, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Using the study’s estimate, that would mean 5,166 Georgians would lose their health insurance, a far cry from Hill’s statement. Using the Lewin Group’s estimate, the number of Georgians losing their insurance would be 9,450, which is slightly closer to the senator’s statement. Hill argued the numbers are higher. "The upper side of that number is approximately 500,000; Georgia represents about 3-4 percent of that number because Georgia has a high number of insured lives," Hill wrote in an email. The highest national estimate Hill sent us was 400,000. The senator mentioned the Lewin Group study, a Congressional Budget Office study that put the number at 200,000 people who lose health insurance for every 1 percent increase in cost and another group that estimated between 200,000 and 400,000 people lose their insurance. Hill told us in a telephone interview that he had heard estimates of 28,000 Georgians who lose their insurance each time costs rise by a percentage point. He rounded the estimate to 30,000 in his comments to the Senate but conceded the estimate may be lower. "My real purpose is to do everything we can to make sure health insurance is more affordable," the senator said. In 2010, nearly one in five Georgians lacked health insurance, according to an annual report by Georgia State University researchers, who compile an annual study on the topic based on U.S. census data. In 2008, the year the Great Recession’s footprints could be seen throughout Georgia, 18 percent of Georgians were uninsured, the GSU researchers found. Georgia State associate professor Bill Custer talked about the recession’s impact with PolitiFact Georgia. He said there’s been a rapid increase in the number of Georgians uninsured because incomes have fallen. "It’s difficult to give a magnitude on that relationship," Custer said when asked whether Hill’s numbers are correct. "If someone put a gun to my head, I’d say he’s pretty close. But thankfully, no one has done that." Even if we use the highest national estimate of the number of people who lose their insurance if costs increase by 1 percent, 500,000, the number of Georgians who would lose their insurance would be 15,000. That’s based on 3 percent of Americans living in Georgia. Considering the recession’s impact in Georgia and that a larger percentage of Georgians were uninsured between 2008 and 2010, maybe the total is higher. Custer, the Georgia State expert, believes Hill is close with his estimate. We’re a little more skeptical about the senator’s math. Our rating: Mostly False. | null | Judson Hill | null | null | null | 2012-03-20T06:00:00 | 2012-03-07 | ['None'] |
pomt-11366 | Mexico has "very strong border laws -- ours are pathetic." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/apr/02/donald-trump/donald-trump-base-comparison-us-mexico-border-laws/ | President Donald Trump offered an unflattering comparison between immigration laws in the United States and those of its southern neighbor, Mexico, in a series of immigration tweets. "Mexico is making a fortune on NAFTA...They have very strong border laws -- ours are pathetic. With all of the money they make from the U.S., hopefully they will stop people from coming through their country and into ours, at least until Congress changes our immigration laws!" Trump tweeted on April 2. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com We decided to take a closer look at Trump’s comparison of the countries’ immigration policies. Is Mexico really more strict about who it admits? White House cites an old law The White House held up an article published in the conservative-leaning Washington Times in 2010 as support for Trump’s statement. Among other points, the article said that Mexican law since 2000 "mandates that federal, local and municipal police cooperate with federal immigration authorities in that country in the arrests of illegal immigrants." The article outlines steep felony penalties for violations and says Mexico can use the law to kick out foreigners for a variety of reasons, including a lack of financial self-support. There’s a problem with citing this nearly eight-year-old article, however: The 2000 law has largely been superseded by a law enacted in 2011. Notably, the 2011 measure decriminalized the act of entering the country without documentation and allowed undocumented immigrants to use education and health services. It also set criminal penalties for abuse of migrants by immigration agents. The 2011 law stemmed from two impulses, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a group that generally opposes a hard-line approach to immigration. "They wanted to create a law that respected immigrants and cleaned up human-rights violations," Selee said. "They also didn’t want to embarrass themselves with the United States. Mexican human-rights advocates would beat them over the head for the punitive aspects of the old law, while also enabling enforcement capabilities. It was a delicate balance." Meanwhile, the article’s point about requiring local Mexican jurisdictions to cooperate with the federal government is a red herring for the United States, said David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. "The requirement for states and localities to cooperate is neither here nor there, because the U.S. system of federalism prevents any such law from existing," Bier said. Immigration policy specialists added that there’s a difference between the Mexican laws on the books and enforcement of those laws. "As anywhere, individuals who are caught without proper authorization in Mexico will be deported from the country," said Sonja Wolf, a researcher with the Drug Policy Program at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), a think tank in Aguascalientes, Mexico. "The question is to what extent the authorities have the capacity and the will to implement the legal requirements." Some missing context One point bolstering Trump’s position is that Mexico does allow a much lower rate of immigration as a percentage of its population than the United States does. In that sense, Trump has a point that the United States is broadly more open to immigration than Mexico. But most of the additional evidence weakens Trump’s argument in the tweet. For starters, it’s important to remember that the enforcement mechanism of U.S. immigration laws is robust and has become more so in recent years. The U.S. Border Patrol "has 19,000 officers with a budget of $3.8 billion," said Douglas S. Massey, a professor of public policy and sociology at Princeton University who specializes in immigration between the United States and Mexico. "It is the most controlled and hardened border anywhere in the world with the exception of Korea's DMZ." Since the late 2000s, increases in Border Patrol resources have combined with a tougher protocol for handling incoming migrants, including more deportation proceedings and incarceration. "Based on the previous 20 years’ experience, we would have expected increased apprehensions of Mexicans after 2009 as the U.S. economy improved and unemployment plummeted," said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Research Center. "Instead, apprehensions of Mexicans continued to decline." The United States removed more than 3 million non-citizens from the United States between 2008 and 2016. "Immigration crimes are still the No. 1 reason for a federal criminal arrest in the United States," Bier said. Another important point: In recent years, Central Americans have accounted for a growing share of migrants coming into Mexico, due to deteriorating conditions in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. While Mexico has taken a variety of measures to limit illegal immigration and asylum for Central Americans, specialists have deemed efforts on Mexico’s southern border to be largely unsuccessful. "Mexico's borders are quite porous," said Wolf of the Mexican think tank. "There are many areas where people and goods can pass through fairly easily, and there is little that the migration authorities or the security forces could do about that." A final note: In recent years, the United States and Mexico have significantly increased their cooperation on cross-border issues, such as drug trafficking and terrorism. This cooperation deepened due to the Merida Initiative during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, "and, at least up until now, it has continued through the Trump administration," said Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. Our ruling Trump tweeted that Mexico has "very strong border laws — ours are pathetic." Broadly, Mexico does admit fewer immigrants than the United States. But the strict Mexican law cited by the White House as evidence has largely been supplanted by a softer 2011 law. In addition, Trump underplays the increasing robustness of U.S. immigration laws and enforcement even under his predecessors, while downplaying how porous Mexico’s own southern border is. We rate the statement Mostly False. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2018-04-02T17:57:45 | 2018-04-02 | ['Mexico'] |
pomt-04676 | After a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last two and a half years. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/sep/06/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-us-has-gained-half-million-ma/ | During his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., President Barack Obama touted recent growth in manufacturing jobs. "After a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last two and a half years," Obama said. Because of the wording of his claim, we are examining whether the numbers are right, not whether Obama's policies were instrumental. To check the numbers, we turned to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal government’s official source for employment numbers. We used seasonally adjusted statistics for manufacturing jobs. A decade of decline It’s not news that manufacturing jobs have been in decline in the United States in recent years, though sometimes with ups and downs. Generally, the decline has been due to broad economic shifts both inside and outside the United States, as well as changes in technology. Manufacturing’s share of U.S. employment was 29 percent in 1960, but it fell to just 9 percent by 2011. Even the raw numbers of manufacturing jobs fell over that period -- from 15.7 million to 11.7 million -- despite a large expansion of the overall U.S. workforce. Between December 1999 and December 2009 -- the decade Obama appears to be referring to -- manufacturing employment fell from 17.3 million to 11.5 million, a decline of just over one-third. So Obama’s correct that manufacturing jobs had experienced "a decade of decline" by the time he took office. If you look at the chart (reproduced above) the downward slope is essentially uninterrupted. Half a million manufacturing jobs created During the period Obama chose -- from January 2010 to July 2012 -- manufacturing jobs began to rise again, by 532,000. That’s "over half a million manufacturing jobs," as Obama put it. It’s worth noting that while the reversal has been striking, this rise has still replaced only a fraction of the manufacturing jobs lost during the "decade of decline." The manufacturing jobs gained during the turnaround replaced less than 10 percent of the jobs lost during the decade of decline. Our rating The rise in manufacturing jobs that Obama is referring to may be modest compared to the prior decade’s decline, but he has described the numbers carefully. We rate his statement True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2012-09-06T23:45:01 | 2012-09-06 | ['None'] |
snes-03286 | An habitual alcohol abuser lost his penis to frostbite after a drunken sexual encounter with a snowman. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/drunk-man-has-sex-with-snowman/ | null | Junk News | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Drunk Man has Sex with Snowman, Loses Genitals to Frostbite | 15 December 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05925 | Michigan has passed a law exempting emergency medical personnel from treating gay people. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/slake-michigan/ | null | Politics | null | Snopes Staff | null | Did Michigan Exempt Emergency Medical Personnel from Treating Gay People? | 7 December 2014 | null | ['None'] |
chct-00104 | FACT CHECK: Is Trump The First Republican To Win Wisconsin Since 1952? | verdict: false | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/06/30/fact-check-trump-republican-wisconsin-1952/ | null | null | null | David Sivak | Fact Check Editor | null | null | 9:16 AM 06/30/2018 | null | ['None'] |
snes-00262 | A video shows dozens of spiderlings dispersed from their mother after she was squashed with a broom. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/squashed-spider-babies/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Does This Video Show Baby Spiders Dispersing from Their Recently Squashed Mother? | 2 August 2018 | null | ['None'] |
farg-00234 | Claimed that 72 people from the seven countries covered by President Donald Trump’s 90-day travel ban “have been implicated in terroristic activity in the United States” since the 9/11 attacks. | none | https://www.factcheck.org/2017/02/terrorism-and-trumps-travel-ban/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | Stephen Miller | Eugene Kiely | ['immigration'] | Terrorism and Trump’s Travel Ban | February 24, 2017 | [' Interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press" – Sunday, February 12, 2017 '] | ['United_States'] |
pomt-08034 | The Democratic majority led the 111th Congress to spend more money in two years than the first 100 congresses before them combined. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jan/05/kevin-mccarthy/kevin-mccarthy-says-111th-congress-spent-more-mone/ | In a recent Q&A feature called, "Ask the Californian," reader Gerald Sutliff wrote the Bakersfield Californian newspaper to ask why his Congressman, Republican Kevin McCarthy, did not cast a vote on several key bills during the busy lame-duck session of the 111th Congress. "One can't help noting that last week's vote recap (How our Lawmakers Voted) shows our congressman (Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield) missing in action," Sutliff wrote. "It's OK with me; he may have had a good reason. However, I really want to know his view on each of the votes he missed. How would he have voted had he been present?" The four bills in question were one to provide assistance to 9/11 responders, one to update food safety laws, one to reauthorize a science education bill known as the America Competes Act and one to temporarily extend government spending. McCarthy's office issued a statement that was published on Jan. 2, 2011. "I was not present for the votes because my son had surgery last week, and I came home to be with him and my family," said McCarthy, who will be the House Majority Whip in the new Congress. "If I had been in D.C., I would have voted against all of the bills mentioned in your reader's letter. While there were a number of positive things in each of the bills, the tipping point was the spending. The Democratic majority led the 111th Congress to spend more money in two years than the first 100 congresses before them combined. Washington has lost touch and spent too much time focusing on the wrong issues. Americans need jobs, not more debt, and next year the new majority will be focused on just that." The portion of McCarthy's comment that caught our eye was where he said that "the Democratic majority led the 111th Congress to spend more money in two years than the first 100 congresses before them combined." The reason? A few months earlier, we gave a Pants on Fire ruling to a very similar statement by Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va. (He and McCarthy are two of the three lawmakers who have labeled themselves the "Young Guns" in the House GOP leadership.) In the earlier comment, during the Oct. 12, 2010, episode of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, Cantor told Jon Stewart that "what you've seen (in Washington) is a crowd that has taken advantage of a crisis back in late '08, early '09 and spent more money than this country has spent in the last 200 years combined, in the two years since." Stewart didn't challenge Cantor's claim, but we did. We found that federal spending in those two years amounted to a little more than $7.2 trillion. We didn't have to add up all 200 years to exceed that amount -- you only had to add together 2006, 2007 and 2008 to reach $8.3 trillion, which exceeded the $7.2 trillion of 2009 and 2010. Cantor was also far off using more lenient calculations. Thus the Pants on Fire rating. When Cantor saw our analysis published by PolitiFact Virginia, he proceeded to write a letter to the editor in which he owned up to misspeaking and that he was referring to accumulated debt instead of spending. So what about McCarthy's statement? It's similar to Cantor's comment to Jon Stewart, but it's not exactly the same. Whereas Cantor used as his comparison point "the last 200 years," McCarthy used "the first 100 congresses." Although his phrasing could be read to mean the 100 congresses prior to the 111th Congress, we're giving him the benefit of the doubt that he meant the first 100 congresses in history. That means counting only from the 1st Congress to the 100th Congress -- a period that ended 22 years ago, in January 1989. But he's wrong by either measure. McCarthy spokeswoman Erica Elliott forwarded us a Dec. 27, 2010, article from the conservative website CSNNews.com that looked at this question. The 111th Congress convened on Jan. 6, 2009, and exited on Dec. 22, 2010, a period in which the gross federal debt increased from $10.6 trillion to $13.9 trillion, a rise of $3.2 trillion. (There's an alternate measure of debt -- public debt -- that doesn't count the money that one part of the government lends to another part of the government, but the difference in the two figures is modest, so for simplicity, we'll stick with gross federal debt here.) Meanwhile, CNSNews tracked down a document showing that the gross federal debt reached $3.22 trillion in September 1990, a date that came during the 101st Congress. Thus the focus on the first 100 Congresses. The bottom line: If McCarthy had referred to debt rather than spending, he would have been correct. But he didn't, which is why the statement published in the Californian is incorrect. In the meantime, we'll add a few broader concerns with the relevance of McCarthy's comparison. • Inflation, economic growth and population. Since a dollar is worth far less today than it was in the early 1800s, you can't genuinely compare dollar amounts across time without making a mathematical adjustment. That's especially true when the time frame of the comparison ends in 1989, leaving off the 22 years most heavily influenced by cumulative inflation. Similarly, from year to year, the economy and population both tend to grow. It's only natural that as the size of the population grows and more money is available to spend, more money will be spent in an absolute sense. • How do you assign responsibility for spending increases? A sizable chunk of current spending was set on its course because of actions taken under President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress (such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit) -- not to mention programs passed under prior GOP presidents and Congresses. This doesn't mean Obama and the Democratic Congress bear no responsibility for the rise in spending. They just don't deserve all the blame. Ultimately, McCarthy's statement in the Californian was slightly less wrong than Cantor's statememt to Jon Stewart, since the "first 100 congresses" formulation is ultimately more supportable than "the last 200 years combined." Still, McCarthy made the same error that Cantor, his fellow Young Gun, did a couple months earlier -- confusing annual spending for accumulated debt. And that's enough to rule McCarthy's statement False. | null | Kevin McCarthy | null | null | null | 2011-01-05T10:01:05 | 2011-01-02 | ['United_States_Congress', 'Democratic_Party_(United_States)'] |
goop-02556 | Justin Bieber, Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr. Gay “Lovers,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/justin-bieber-pastor-rich-wilkerson-jr-not-gay-lovers/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Justin Bieber, Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr. NOT Gay “Lovers,” Despite Claim | 4:24 pm, August 21, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09707 | That 3.5 percent (increase in the third quarter GDP) came from two things — government spending on Cash for Clunkers — they just moved fourth-quarter auto sales into the third quarter — and the first-time home buyer thing. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/03/rush-limbaugh/rush-limbaugh-said-bump-gdp-due-cash-clunkers-and-/ | While many hailed the news that the gross domestic product had increased 3.5 percent in the third quarter as a sign that the recession has ended, political commentator Rush Limbaugh was not one of them. On the Fox News Sunday program on Nov. 1, Limbaugh scoffed at a question about whether President Barack Obama had saved the country from "a financial abyss," as witnessed by reports about the bump in the GDP. "There wasn't any growth in the private sector," Limbaugh said. "That 3.5 percent came from two things — government spending on Cash for Clunkers — they just moved fourth-quarter auto sales into the third quarter — and the first-time home buyer thing." Limbaugh is referring to the Cash for Clunkers program that provided up to $4,500 to consumers to trade in their old cars for new ones, as well as to a government incentive program that provides an $8,000 tax credit to first-time home buyers. There's little debate that the Cash for Clunkers program gave a serious jolt to the car industry in the third quarter and contributed significantly to the GDP bump. In a statement before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, J. Steven Landefeld, director of the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, said consumer spending on durable goods — which increased by 22.3 percent — was driven by motor vehicle purchases and that Cash for Clunkers "accounted for most of this increase." But not all of it. Landefeld noted that "real spending on other durable goods, nondurable goods and services also increased in the third quarter," he said. There's no way of untangling exactly how much Cash for Clunkers or home-buying incentives directly affected the GDP, said Eugene Seskin, an economist with the Bureau of Economic Analysis. But statistics on the categories those programs would affect provide strong clues. In a breakdown of the contributors to the 3.5 percent increase in GDP, the Bureau of Economic Analysis attributed 1 percentage point to consumer purchases of motor vehicles and parts. In a broader sense, motor vehicles — including commercial purchase of vehicles and parts (not eligible for Cash for Clunkers) as well as vehicle imports and exports — raised real GDP growth in the third quarter by 1.7 percentage points, Landefeld said. But, he added, "Excluding the effects of motor vehicles, real GDP increased 1.9 percent in the third quarter after decreasing 0.9 percent in the second quarter." In other words, there was a lot more to the bump than just cars. Okay, what about the effect of the government incentives to new home buyers? According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, residential construction rose by 23.4 percent in the third quarter, the first increase in 15 quarters. That translated to 0.53 percentage points of the increase in GDP. But economists say it would be wrong to assign credit for that entirely to government incentives through tax credits to first-time home buyers. First of all, most of the homes purchased through the program were existing homes, not new construction. The new homes figure also includes such things as brokers commissions on sales of homes. So the correlation between that increase and the tax-credit incentives to new home buyers is more tenuous. Still, it appeared to have had some benefit. But for argument's sake, let's say all of the consumer purchases of new cars and parts (1 percentage point) and all of the new home purchases (0.53 percentage points) in the third quarter were tied to the programs Limbaugh mentioned. That still only accounts for less than half of the bump. If Limbaugh's bigger point was that the bump was largely due to government intervention, he's on more solid ground. In fact, it's a talking point from the White House defending the effectiveness of the economic stimulus package championed by the president. The stimulus "contributed between 3 and 4 percentage points to real GDP growth in the third quarter," said Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "This suggests that in the absence of the Recovery Act, real GDP would have risen little, if at all, this past quarter," said Romer. Josh Bivens, an economist with the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, thinks Limbaugh missed the biggest drivers from government intervention: tax cuts, extended unemployment benefits and food stamps, and aid to states from the stimulus. By Bivens' back-of-the-envelope assessment, the stimulus accounted for about 2.5 percentage points of the increase. The truth in Limbaugh's statement, Bivens said, is that government intervention is driving the economy forward right now. In addition to the stimulus, the third quarter saw an increase in direct government spending, mostly on defense (adding 0.5 percentage points to the bump). "If not for the government intervention, the numbers would not be as strong right now," he said. "That's why we did it." Other economists say Limbaugh missed the mark when he began by saying the growth in the GDP was not in the private sector. While the government may have provided incentives with Cash for Clunkers, for example, consumers still bore the majority of the cost of new cars. So while the government may be acting as a catalyst, said Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution, it's still private sector growth. Bottom line, Limbaugh dismissed the growth in the GDP as being simply from Cash for Clunkers and tax credits to first-time home buyers. Economists agree those programs, particularly Cash for Clunkers, contributed significantly to the bump. And it's certainly valid to caution that much, if not all, of the bump can be attributed to government intervention. But Limbaugh oversimplifies things when he dismisses the growth as tied solely to those two programs. By our math, even a generous reading of government data ties less than half of the growth in GDP to sectors of the economy those two programs may have influenced. And so we rate his statement Half True. | null | Rush Limbaugh | null | null | null | 2009-11-03T18:40:13 | 2009-11-01 | ['None'] |
snes-01819 | A 25-year-old woman was drugged and nearly abducted by sex traffickers in the bathroom of a Shelby Township Meijer in August 2017. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shelby-meijer-human-trafficking/ | null | Crime | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Shelby Township Meijer ‘Human Trafficking’ Warning | 29 August 2017 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00287 | “The prevalence of pregnancy increased with age, rising from 0.7% for females aged 14 years, to 12.1% for females aged 19 years.” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/national-youth-policy-health-and-violence/ | null | null | null | null | null | National Youth Policy: crime & health claims fact-checked | 2015-06-11 11:46 | null | ['None'] |
thal-00088 | FactCheck: You asked, we answered - suicide, austerity and the Troubles when it comes to the years 2007-2014, it does certainly appear that the number of deaths by suicide was greater than the number of deaths during the troubles | mostly true | http://www.thejournal.ie/suicide-austerity-troubles-ireland-tim-pat-coogan-3124487-Dec2016/ | null | null | null | null | null | FactCheck: You asked, we answered - suicide, austerity and the Troubles | Dec 18th 2016, 8:30 PM | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11309 | Studies show "the 2016 shooting and murder rate in Chicago cost us about $9.6 BILLION DOLLARS" and "the entire City budget for 2018 is $8.6 billion dollars. This math does not work, it is financially killing our city." | false | /illinois/statements/2018/apr/17/garry-mccarthy/chicago-gun-violence-really-killing-citys-bottom-l/ | Garry McCarthy was Chicago Police Superintendent under Mayor Rahm Emanuel until getting fired as controversy engulfed the administration over the investigation into the 2014 videotaped police shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald. Now McCarthy is trying to mount a comeback as a challenger to Emanuel in next year’s mayoral race, with the veteran cop leveraging his law enforcement bona fides to excoriate his old boss for not doing enough to tamp down on gun violence. After formally declaring his candidacy in March, McCarthy sought to tie gun violence in the city, which has soared in the years since he got the boot, to the difficult state of municipal finances. To that end, McCarthy’s campaign website made sweeping assertions: "Studies show that every murder costs our City a priceless life and approximately $5-8.6 million dollars. Each shooting costs approximately one million dollars.That means the 2016 shooting and murder rate in Chicago cost us about $9.6 BILLION DOLLARS, and that is not even including other crimes like rape, robbery etc.. [sic] However, it is worth noting that the entire City budget for 2018 is $8.6 billion dollars. This math does not work, it is financially killing our city." A lot of numbers are being tossed around in that statement, which the campaign somewhat altered after PolitiFact inquired about it. A McCarthy spokesman said the wording changes resulted from a revamp of the campaign website. But the gist of the claim still resides on the website, and the implication the campaign makes is striking: In dollars and cents alone, gun violence costs Chicago taxpayers more than they spend on everything else the city does. It is a claim that cries out for a closer look. The cost of gun violence in Chicago vs the cost of gun violence to Chicago Pricing the value of a human life or limb may seem a delicate, if not downright insensitive, endeavor. Yet it’s done with frequency. Actuaries apply the science of life expectancy to determine pension and insurance costs. Workers’ compensation experts estimate what an employee would otherwise have been able to earn if not impaired by an accident. Juries in civil lawsuits arising from wrongful death or injury claims are tasked with determining not only the value of a victim’s lost or diminished earning capacity but also compensation for suffering. So we asked McCarthy’s campaign to explain how it came up with the cost figures it cited. A spokesman said the raw material for the calculation largely depended on an analysis conducted by Ted Miller of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, a Maryland-based nonprofit research organization focused on public health issues. McCarthy also referenced Miller’s research into the topic in 2013 while still in charge of the Chicago Police Department to argue that it was cheaper for city taxpayers to pay significant overtime for officers than have to bear the cost of crime that would occur if fewer cops were on patrol. Contacted by Politifact, Miller, an internationally-recognized safety economist, said the McCarthy campaign’s use of his data was badly flawed. "I think they confused cost to the citizens with cost to the government," Miller said in an email exchange. Miller’s research does peg the average cost of an individual murder in the millions of dollars, as McCarthy claimed. But Miller explained that his calculations factored in not just costs borne by government but also by victims along with their relatives and employers. In short, Miller is measuring the social cost of gun violence, not the direct cost to taxpayers. In a follow-up phone interview, Miller said he did attempt to isolate government expenses, but the totals he came up with are far smaller than those seized on by the McCarthy campaign: $450,000 on average for a firearm-related homicide and $53,000 for a shooting-related injury. And those numbers come with a cautionary note. Miller’s yardstick measures costs borne at all levels of government, not just the city. For Chicago specifically, Miller estimated the costs to taxpayers of gun violence in 2012--the last year for which he had city-level data, but a year in which McCarthy still ran the police--at $213 million. And those costs were likewise paid across all levels of government, as well as being spread across multiple jurisdictions, including the city, courts, prosecutors, hospitals and more. Not cheap by any means, but a far cry from the nearly $10 billion figure the McCarthy campaign claims on its website. The difference lies in far more sweeping, yet harder to quantify indirect costs of violence that Miller nonetheless attempted to total. They range from wages a victim otherwise could have earned to workplace disruption and "the financial value of the pain, suffering, and fear that accompany a death or injury," as described in a report Miller published in 2015 with Mother Jones. Miller said the McCarthy campaign was mischaracterizing his findings on its website by suggesting Chicago taxpayers were directly on the hook for millions of dollars every time a murder takes place in the city. "It’s not clearly stating what the numbers say and mean," Miller said of the McCarthy campaign claim. We asked the campaign why it appeared to mix apples and oranges, and a spokesman responded by email with a statement that avoided the question entirely. Our ruling In his attempts to brand Emanuel as a failed mayor whose inability to stamp out crime has led Chicago down the path to financial ruin, McCarthy claimed studies on gun violence support his argument that city taxpayers bear an enormous cost for murders and shootings. Studies show "the 2016 shooting and murder rate in Chicago cost us about $9.6 BILLION DOLLARS" and "the entire City budget for 2018 is $8.6 billion dollars. This math does not work, it is financially killing our city," his campaign website read. But the researcher who produced the findings cited by the McCarthy campaign says it misinterpreted his conclusions, which attempted to put a price tag on the total societal costs of firearm homicides and shootings--not just the still significant, but much smaller, costs to city government. McCarthy’s campaign badly misfires in its claim on the costs of gun violence to Chicago taxpayers. It is undoubtedly both a serious and costly problem, but in misinterpreting the very data it relies on the bolster its case, the campaign’s claim earns a credibility rating of False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Garry McCarthy | null | null | null | 2018-04-17T07:00:00 | 2018-03-30 | ['Chicago'] |
farg-00213 | Claimed that a Democratic National Committee staffer “apparently was assassinated” after “having given WikiLeaks something like … 53,000 [DNC] emails and 17,000 attachments.” | unsupported | https://www.factcheck.org/2017/05/gingrich-spreads-conspiracy-theory/ | null | the-factcheck-wire | Newt Gingrich | Eugene Kiely | ['Democratic National Commitee', 'hacking'] | Gingrich Spreads Conspiracy Theory | May 22, 2017 | [' Fox and Friends – Sunday, May 21, 2017 '] | ['Democratic_National_Committee', 'WikiLeaks'] |
vees-00196 | Sasot in a 17-minute Facebook video the next day slammed Hontiveros: | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-pro-duterte-bloggers-claim-about-china | Sasot’s claim is inaccurate. | null | null | null | China,sass sasot,nuclear power | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Pro-Duterte blogger's claim about China nuclear history inaccurate | May 28, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-03373 | Says a growing number of extremely premature babies survive into healthy childhood. | mostly true | /texas/statements/2013/jul/11/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-more-and-more-extremely-premature-/ | Gov. Rick Perry spoke up for restricting abortions earlier in pregnancy by saying that extremely premature births increasingly result in healthy children. To Democratic opposition and a sustained uproar in the Texas Senate gallery, a proposal intended to tighten the regulation of abortion in Texas perished at the end of the session that ran through June 25. Perry reacted by calling a fresh special session before telling the National Right to Life Convention in a June 27, 2013, speech: "We will ban abortion after 20 weeks" of pregnancy. "And you think about it," Perry said, "it makes sense considering the growing number of healthy, happy children who are born prematurely at the same early gestation that our laws allow abortion." Current law Texas currently restricts abortions in the third trimester of pregnancies, which starts 26 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period, as defined in state rules. This yardstick--time since the last period--is also about two weeks longer than the length of a pregnancy, meaning the time after the egg has been fertilized. This distinction bears on the Texas debate because the proposal backed by Republicans including Perry would shorten the period during which most abortions would be permitted by four weeks. So, we took Perry’s speech statement as referring to infants born in those same four weeks, the 20th through 23rd week of pregnancy, though Perry spokesman Rich Parsons said by telephone that this was an injection of context on our part that didn’t accurately reflect the governor’s remark. "That’s a lie," he said. Nationally, very few babies are born in the weeks targeted by the legislation. In 2010, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than 1 percent of the nearly 4 million U.S. births occurred before even 28 weeks of gestation. Still, do more and more of such extremely premature infants survive to healthy childhoods, as Perry said? By email, Perry spokesman Josh Havens offered studies as backup for the claim, but also said, "The point the governor is making is that babies born prior to the third trimester can survive outside the womb." That’s so, we learned from research and interviews with experts, though survival rates are low for such babies and whether more survivors reach healthy childhoods is murky. We hunted for relevant research. Governor's backup Havens pointed out an article in the April 2012 issue issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, titled "Improving Survival of Extremely Preterm Infants Born Between 22 and 25 Weeks of Gestation." The article, based on research led by a University of Iowa physician, reviewed the births of 237 babies born without major congenital anomalies after 22 to 25 weeks of gestation from 2000 through 2009 and concluded that more survived than would have been expected based on predicted survival rates based on outcomes of a national study from 1998 to 2003. The Iowa study said: "These findings reflect improvement in survival" of such babies "whose parents elected aggressive treatment." The study did not look into how the babies fared into childhood. Havens also noted a study described in the May 1, 2013, Journal of the American Medical Association. According to an online summary, researchers in Sweden assessed 456 children born before 27 weeks of gestation from 2004 through 2007 and concluded, after check-ups at about 30 months of life, that about three in four of the survivors had mild or no disabilities, 16 percent had moderate disabilities and 11 percent had severe disabilities. Babies born the earliest were worst off, the summary says. More than half the children born at 23 weeks of gestation or earlier had moderate or severe overall disabilities at 30 months as did 60 percent of those children born at 22 weeks of gestation or earlier. The summary does not say whether the prevalence of disabilities at 30 months was an improvement compared to extremely premature babies born in earlier years. Other analyses At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spokeswoman Karen Hunter suggested we seek research insights from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which opposes the Texas measure. By email, a college spokesman, Gregory Phillips, pointed out its physician guidelines, issued in September 2002 and reaffirmed in 2012. The guidelines state that survival rates for newborns born at the "threshold of viability," defined as 25 or fewer weeks of gestation, improved in the early 1990s largely thanks to medical steps taken after those births, though extreme preemies still faced long odds. A chart in the guidelines, based on a study of more than 4,600 such babies born in centers around the country in 1995 and 1996, indicates no survivors among a dozen babies born after 21 weeks of gestation; a 21 percent survival rate among babies born after 22 weeks; and a 30 percent survival rate among babies born after 23 weeks. Phillips also suggested we contact the American Academy of Pediatrics, which put us in touch with Kristi Watterberg, a University of New Mexico professor and pediatrician who chairs the academy’s Committee on Fetus and Newborn. By email and telephone, Watterberg agreed that survival rates of extremely premature babies have improved, thanks in large part to post-birth medical interventions and pre-birth steroid treatments, which especially help tiny lungs mature, she said.. However, Watterberg said, it remains questionable whether more extremely premature babies grow into healthy children. "Survival has increased for those babies on the cusp of viability," Watterberg said. "Whether their short- or long-term outcomes have improved is much less clear. We need studies of babies at school age, as adolescents and as adults." Watterberg said the Iowa study offered by Perry’s office included too few babies — only 16 infants were born before 24 weeks of pregnancy — to reach broad conclusions. A study would need to consider a couple hundred like-timed births to begin to support reasonable comparisons and conclusions, she said. "You cannot make any pronouncements based on that," she said. Watterberg said by email: "It's very difficult to get a good handle on long-term outcomes for large populations of extremely preterm infants - there aren't that many at 22 - 23 weeks, they have a high mortality rate, and follow-up studies are limited. There is a wide variability in reported outcomes" as well, she said. Watterberg singled out several other studies and our review of them led us to mention of another: —A study published by BMJ in December 2012 compared short-term survival rates of extremely premature babies born in 2006 to similar babies born in 1995. In 2006, more than 1,100 of about 3,100 such babies survived to leave the hospital, the authors wrote. Still, less than half of the babies born in 2006 before 25 weeks of gestation survived, according to the study, compared to 66 percent or more of babies born at 25 weeks or later. Also, the authors wrote, "the pattern of major neonatal morbidity," meaning major conditions, remained unchanged from 1995. Serious conditions included lung disease, brain injury and retinopathy (a disease that can lead to loss of vision). "These observations reflect an important increase in the number of preterm survivors at risk of later health problems," the authors wrote. A Dec. 3, 2012, press release issued with the BMJ-published study said: "These results suggest that the total number of children in the community with lifelong health problems as a result of extremely preterm birth will rise, and represents an important increase in workload for health, educational, and social services, they conclude." —The same release said another study published by BMJ compared neurological and developmental outcomes at age 3 in babies born before 27 weeks of gestation in 2006 with babies born between 22 and 25 weeks in 1995. For such babies born in 2006, severe disability at age 3 years increased as gestation shortened, from 20 percent of survivors at 26 weeks’ gestation to 45 percent at 23 weeks, according to the release, with the most common impairment being developmental or cognitive function. Between 1995 and 2006, the "proportion of survivors with severe disability at 3 years was unchanged," the press release said. "However, an estimated 11% more babies born between 22 and 25 weeks survived without disability." Fewer of the extremely premature babies had disabilities, but the same proportion had severe impairments in 2006 as in 1995, the release said. The authors also stressed that these findings be interpreted with caution, with additional research about the children as they age being critical before deciding there have been big changes in the frequency of disabilities. —A study posted online in August 2010 in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, reviewed outcomes for more than 9,500 very small infants born from 22 weeks through 28 weeks of gestation from 2003 through 2007. Upshot: More than half of infants born at 24 weeks of gestation or later survived, the study said, though many infants had major conditions as well. "During the 5-year study period," the authors wrote, "there was no substantial improvement in rates of survival to discharge for extremely low gestation infants.... However, each additional week of" gestation age (GA) "at birth had substantial survival advantage; the most marked changes were between GAs of 22 and 25 weeks, with survival rates increasing from 6% to 72%. Furthermore, rates of survival to discharge without major" diseases "increased dramatically between 22 and 25 weeks, with continued steady improvement for each additional week of gestation." — A study published in April 2008 in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at outcome at 18 to 22 months for nearly 4,200 infants born at 22 to 25 weeks’ gestation, with a focus on whether intensive care made a difference. At 18 months, 61 percent had died or had severe impairments, the authors wrote, counting 98 percent of infants born at 22 weeks, 84 percent of infants born at 23 weeks; 57 percent at 24 weeks; and 38 percent at 25 weeks. Federal institute Separately, we reached out to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which has a website enabling anyone to calculate survival rates of very young babies by inputting the length of pregnancy and other factors. Robert Bock, an institute spokesman, said by email its neonatal researchers consider a study steered by a Brown University pediatrician, Bonnie E. Stephens, to be the best reference on longer-term outcomes for babies born extremely early. The study, published in June 2009 in the journal Pediatric Clinics of North America, states that survival rates of infants born "at the limits of viability," 22 to 25 weeks of gestation, "continued to improve" through the 1990s. However, the study says, such improvements over the previous 20 years "have not been accompanied by proportional reductions" in disabilities among such babies. The study says, in fact, that there is "increasing evidence of adverse outcomes into school age and adolescence," a conclusion the authors trace to about 25 other studies. Our ruling Perry said more and more extremely premature babies grow into healthy childhoods. We found research indicating that more extreme preemies -- some born during the period when abortion is permitted -- make it home from the hospital and live into early childhood. But evidence is lacking to prove the children's long-term health; in fact, we found that many of these children face major health challenges. We rate Perry's statement, which lacked this clarification, as Mostly True. | null | Rick Perry | null | null | null | 2013-07-11T06:00:00 | 2013-06-27 | ['None'] |
pomt-11277 | Obama’s Private ‘security’ Company Sets Up Massive Camps Outside 3 Major Cities. | pants on fire! | /punditfact/statements/2018/apr/25/blog-posting/barack-obama-has-security-company-camps-outside-3-/ | A website called Newsfeed USA is peddling fake news about former President Barack Obama, claiming he’s planning "a coup against his own government." "Obama’s Private ‘security’ Company Sets Up Massive Camps Outside 3 Major Cities," said the headline of an April 14 post on newsfeedusa.us. "Barack Obama has decided to spend his retirement years planning a coup against his own government," the post said. "In the past two weeks, after receiving an executive declaration issued by his own hand before Trump took office, Obama has built a $10 billion military that he calls a ‘security company.’ " It’s unclear what the post meant by saying Obama received "an executive declaration issued by his own hand before Trump took office." But the rest of the post doesn’t add up, either. Newsfeedusa.us claims Obama’s alleged company is called NOS United, with NOS standing for "Novus Ordo Seclorum," or New World Order. (Novus Ordo Seclorum is inscribed in the $1 bill. The U.S. State Department translates the Latin text to "A new order of the ages.") "It’s pretty clear what the agenda is of this traitor we knew was an American-hating globalist all along," the post claimed, adding that along with two islands due east of Virginia in international waters, there also are "massive complexes with billions in equipment and spying technology outside of Washington DC, New York and Los Angeles." The post also claims Obama is holding "secret meetings" with bipartisan officials and diplomats from around the world "in a mansion that is a part of the old Washington tunnel system." That part of the story reminded us of another hoax claiming Obama was trying to take down President Donald Trump by establishing a shadow government outside the White House. That Pants on Fire claim also said Obama held secret meetings with world leaders. We reached out to Newsfeed USA’s Facebook account for evidence backing its claim. A reply said "Google." But there’s no credible information backing Newsfeed USA’s story. If there was any merit to the claim, it would have been in national and international headlines of legitimate news sources. Newsfeed USA’s post is inaccurate and makes a ridiculous claim. We rate it Pants on Fire! See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-04-25T13:32:17 | 2018-04-14 | ['None'] |
vees-00019 | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Facebook post claiming UN hailed Duterte ‘world’s best president’ | fake | http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-facebook-post-claiming-un-hailed-duter | null | null | null | null | Duterte,fake news | VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Facebook post claiming UN hailed Duterte ‘world’s best president’ FAKE | October 23, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14803 | Says Thomas Jefferson helped "craft" the Constitution. | false | /virginia/statements/2015/nov/27/ben-carson/carson-falsely-says-thomas-jefferson-helped-craft-/ | During a recent TV interview, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson was asked which Founding Father impressed him the most. "I’m particularly impressed with Thomas Jefferson, who seemed to have a very deep insight into the way people would react and tried to craft a constitution in a way that would control people’s natural tendencies and control the natural growth of government," Carson replied during a Nov. 22 broadcast on C-SPAN. Our ears perked up, because Jefferson was an ocean away from Philadelphia during the late spring and summer of 1787 when the Constitutional Convention met at Independence Hall. He was in Paris, serving as minister to France for the Confederation Congress. So did Jefferson really play a role in crafting the U.S. Constitution? Let’s take a look. Although Carson did not acknowledge Jefferson’s absence from the convention in the C-SPAN interview, he did note it in his recently published book "A More Perfect Union," which urges Americans to "reclaim our constitutional liberties." Ying Ma, a spokeswoman for Carson, backed the claim about Jefferson’s role in crafting the Constitution by pointing to a biography of the third president posted on the Library of Congress website. It says, "Although Thomas Jefferson was in France serving as United States minister when the federal constitution was written in 1787, he was able to influence the development of the federal government though his correspondence." We contacted four Jefferson historians, and they all disagreed with Carson’s statement and evidence. When it came to the drafting of the constitution, which was done under a cloak of secrecy, they say Jefferson was in the dark. "Jefferson didn’t know what was going on at all," said Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who wrote "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson." Peter Onuf, a retired University of Virginia professor who specialized in Jefferson, wrote in an email, "Jefferson never ‘crafted’ a constitution (federal or state), nor did he have any influence over the secret proceedings at Philadelphia. Technically speaking, Jefferson was not a ‘founder’ at all, having been absent from the founding - but Carson is certainly not alone in according him that status." Jefferson was abroad from August 1784 through November 1789. He maintained steady correspondence with James Madison, who would become known as the "Father of the Constitution." Historians say Jefferson indirectly may have influenced Madison’s political thinking when, in 1785, he shipped to his friend almost 200 books from Paris on government, philosophy, religion and other subjects. Madison delved deeply into the books. But when it came to forming a government, Jefferson and Madison were miles apart in thought and distance. Jefferson opposed the creation of a strong central government; Madison supported it. Shortly after the Constitutional Convention began, Madison sent Jefferson a letter naming the delegates but withholding all other information. "In furnishing you with this list of names, I have exhausted all the means which I can make use of for gratifying your curiosity," Madison wrote in June 1787. "It was thought expedient in order to secure unbiassed (sic) discussion within doors, and to prevent misconceptions and misconstructions without, to establish some rules of caution which will for no short time restrain even a confidential communication of our proceedings." In October 1787 - a month after the convention had agreed on a constitution and adjourned - Madison wrote Jefferson a long letter detailing the accord that was being sent to states for ratification. Jefferson described himself as "neutral" on the constitution, according Dumas Malone’s 1951 book "Jefferson and the Rights of Man." Malone wrote that Jefferson was pleased by the way a bicameral Congress would be set up but, like many anti-federalists, was disappointed the document did not include a bill of rights. By the time Jefferson returned from Europe in 1789, all but one of the states had approved the Constitution - only Rhode Island was holding out - and a new nation had been born. Two months before his landing, Congress had approved the Bill of Rights, which would win the necessary ratification by two-thirds of the states in 1791. Our ruling Carson identified Jefferson as a craftsman of the U.S. Constitution - a frequently made mistake. Jefferson played many leading roles in history, including as author of the Declaration of Independence, president of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia. But in the production of the Constitution, Jefferson didn’t even make a cameo appearance. He was in France during the entirety of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, shut out from the top-secret deliberations. When he returned to the U.S. in 1789, the Constitution had been ratified, a president was in office, and the 1st Congress was open for business. Historians with whom we spoke say Jefferson, at most, deserves a footnote at the end of the credits for sending books from abroad that may have influenced Madison’s thinking. So we rate Carson’s statement False. | null | Ben Carson | null | null | null | 2015-11-27T10:06:25 | 2015-11-22 | ['None'] |
bove-00098 | Karnataka CM’s Twitter Handle Tweeted A Photo From Germany For The Shakti Sthala Project | none | https://www.boomlive.in/karnataka-cms-twitter-handle-tweeted-a-photo-from-germany-for-the-shakti-sthala-project/ | null | null | null | null | null | Karnataka CM’s Twitter Handle Tweeted A Photo From Germany For The Shakti Sthala Project | Mar 05 2018 5:26 pm, Last Updated: Mar 10 2018 1:33 am | null | ['Germany'] |
pose-00837 | FitzGerald will direct the county Jobs & Family Services department to establish metrics-based programming that focuses on connecting young people with suitable internship and job opportunities and develop a meaningful internship program for Cuyahoga County. | in the works | https://www.politifact.com/ohio/promises/fitz-o-meter/promise/869/develop-internships-and-job-opportunities-for-youn/ | null | fitz-o-meter | Ed FitzGerald | null | null | Develop internships and job opportunities for young people | 2011-01-20T13:56:11 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-08702 | My supporters aren't special interest groups in Madison and Milwaukee. | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2010/sep/07/mark-neumann/mark-neumann-says-he-doesnt-receive-support-specia/ | In his bid for governor, businessman Mark Neumann badly lags behind rival Republican Scott Walker in fundraising -- that is, if you don’t count the $2.7 million Neumann has lent his own campaign. In most scenarios, that would be considered a negative. But this is politics. In a recent radio spot, Neumann put a positive spin on the fundraising picture. "I didn't run for office for power," the ad says. "I ran because I'm afraid of what's happening in America. That experience taught me how dangerous a permanent class of career politicians can be..." The ad continues: "I've owned a business for 26 years. My family isn't in politics and my supporters aren't special interest groups in Madison and Milwaukee. Now's our chance. This is the election. Let's choose a governor who will fight for Wisconsin's forgotten middle class." We were struck by part of that statement. Is Mark Neumann free of big-city special interest group backing? We’ll define special interests broadly: cash support from political action committees (PACs) and "bundled" donations from "conduit" organizations. Bundling is when a corporation, trade group or political party collects individual donations, pools them and writes one big check in the group’s name to the candidate. In 1992, when Neumann first ran for Congress, he denounced PAC contributions. But he accepted them in subsequent races. He served two terms in the late 1990s, representing a district in southern Wisconsin. This time around, in the gubernatorial race, campaign spokesman Chris Lato said Neumann has not "actively pursued" PAC contributions. But the campaign isn’t turning such money away. Lato noted that in Neumann’s latest six-month finance report, covering the first half of 2010, there were no contributions from PACs. In that period, groups and corporations bundled less than $4,000 in donations from their members or employees for Neumann. If you go back a year -- to the time the campaign began -- the same pattern holds, according to campaign reports filed with the state Government Accountability Board. PAC cash: Neumann in 12 months reported getting not one single cash donation from a PAC, according to a PolitiFact Wisconsin review of state records. (The Wisconsin Dental Association PAC wrote him a $1,000 check, according to that group’s report. But PolitiFact Wisconsin couldn’t find a record of it in Neumann’s report. The campaign erred, Lato said.). Neumann’s statement in the radio ad aims to contrast him with the other two major candidates in the race, Republican Walker and Democrat Tom Barrett. And his rivals clearly have received more from political action committees -- typically labor unions and business interests. Reports show Walker received $190,000 from political action committees in the same 12-month period that Neumann got nothing or close to it. Barrett received far more, almost $500,000. Those are the PAC facts. Conduit cash: Now let's look at those "bundled" conduit donations. Neumann, a developer and homebuilder, has received some conduit money from Madison or Milwaukee-based groups. Neumann’s statewide conduit tally was $12,925 from 78 individual gifts bundled by a small number of conduits. Most of it came from Milwaukee and Madison and just three groups: Wisconsin builders, engineering companies and Realtors, according to our analysis of state records. Walker, meanwhile, took in $311,000 from 1,300 individual gifts bundled by conduits. PolitiFact’s analysis found. His conduit backers included health care companies, utilities, Realtors, law firms, a timber company, grocers, credit unions, chiropractors and builders. And Barrett was between the two: $214,000 from conduits. All Cash: This brings us to the final tally from PACs and conduits. Overall, Neumann has received 0.5 percent of his overall war chest from PACs and conduits, compared with 11.5 percent for Walker. Barrett’s campaign topped both Republicans, getting 22 percent from the special interest donations in the year. So, let’s look at the bottom line. Neumann’s statement says his supporters "aren’t special interest groups in Milwaukee and Madison." When it comes to measuring that support in dollars, Neumann has received some cash from such groups -- but so little it’s negligible, and his major opponents received far more. He may have wanted more himself, but it did not come his way. Thus, we rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Mark Neumann | null | null | null | 2010-09-07T09:15:45 | 2010-08-16 | ['Milwaukee', 'Madison,_Wisconsin'] |
pomt-05558 | Republicans in Congress refuse to list a single tax loophole they are willing to close. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/apr/05/barack-obama/obama-says-republicans-congress-wont-name-one-tax/ | President Barack Obama said a budget proposed by House Republicans lacked "a shred of credibility," especially when it came to tax cuts. Obama said their budget includes $4.6 trillion in lower taxes over the next 10 years, with no way to pay for them. "We’re told that these tax cuts will supposedly be paid for by closing loopholes and eliminating wasteful deductions," Obama said. "But the Republicans in Congress refuse to list a single tax loophole they are willing to close. Not one." We wanted to check Obama’s claim that Republicans in Congress "refuse to list a single tax loophole they are willing to close." But first, a little explanation about the House Republicans’ budget. Its top advocate is Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and chairman of the House Budget Committee. When it comes to taxes, the idea behind the House Republican budget is to keep overall tax revenues about where they would be under current policies. (We use the word "policies" on purpose -- keep in mind that under current law, today’s rates will expire at the end of the year and climb higher in 2013.) The House Republicans envision dramatically different income tax rates, though. Instead of today’s six income tax brackets -- 10, 15, 25, 28, 33 and 35 percent -- they would use just two brackets, 10 percent and 25 percent. Clearly, this would represent a big rate reduction for people in the top brackets. To keep tax revenues from taking a nosedive, House Republicans say they will end current exemptions and deductions, which both they and Obama refer to as "loopholes." In principle, it’s certainly possible to eliminate exemptions and lower tax rates while keeping tax revenues the same. It’s usually called "broadening the base", and it was part of the 2010 Simpson Bowles budget commission that Obama has praised, though he’s stopped short of endorsing the bipartisan commission’s recommendations. The point Obama made, though, was that the House Republicans haven’t said which exemptions they would end. Some of the largest exemptions are the most popular, such as tax exemptions on employer-provided health insurance, home mortgage interest and charitable donations, as well as special lower tax rates for income from investments, such as capital gains and dividends. We found Obama’s charge is largely correct -- the House budget doesn’t specify which exemptions it would end. The website of the House Budget Committee defers the matter to the House Ways and Means Committee, which is traditionally charged with tax legislation. Committee staff pointed us to this statement on the House Budget Committee website: "This budget calls for lowering tax rates and broadening the tax base. All corners of the tax code should be on the table. The House Ways and Means Committee, led by Chairman Dave Camp of Michigan, has held dozens of hearings over the past year examining how best to simplify the tax code while maximizing economic growth." That doesn't entirely let House Republicans off the hook, though. The Tax Policy Center, a respected independent think tank that specializes in analyzing the tax plans of politicians, found that without curtailing exemptions, the overall tax policies in the House Republicans’ budget would add $4.6 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. "Ryan argues that eliminating or scaling back deductions, credits, and exclusions ought to be part of the GOP fiscal plan. But he won’t say how," said Howard Gleckman, writing for the center’s blog TaxVox. "Cuts in those tax preferences could make a big difference in determining who wins and who loses from the tax portion of his budget. But until House Republicans describe which they’d cut, there is no way to estimate what those base-broadeners would mean." Ryan himself was put on the spot recently by Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace. After some back and forth, Ryan suggested that he would favor targeting elimination of exemptions for higher income taxpayers. Here’s the exchange: Wallace: "All right. I understand, this is not your committee, it's the Ways and Means Committee. Can you tell me any (tax exemptions) that you're willing to say, do away with it?" Ryan: "What I would say on doing away with it, is who would we do away with it for. And what we're saying is the people who disproportionately use those, it's the top two tax rate payers use almost of those tax expenditures. We would limit these things to those higher income earners." Wallace: "Even things like the deduction for health insurance and pensions and home mortgage?" Ryan: "Yes, right. Instead of giving these write-offs to the people in the top tax bracket, take those tax shelters away. For every dollar that's parked in the tax shelter is taxed at zero. Take away the tax shelter, subject all of their income to taxation, you get more revenue, and we can lower everybody's tax rate in return. So, we're saying let's limit these kinds of deductions to the higher-income earners so that everybody can enjoy lower, flatter tax rates in return." Our ruling Obama said, "Republicans in Congress refuse to list a single tax loophole they are willing to close." House Republicans have said they want to handle tax changes through the Ways and Means Committee, and the plan’s top proponent, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, said he would limit deductions and exemptions for people who report higher incomes. But without more details on eliminating exemptions, it’s impossible to know if the tax plan will substantially reduce tax revenues or not. It’s also not possible to know what all the implications are for taxpayers. We rate Obama’s statement True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2012-04-05T17:29:46 | 2012-04-03 | ['United_States_Congress', 'Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-15036 | We have 650 people who move to Texas every day. | true | /texas/statements/2015/oct/01/glenn-hegar/glenn-hegar-says-650-people-giddyap-texas-every-da/ | No mistake, Glenn Hegar is bullish on the Texas economy. The Republican state comptroller has launched a 27-city "Good for Texas" tour of the state that got our attention after he told Georgetown residents Texas remains a magnet for people otherwise stuck elsewhere. "We have 650 people who move to Texas every day who want to come here for that economic opportunity," Hegar said Sept. 10, 2015, according to Community Impact News. "That’s about half a million people who are moving to Texas every single year, and there is no better place to see that than in Central Texas and this region. The population increase has been phenomenal." We suspect Hegar's "about half a million" referred to the state's total annual population growth. But was he right about 650 people a day moving to the state? We’ve spotted flaws in Gone-To-Texas claims before. In June 2014, for instance, we pointed out that while 1,000 people a day may have moved to the state from July 2012 through June 2013, net migration — taking into account people who (unfathomably) left Texas — broke out to about 487 people a day, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. To our inquiry about Hegar’s figure, Lauren Willis, a spokeswoman for the comptroller’s office, told us by email that he relied on figures provided by IHS Inc., a Colorado-based consulting and information-services company. She also sent along a chart stating that according to IHS and the Census Bureau, Texas grew by 1,230 residents a day in 2014 with net migration, from other states and abroad, accounting for 666 of that average daily increase; Texas births outpacing deaths explained the rest of the growth. We sought elaboration from an IHS economist, Karl Kuykendall, who said the company reached its net migration figures for 2014 by starting from the bureau’s Current Population Survey estimates for net migration into Texas from July 2013 through June 2014, drawing on state population estimates released in December 2014, then reaching a calendar-year 2014 estimation of migration by assuming the state would grow at the same pace through December 2014. Kuykendall also guided us to the bureau’s population estimates of annual net migration to Texas, domestic and international, covering July-through-June periods from 2010-11 through 2013-14. From that, we confirmed the bureau’s latest estimates indicated Texas enjoyed a July 2013-July 2014 net gain of 84,637 residents through international migration and a net gain of 154,467 residents thanks to domestic migration. All told, that breaks out to total net migration to Texas of 655 people a day, very close to the 666 net migration estimated by IHS for all of 2014. Separately, an expert with the San Antonio-based Texas State Data Center, directed by Lloyd Potter, the state demographer, told us it previously calculated the same net migration of 655 people a day. By email, Rafael Emmanuel González said the center reached the figure by pairing data from the bureau’s 2014 Population Estimates of the Components of Population Change and information from the bureau’s 2013 State-to-State Migration Flows. So the best available numbers at the time Hegar spoke support what he said. González noted, though, that the bureau subsequently posted fresh figures based on its one-year American Community Survey perhaps indicating even greater net migration to Texas. The information wouldn’t have been available to Hegar when he spoke. Still, it’s worth mentioning that according to these ACS results, an estimated 538,572 Texas residents reported living in another state the year before and 217,392 had been living abroad. Subtract the 435,107 people estimated to have left Texas for another state in the meantime, and net migration to Texas amounts to 320,857 people--or 879 net new residents a day. That’s probably an overstatement to a degree; the bureau does not try to estimate the number of people who have left any state for another country, Bernstein said. We asked Potter about why migration estimates bounce around. He emailed: "From year to year, migration numbers do fluctuate, sometimes dramatically. Our economy was doing very well in 2013-14, bolstered by oil extraction, but was doing well even without. Next year, I’m anticipating migration will still be high, but we may see some muffling starting to show up with the reductions in extraction. Migration is usually and mostly driven by economic opportunity, thus, as our economy goes, we can expect migration to go." Our ruling Hegar said: "We have 650 people who move to Texas every day." Different government estimates suggest the state has lately been netting 655 or even around 880 new residents a day, depending on the estimate. It’s also worth noting Hegar could float a much bigger number by tallying solely people GTT, but that number would fail to account for people leaving the state. We rate this claim True. TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. CLARIFICATION, 4:40 p.m., Oct. 2, 2015: We added a clarifying sentence to this story after we recognized, post-publication, that Hegar's figure for people who move to Texas every day did not add up to about half a million new residents a year; we suspect he was referring in his speech to total annual population growth, taking into account Texas births outpacing deaths. This clarification did not affect our rating of his claim. | null | Glenn Hegar | null | null | null | 2015-10-01T17:43:17 | 2015-09-10 | ['Texas'] |
pomt-13985 | Says the United States has "treaties with apparently 69 countries where we are obligated to defend their borders. And these were treaties that were executive treaties, not authorized by Congress." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/09/gary-johnson/libertarian-candidate-gary-johnson-mischaracterize/ | Is the United States really obligated to be the world’s bodyguard? Speaking on Meet the Press on June 5, Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson said that the United States is already committed — without congressional approval — to protecting the borders of 69 other countries (about one-third of the world). "We've got treaties with apparently 69 countries where we are obligated to defend their borders. And these were treaties that were executive treaties, not authorized by Congress," Johnson said. Johnson’s claim itself isn’t new. He made the claim on CNN’s New Day on May 31 and Donald Trump tweeted the same claim May 29. Trump has also made the United States’ role protecting other countries a talking point this election, leaving open the possibility of disbanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization if other countries fail to contribute their fair share. We wanted to look closer into Johnson’s claim about the United States’ current obligations to other nations. The statement warrants examination on multiple grounds: 1. The number of countries involved through formal treaties; 2. Whether Congress had a say in the treaties; 3. Are these provisions actually used? We reached out to the Johnson campaign but did not get a response back. United States treaties A paper published by Tufts University professor Michael Beckley in 2015, The Myth of Entangling Alliances, contains Johnson’s 69-country figure. In his analysis, Beckley counts the Organization of American States, NATO and various other treaties as collective defense arrangements. We found that other sources include fewer countries. The State Department only counts 54. We analyzed all of the treaties Beckley cites and compared it to U.S. Department of State records. The Charter of The Organization of American States created the OAS — an organization that aims for regional solidarity in the Americas — and was approved by the Senate in 1951. The OAS Charter treaty pledges the United States to support 33 countries through collective security provisions in Articles 28 and 29, according to Beckley. Those countries include — Antigua & Barbuda, Argentina, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haití, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Perú, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela. Beckley’s analysis also includes 28 countries as part of NATO, which was created by the North Atlantic Treaty and approved by the Senate on July 21, 1949. Article V of the NAT provides for collective defense. In that list, Beckley includes — Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, West Germany and Germany. Those two agreements count for 61 of the 69 countries Johnson cited. Both were approved by the Senate, but more on that later. Next, Beckley cites the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty of 1951, which was also approved by the Senate on March 20, 1952. That makes countries 62 and 63. Beckley also includes Japan as country 64 through a bilateral U.S.-Japan treaty (approved by the Senate on March 20, 1952), South Korea (65) through a mutual defense treaty (approved by the Senate on January 26, 1954), and the Philippines (66) through a mutual defense treaty (approved by the Senate on March 20, 1952). He also cites a bilateral defense agreement with Pakistan (67) on March 5, 1959. According to Dennis Kux in his book on U.S.-Pakistan relations, this was an "executive agreement" — a different type of treaty not sent to the Senate for approval. Pakistan has since accused the United States of not honoring the agreement, Kux wrote. Israel (68) and Taiwan (69) are also on Beckley’s list. He includes Israel because he claims the United States has a "de facto" agreement to defend it (not a formal treaty). The Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress in 1979, requires the United States to provide defense assistance to Taiwan. Adding all of these up gets to the 69 figure Johnson used on Meet The Press. The official Department of State website, however, has a different number of collective defense arrangements — only 54 countries. The State Department excludes West Germany, Pakistan, Israel and Taiwan from Beckley’s list and also adds Thailand due to the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty — which created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and was approved by the Senate on Feb. 1, 1955. The main difference, however, is that the State Department does not include all the countries in the OAS Charter. Rather, it only includes members of the affiliated Inter-American Treaty of International Assistance (Rio Treaty), a collective defense treaty with fewer members than the OAS Charter. Julian Ku, Maurice A. Deane distinguished professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University, agreed with the State Department’s assessment. Ku did note, however, that these determinations have not been actively discussed since the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s. "The OAS Charter is not what we would call a mutual defense treaty," he said. "It is not a treaty obligation to defend every member of the OAS Charter." Beckley told PolitiFact he used all the OAS countries primarily for methodological reasons. There’s another wrinkle to this count. Some countries the State Department included as part of the Rio Treaty — Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela — have recently denounced the treaty. Cuba has also announced it will not be rejoining the OAS, making its status within the Rio Treaty unclear. Lastly, SEATO — containing Thailand — disbanded in 1977. Add it all up and what do you get? It’s reasonable to say the United States has obligations to defend anywhere from around 48 countries to close to 70. Did Congress have a say? The second part of Johnson’s claim — that all were "executive treaties" without congressional approval — does not stand up to scrutiny. The Senate approved all of the pertinent treaties through its "Advice and Consent" procedure under Article II, section 2 of the Constitution (with the exception of the Pakistan 1959 agreement). Michael Ramsey, an international law professor at the University of San Diego, told PolitiFact that Johnson could be considered "technically correct" because the House of Representatives does not consider the issue. Nonetheless, Ramsey explained, Johnson’s claim is misleading because nothing "improper" was done. "The Constitution expressly provides that treaties are to be approved by two-thirds of the Senate (and not the House)," he wrote. "Thus there is nothing improper occurring here, and it is not the case that these agreements are being done on executive authority alone." Beckley told PolitiFact that many treaties require action consistent with each nation’s constitution, such that Congress would still have a say before an actual intervention. Relevance Johnson’s phrasing of "defend their borders" could be misleading as well, making it seem that the United States has a more general and ongoing policy than it does. Just how strong an "obligation" the United States has is also questionable, experts said. The treaties in question only require other member states to get involved if one country is attacked, which is rare. "Look at those countries. Very few are under threat of attack," wrote Douglas Gibler, a professor of political science at the University of Alabama, in an email. In addition, Beckley noted that the treaties do not require the United States to take immediate action and that the treaties often do not specify what such action would look like. The Rio Treaty, for example, provides "no State shall be required to use armed force without its consent." "The OAS Charter doesn’t say the U.S. has to go in guns blazing to defend its allies to the death everytime someone comes under attack," Beckley said. "The language is super vague with a lot of loopholes in it, so when Johnson says that the U.S. has an ironclad obligation to protect the country that’s more than a bit of a stretch." Ku noted as well that neither the OAS Treaty or the Rio Treaty have been actively invoked since the 1960s. Our ruling Gary Johnson claimed that the United States is obligated to "defend the borders" of 69 countries by treaties, and that Congress did not have a say in the matter. Johnson’s reference to "69 countries" is in the ballpark. However, he fails to include in his statement the nuance regarding how much action the United States would actually be compelled to take under these treaties, according to experts. Johnson is also wrong to say that Congress had not considered any of these treaties, because the Senate considered all but one pursuant to its constitutional powers. We rate this claim Mostly False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/9fc80cb6-ce8d-4630-93a7-2af99cff41fa | null | Gary Johnson | null | null | null | 2016-06-09T17:00:00 | 2016-06-05 | ['United_States', 'United_States_Congress'] |
pomt-02247 | The insurance risk corridors aren't going broke like Republicans predicted. | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2014/apr/13/james-carville/carville-insurance-risk-corridors-arent-going-brok/ | It will be some time before we know how the Affordable Care Act actually works in practice. The initial enrollment period has ended more or less. Now we wait to see how many people pay their premiums, how much the insurance companies pay out in claims and tally what the expansion of Medicaid did for the working poor. Yet partisans on both sides seem unable to resist the temptation to declare success or failure based on what we know today. Democratic strategist James Carville succumbed to excessive exuberance during an exchange on ABC’s This Week with conservative radio show host Laura Ingraham. Carville ribbed Ingraham over the doom and gloom predictions of Republicans. "Y’all said it would collapse," he said. "You said no one would sign up. You said it would cost part-time jobs." And then he added, "You said the risk corridors were going to go broke. None of it has happened. Get over it. It’s working." That last point touches a nerve in certain GOP quarters. Leading voices like Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, have been waving a red flag, warning that Obamacare has a built-in bailout for health insurance companies. Part of that alleged bailout comes in the shape of risk corridors. For this fact-check, we’ll assess whether the insurance risk corridors aren't going broke as Republicans predicted. It’s pretty technical and obscure but here’s what the fuss is about. Managing carrier jitters The Affordable Care Act does a complete number on the insurance game as Americans know it, at least in the individual and small group markets. Instead of companies making a profit through selling policies to the healthy and avoiding the ill, the law aims to pull carriers into a world where they insure everyone and compete based on efficiency and value. We’re not saying that will necessarily happen, but that’s the goal. In sickness and health and everything in between, that’s the population the insurers must work with. The problem is, if you are an insurance company, how do you decide how much to charge in such a different landscape? Until you have a few years to see who you’re insuring and how much health care they use, the uncertainty is way beyond your comfort zone. Enter the government and a few tricks to spread both possible losses and windfall profits among insurance companies and between all insurance companies and the government. One of those devices is called risk corridors. Risk corridors are a temporary program that cover the first three years of the health care law -- 2014-16. Here’s how it works. The government sets financial benchmarks for each plan offered on the marketplace. As long as insurers come close to that benchmark, nothing happens. If an insurer overperforms by up to 3 percent, they can keep the extra revenue. If they underperform by up to 3 percent, they are forced to absorb those additional costs. When the gaps get wider, however, money starts changing hands. If insurers beat their benchmark by 3-8 percent, they have to split that extra revenue with the federal government. If insurers beat the mark by more than 8 percent, the government receives 80 percent of that additional money. On the flip side, when insurers fail to meet their benchmarks, the government helps absorb those costs. If insurers underperform by 3-8 percent, the government will cover half the extra cost. The government covers 80 percent of losses bigger than that. A matter of timing As you probably can guess, nothing actually happens until the insurance companies wrap up the year. They have to tally up the premiums they collected and compare those to the claims they paid out. The very earliest they could do that would be January 2015, but they have until the end of July 2015 to submit their data to Washington. Melinda Buntin chairs the Department of Health Policy at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Buntins said it’s too early to draw any conclusions. "With people just enrolling now, we don’t know how the risk corridors will play out," Buntin said. A Carville assistant told us Carville relied on the latest numbers from the government’s nonpartisan bean counters, the Congressional Budget Office. In February, the CBO predicted that the total package of risk adjustment programs (that includes the corridors and two other programs) will generate revenue for the government. CBO analysts think Washington will gain about $8 billion over the three years the programs are active. However, while those projections undercut the fears expressed by people like Rubio and Kristol, they remain just that -- projections. Carville was drawing real-world conclusions in his remarks. Our ruling Carville said that Republican fears of big payouts under the risk corridors have not come to pass. Carville was claiming victory before any numbers are in. We won’t know for sure whether government gained, lost or broke even with the risk corridors until 2014 is over. The CBO projections suggest little reason for concern. If they had gone the other way, that would undermine Carville’s case, but they are not the final proof. Carville’s statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate the claim Mostly False. | null | James Carville | null | null | null | 2014-04-13T14:45:24 | 2014-04-13 | ['None'] |
snes-05162 | Former first lady Nancy Reagan has endorsed Hillary Clinton. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nancy-reagan-hillary-clinton/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan Evon | null | Nancy Reagan Endorsed Hillary Clinton? | 24 February 2016 | null | ['Nancy_Reagan', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
snes-06179 | Facebook is removing photographs of military amputees from their network, deeming them "offensive." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facebook-removing-amputee-photos/ | null | Computers | null | David Mikkelson | null | Facebook Removing Amputee Photos | 15 October 2013 | null | ['None'] |
snes-05986 | A public high school in Hilliard, Ohio, hosts a Muslim prayer room. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/room-service/ | null | Religion | null | David Mikkelson | null | Does Hilliard High School Have a Muslim Prayer Room? | 16 September 2014 | null | ['Ohio', 'Hilliard,_Ohio', 'Islam'] |
pomt-04779 | His new running mate, Congressman Ryan, put forward a plan that would let Governor Romney pay less than 1 percent in taxes each year. | mostly true | /new-hampshire/statements/2012/aug/24/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-paul-ryan-tax-plan-would-have-el/ | By his own admission, Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than many Americans. But, President Barack Obama says Romney’s rate would be far lower under a plan proposed by the presumptive Republican nominee’s new running mate. Obama took aim at Romney and his running mate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, last week in a speech at Windham High School in New Hampshire. "His new running mate, Congressman Ryan, put forward a plan that would let Governor Romney pay less than 1 percent in taxes each year," Obama told the cheering crowd during the August 18 speech. "And here’s the kicker, he expects you to pick up the tab." Much has been made of Romney’s taxes in recent months, as the millionaire former Massachusetts governor has declined to release most of his returns. But saying he would pay next to nothing in taxes each year under Ryan’s plan is a new one. We decided to crunch the numbers. Over eight terms in Congress, Ryan has introduced a number of budget plans with a range of tax reforms. So, to figure out which plan the president was referring to, we approached the Obama campaign, which pointed us to Ryan’s first proposal, A Roadmap for America’s Future. Ryan first introduced this plan in 2010, before he became chairman of the House Budget Committee. He proposed at the time to do away with taxes on interest, dividends and long-term capital gains, among other reforms. The plan stalled in committee and never reached the House floor for a vote. And Ryan and other House Republicans moved away from the tenets of the original plan with their later budget proposals, which included taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains. ABC News noted recently that Romney himself criticized a similar proposal during a January debate. The plan, introduced by Republican challenger and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, also proposed to do away with capital gains taxes. "Under that plan, I'd have paid no taxes in the last two years," Romney told Gingrich, according to the debate transcript. But, several major publications, along with Obama, place the number at closer to 1 percent. Both Roll Call and the Atlantic have published stories in recent weeks reporting Ryan’s plan would have left Romney paying a tax rate of 1 percent or less. Each story based its calculations on Romney’s 2010 tax return-- the most recent one released. In his 2010 return, Romney reported $21.6 million in income. But, of that total, none of it came from wages or salary, according to federal tax documents. Instead, most of Romney’s income came from capital gains ($12.5 million), dividends ($4.9 million), and taxable interest ($3.3 million), among other sources that would no longer be taxed under Ryan’s plan. On top of those figures, the Roadmap plan proposed to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, on which Romney paid nearly $233,000 in 2010, and it would have cut the top marginal tax rate from 35 to 25 percent on income over $100,000. This would have reduced the taxes Romney paid that year on his business income, about $594,000, much of which came from book and speaking fees. In his Roll Call story, Steven T. Dennis didn’t identify an exact tax rate, but he reported that these new deductions would amount to 95 percent of Romney’s income that would no longer be taxed under Ryan’s plan. "It's not certain exactly how low Romney's tax bill would go, but his income from other sources amounts to about $1 million," Dennis wrote in the Aug. 11 story. "Romney's total tax bill would have dropped from the $3 million that he paid to a few hundred thousand dollars if Ryan's plan had been in effect." In his Atlantic piece, reporter Matthew O’Brien takes his calculations a step further, totaling the amount Romney would have paid under the Ryan plan at just north of $175,000. That number reflects the elimination of interest, dividends and capital gain taxes, as well as the Alternative Minimum tax, O’Brien wrote in an email to PolitiFact. It considers the lower top marginal rate proposed under the plan, and it maintains the self-employment taxes that Romney paid in 2010, he wrote. "Now, Romney would still owe self-employment taxes on his author and speaking fees, but that only amounts to $29,151," O’Brien wrote in the Atlantic article. "Add it all up, and Romney would have paid $177,650 out of a taxable income of $21,661,344, for a cool effective rate of 0.82 percent." Tax analysts across the country haven’t repeated O’Brien’s math exactly, but, looking at Ryan’s plan, they feel the numbers are right on. "The rough calculation by Matt O’Brien strikes me as reasonable. … The bottom line is that given that we know the vast majority of Gov. Romney’s income falls into the categories of interest, dividends, and capital gains, he would no doubt pay a far lower rate …," said Joseph Rosenberg, a research analyst with the Tax Policy Center, in an email. The policy center is a joint venture between the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. "Very little of (Romney’s) income is from ordinary working or business income," added Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at center. "Given the amount of itemized deductions he had, at least on the 2010 return, that would wipe out close to all of them. … When you’re Mitt Romney, that’s a very good deal." Our ruling: It’s important to note that Ryan’s most recent budget proposal does not eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and long-term capital gains. Obama is correct, however, to suggest that Ryan at one point put forward a plan that would have eliminated them. It’s hard to say how that budget proposal would have affected Romney’s tax rate for "each year." Romney hasn’t released his tax returns before 2010, and his 2011 documents aren’t finalized yet. But, looking at the snapshot of his 2010 return, it’s safe to say his tax rate would have taken a nose dive. More than $20 million of Romney's $21.6 million income that year came from interest, dividends and capital gains -- items that would no longer be taxed under Ryan’s plan. Factor in a reduction in the top marginal tax rate and the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and Romney’s tax rate would have fallen dramatically, almost surely reaching below 1 percent, according to media reports and tax analyses. We rate this claim Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2012-08-24T15:39:51 | 2012-08-18 | ['None'] |
hoer-00604 | Picture: Fields of Spider Silk After Australian Floods | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/spider-fields-australian-floods.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Picture: Fields of Spider Silk After Australian Floods | November 26, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
snes-03930 | Donald Trump said that pregnancy is an inconvenience for businesses, then denied having said it. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-pregnancy-inconvenient/ | null | Politicians | null | Bethania Palma | null | Donald Trump: Pregnancy Is an ‘Inconvenience’ for Businesses | 28 September 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pose-01324 | Establish new immigration controls to boost wages and to ensure that open jobs are offered to American workers first. | in the works | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1416/hire-american-workers-first/ | null | trumpometer | Donald Trump | null | null | Hire American workers first | 2017-01-17T09:06:53 | null | ['United_States'] |
goop-02167 | Khloe Kardashian Quitting “KUWTK” For Maternity Leave? | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/khloe-kardashian-quitting-kuwtk-maternity-leave/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Khloe Kardashian Quitting “KUWTK” For Maternity Leave? | 3:37 pm, November 21, 2017 | null | ['Keeping_Up_with_the_Kardashians'] |
snes-05808 | Emordnilap is a real word referring to words that produce other words when spelled backwards. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/emordnilap/ | null | Language | null | David Mikkelson | null | Emordnilap | 13 December 2014 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06184 | Richard Cordray’s nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau marks the first time in Senate history "that a political party has blocked a nomination of someone because they didn't like the construction of the agency." | true | /ohio/statements/2011/dec/12/sherrod-brown/sen-sherrod-brown-says-republicans-refusal-confirm/ | The U.S. Senate on Dec. 8 failed to confirm Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with Republicans successfully blocking confirmation by using a procedural measure. It wasn’t that the GOP disliked Cordray, Ohio’s attorney general until his election defeat in 2010. Rather, Republican senators said they would not support any nominee to the new agency unless its very structure was changed. They wanted, among other things, a five-member board to oversee the agency rather than a single director. And they wanted Congress to approve the agency’s budget rather than have it set by the Federal Reserve. This would have required changing the 2010 financial reform law, known as Dodd-Frank, that created the agency -- or as U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown put it, it would require a change to the construction of the agency Cordray was nominated to direct. As a date for a vote approached, Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said several times that the Republicans’ refusal was unprecedented. In a Senate Banking subcommittee hearing on Dec. 7, the day before the vote, Brown said, "I probably know Richard Cordray better than any member of the Senate. I knew him when he was a state representative and county treasurer and state treasurer and attorney general and have continued to work with him. And there's no question of his qualification. And some time ago I asked the Senate historian has this ever happened, that a political party has blocked a nomination of someone because they didn't like the construction of the agency? And he said, no, it's never happened." The next day, shortly before the Senate failed to get enough votes to cut off debate and confirm the nominee, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said the same thing: "This is the first time in Senate history a party has blocked a qualified candidate solely because they disagree with the existence of the agency that's being created by law." This struck PolitiFact Ohio as worth checking, for the current record and as a useful piece of political trivia. We asked Brown’s communications director, Meghan Dubyak, for her boss’s source, and she shared with us language from email that Brown’s chief of staff, Mark Powden, received from Senate Historian Donald A. Ritchie. We followed up by asking Ritchie for the original. Ritchie wrote us back, and his short answer was, "We searched through past cases and could not find anything that fit the current circumstance." Ritchie also provided the email that he exchanged with Brown’s office. It began when Powden contacted the historian and asked if he knew of a similar case of blanket objection to any nominee unless the agency itself was changed. Here is Ritchie’s answer, written on July 25, 2011, to Brown’s top aide: "I’ve looked through our files and contacted the Senate Library, but have not found anything comparable. There were instances in the 19th Century -- during the John Tyler and Andrew Johnson administrations -- when the Senate defeated some of the president's most prominent nominations (including three times rejecting Tyler's nominee for Secretary of the Treasury). Those instances involved major disagreements between Congress and the president over policy (Tyler vetoed the main provisions of the Whig party's agenda, and Johnson and Congress fell out over Reconstruction policy), but they did not involve a blanket blocking of nominees to a particular agency." Ritchie sent that email to Brown’s office at 12:52 p.m. Several hours later, he followed up with another email to Brown’s chief of staff: "Mark, the Senate Library has been hunting for precedents, and found the attached controversy over the Legal Services Corporation in the 1980s that involved a letter signed by a majority of senators against three of the president's nominees. The issue there was whether the nominees would support the spirit of the law, rather than requesting that the law be rewritten, so it's not exactly the same." This was in reference to a period in 1982 when the White House tried to weaken the Legal Services Corporation by nominating board members with conservative views of how far the government should extend its hand. The Legal Services Corporation helps pay for civil lawyers to serve the poor, and President Ronald Reagan and a bipartisan majority in the Senate were at odds over three of Reagan’s most conservative nominees, according to "Congress and the Nation," a historical volume. Jousting over Reagan’s nominees continued for several years, but as Ritchie said, the issue was whether the nominees would support the spirit of the law. To better understand this distinction, it’s important to know that in the case of Cordray, 44 of the Senate’s 46 Republicans made clear in a letter before the Ohioan was even nominated that they would not accept any nominee unless the brand-new agency’s structure was changed. Theirs was a blanket blockade. Was their goal to weaken the agency? Brown and other Democrats say so. That, too, was the goal of Reagan with the Legal Services Corporation. But there are two differences between the Reagan matter and the current case. The Senate in the 1980s was not trying to use the confirmation process to change the architecture of the agency. Rather, Reagan was trying to use his appointments to change how aggressively or weakly the agency did its job. The agency, established in 1974, was already operating. The other difference? Reagan, the president, was the one interested in slowing down the agency. The Senate, on the other hand, wanted the agency to keep operating as usual. Cordray’s case is the opposite. President Barack Obama supported the agency’s creation and wants it to get to work. But under the Dodd-Frank legislation it cannot write and enforce rules affecting payday lenders, private student loan providers, debt collectors, non-bank mortgage servicers or credit agencies until it has a director. Senate Republicans say they will not confirm any director unless the agency’s oversight structure is changed. Lacking a majority, they failed to win those changes in the Dodd-Frank legislation, but they have sufficient numbers under procedural rules to halt confirmations. This isn’t a question of which side is morally or politically correct. But based on the record, including its nuance, we take the Senate historian’s word: Brown was correct when he said this was the first time that a political party has blocked a nomination unless changes were made to an agency. To repeat Ritchie’s words: "We searched through past cases and could not find anything that fit the current circumstance." We rate Brown’s claim True. | null | Sherrod Brown | null | null | null | 2011-12-12T18:00:00 | 2011-12-07 | ['None'] |
vogo-00105 | Statement: “The school board is a part-time position, which currently pays about $17,500 per year.” | determination: true | https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/fact-check-full-time-gigs-for-school-board-trustees/ | Analysis: | null | null | null | null | Fact Check: Full-Time Gigs for School Board Trustees | June 11, 2013 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00817 | Will work with lawmakers to "pass legislation allowing prosecutors to seek life without parole for repeat offenders convicted of sexual assault or aggravated sexual assault." | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/texas/promises/perry-o-meter/promise/849/pass-law-permitting-prosecutors-to-seek-life-witho/ | null | perry-o-meter | Rick Perry | null | null | Pass law permitting prosecutors to seek life without parole for certain repeat sex offenders | 2012-12-10T10:00:00 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00844 | Drake Suing Pusha T For $5 Million? | 2 | https://www.gossipcop.com/drake-pusha-t-suing-lawsuit-feud/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Drake Suing Pusha T For $5 Million? | 1:00 pm, June 11, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
thal-00019 | Q&A: Can the proposed legislation allowing abortion up to 12 weeks be changed in the future? | none | http://www.thejournal.ie/qa-changing-legislation-after-repeal-4006293-May2018/ | null | null | null | null | null | Q&A: Can the proposed legislation allowing abortion up to 12 weeks be changed in the future? | May 22nd 2018, 6:05 AM | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07870 | Says he never said he would keep education funding the same. | false | /florida/statements/2011/feb/08/rick-scott/education-cuts-show-rick-scotts-budget/ | Gov. Rick Scott unveiled his highly anticipated state budget on Feb. 7, 2011, which, as promised, calls for major reductions to government spending along with tax cuts for property owners and businesses. Scott's two-year spending plan would shrink the overall state budget from $70.3 billion to $65.9 billion in 2011-2012 and to $63.3 billion in 2012-2013. Cuts were expected almost everywhere -- except in the area of education, where Scott has said that funding would remain the same. At least, that's what people thought. Scott's proposed budget for next year includes billions of dollars in education cuts. (The actual cut depends on what education budget figure you consult, but the cut would be between $3.3 billion and $4.8 billion, with per-student funding to decrease by 10 percent.) Some of that loss is offset by having teachers contribute 5 percent to their retirement and by the inclusion of temporary federal education dollars. Still, per-student funding would shrink if Scott's budget is ultimately approved. "I've heard nothing but that education funding wasn't going to be touched," said Florida Education Association spokesman Mark Pudlow. "We all were wondering what kind of alchemy we were going to see. Of course, what we saw was tons of cuts to education." When Scott met with reporters after announcing his budget, he was asked if he had flipped on his campaign rhetoric. "No, it's not going back on anything I promised," Scott said. "What I said throughout the campaign and what I'm saying today -- any money that came out of state general revenue, we're not cutting that. Any money that they relied on federal bailouts, that is different." But that's not what Scott said just four days prior in Tampa. During an announcement where Scott said he would cut local school property taxes, called the required local effort, he was asked specifically about the effect on education funding. Here's the question and answer from Feb. 3, which we just happened to record: Question: You referred to cuts in the RLE (required local effort) property tax. Do you have a plan to make up that revenue or will the schools take that as a loss? Scott: "No, my commitment is to make sure the money that they've received they'll get again. Where I'm getting the savings is, I'm reducing the state government. What I'm trying to do is keep the school budgets the same." School budgets are funded through multiple sources. Local districts contribute property taxes through the required local effort, which is set by the state, and additional optional property taxes, which are set by county school boards. The state contributes general fund revenues through the state sales tax, as well as money from education trust funds. And the federal government contributes as well. The combination produces total school funding. If one part of the funding -- required local effort -- is reduced while the other parts simply stay the same, the result is less school money overall. Speaking in Tampa, Scott made no effort to distinguish or differentiate the funding formula -- all he said is he would keep school budgets the same. We also found references during the campaign when Scott was on the record saying education funding would not be cut as part of his budget. During the primary, Scott said he could offset a reduction in the school property tax through a combination of a larger share of sales taxes and other general revenue, according to the Palm Beach Post. When Scott's primary opponent, Attorney General Bill McCollum, called that plan "unrealistic," Scott said the money for schools could be found by cuts in non-education spending, the Post reported. And then during the general election, Scott again was asked to respond to questions over his education spending plan. According to the Associated Press, a spokeswoman for Alex Sink, Scott's Democratic opponent, called the Scott plan a rip-off of education. Here's how Scott responded in a Sept. 28 story: "We're not slashing the budget, our focus is to spend the dollars well," he said. "We're gonna drive down property tax rates, but we're gonna do that as we figure out how to save money. We're gonna make sure the money is there for education." Again, Scott offered no suggestion he was talking only about general revenue funding. One more thing: In comments after releasing his budget, Scott said he only promised no cuts to general revenue -- but he's actually making a slight cut there as well. Scott's budget includes about a $155 million cut in general revenue funding in 2011-2012. Yes, it's a small cut from a proposed budget of $12.3 billion, but it's a cut nevertheless. At the very least, Scott deliberately and purposely suggested that education funding would be held harmless in his first state budget. He made comments to that effect just days before his budget was released. Yet, when he announced his budget, cuts were included. We rate Scott's claim False. | null | Rick Scott | null | null | null | 2011-02-08T11:17:48 | 2011-02-07 | ['None'] |
pomt-12824 | Says CNN’s Chris Cuomo "never asked" Sen. Richard Blumenthal about Blumenthal's misstatements on his own service in Vietnam. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/09/donald-trump/trump-wrong-sen-blumenthals-cnn-interview-and-viet/ | President Donald Trump lashed out at CNN New Day anchor Chris Cuomo for failing to get tough with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D- Conn. Cuomo had interviewed Blumenthal after the senator made headlines by saying that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch had told him he was "disheartened" by the president’s dismissive comments about federal judges. Blumenthal drew Trump’s wrath first. The president tweeted, "Sen.Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie),now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?" Cuomo’s turn came next. After he spoke with Blumenthal, Trump tweeted on Feb. 9, 2017, "Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave "service" in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!" See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Actually, Cuomo did ask about that. CNN posted Cuomo’s interview with Blumenthal. Cuomo’s first question was: "What is your response to the president of the United States saying you should not be believed because you misrepresented your military record in the past?" Blumenthal didn’t answer the question. Instead, he repeated his account of what Gorsuch said to him. The interview moved on to details about the Gorsuch nomination. After Trump took his shot at Cuomo, the CNN anchor defended himself on air. "The president, with all due respect, is once again off on the facts," Cuomo said. "He just said, ‘You never asked him about it.’ I did. He ducked it, and that’s okay. Politicians duck things all the time." See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com We reached out to the White House for comment and did not hear back. If they do respond, we will update this fact-check. Vietnam legacy Both Blumenthal and Trump avoided serving in Vietnam, but while Trump never claimed to have been there, Blumenthal did. In 2010, the New York Times reported that at a 2008 ceremony for veterans and senior citizens, Blumenthal said, "We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam." In 2003, Blumenthal spoke at a rally supporting troops overseas. "When we returned, we saw nothing like this," he said, a comparison with soldiers who came back from Vietnam. Blumenthal told the New York Times he had "misspoken" about his Vietnam record. In reality, between 1965 and 1970, he received at least five deferments for military service. In 1970, he obtained a slot in the Marine Reserves and was stationed in America. As we’ve reported before, Trump benefited from four student deferments in college and one medical deferment (Trump later said that was for bone spurs in his heels), before being classified 4-F, unfit to serve. Trump played baseball, tennis and squash during his college years. He once said attending a private military-style boarding school gave him "more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military." Our ruling Trump said Cuomo failed to ask Blumenthal about his "long-term lie" about his service in Vietnam. The video record shows that Cuomo asked Blumenthal to respond to the charge that he lacked credibility after misrepresenting his military record. Cuomo might not have mentioned Vietnam, but he certainly brought Blumenthal’s past distortions into the conversation. Cuomo could have pressed Blumenthal with follow-up questions, which he failed to do. But he did ask. We rate this claim False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/58a74cc9-0557-43fb-b0b9-45ba9de64db1 | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2017-02-09T14:49:26 | 2017-02-09 | ['Richard_Blumenthal', 'Vietnam'] |
pose-01025 | For victims of Superstorm Sandy: "We are going to be with them every step of the way in helping them to rebuild their lives." | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/1105/help-victims-superstorm-sandy-rebuild-their-lives/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Help victims of superstorm Sandy 'rebuild their lives' | 2013-01-20T06:00:00 | null | ['None'] |
tron-01905 | The red-faced TV news anchor | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/tvanchor/ | null | humorous | null | null | null | The red-faced TV news anchor | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11246 | You (Evan Jenkins) said your philosophy was ‘progressive mainstream’ back in 2003. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/may/02/patrick-morrisey/did-evan-jenkins-once-say-his-philosophy-was-progr/ | The accusations flew fast and furious in a Fox News-sponsored debate between three Republican Senate contenders in West Virginia. We’re checking several claims from the May 1 debate, which featured former coal CEO Don Blankenship, U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins, and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. Each is running for the nomination to face Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in the general election. Here, we’ll fact-check one of several assertions Morrisey made about Jenkins’ past Democratic affiliation. As we’ve previously noted, Jenkins was initially registered as a Democrat, then switched to Republican, then back to Democratic when he sought a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1993. He remained a Democrat until July 2013, when he became a Republican to successfully challenge U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va. In the debate, Morrisey addressed Jenkins and said, "You said your philosophy was ‘progressive mainstream’ back in 2003." (It’s at about the 5:10 mark here.) We found that Jenkins did use those words, although Morrisey glossed over some context about the comment. Morrisey’s camp pointed us to an Aug. 13, 2003, article in the Herald-Dispatch newspaper of Huntington, W. Va. The article addressed West Virginia’s 2004 gubernatorial election, in which incumbent Democratic Gov. Bob Wise declined to seek another term. Manchin easily won the Democratic primary and the governorship that fall. With the headline, "Some say governor is right not to run," the story quotes Jenkins about the still-developing candidate field for the governorship. At the time, Jenkins was a Democratic state senator. Here’s the relevant part: "This is an opportunity for Democrats, who I hope will put forth a nominee who can chart a course that gets away from the politics of the past and talk about addressing some of our tough economic development challenges," Jenkins said. "I hope the end result is a candidate who will talk about progressive mainstream issues and not talk about coalition building of special interest groups. I think voters in the mainstream are tired of politics of the past and ready for some new, strong leadership." So Jenkins definitely said the words "progressive mainstream." But Morrisey’s characterization of the comments are somewhat off. Jenkins didn’t exactly say the term described his own "own philosophy," as Morrisey charged during the debate. Rather, Jenkins was using the phrase to describe the philosophy a hypothetical gubernatorial candidate might pursue. It’s also worth noting that, unlike today, the term "progressive" was not used as widely as a near-synonym for "liberal" back in 2003. The specific policies that Jenkins mentioned in the 2003 exchange were not ones considered central to the "progressive" agenda today, such as abortion rights and gun control, but rather economic development, which is not an issue with support that’s exclusive to either the left or the right. Indeed, the overall gist of Jenkins’ remarks focuses on ditching the "politics of the past" and not kowtowing to "special interest groups." Our ruling Morrisey said to Jenkins, "You said your philosophy was ‘progressive mainstream’ back in 2003." Jenkins did use those words in an aspirational tone for a 2003 newspaper article. But Jenkins was talking about issues a hypothetical Democratic gubernatorial candidate should run on, not his own political philosophy. We rate the statement Half True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Patrick Morrisey | null | null | null | 2018-05-02T18:02:12 | 2018-05-01 | ['None'] |
goop-00711 | Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie In “New Scandal,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/brad-pitt-margot-robbie-scandal/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie NOT In “New Scandal,” Despite Report | 1:06 pm, July 2, 2018 | null | ['Brad_Pitt'] |
goop-01779 | Kylie Jenner “Using” Tyga For “Attention,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kylie-jenner-using-tyga-made-up/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Kylie Jenner NOT “Using” Tyga For “Attention,” Despite Report | 10:33 am, January 20, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00492 | Says Winston Churchill said, "The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists." | false | /texas/statements/2018/aug/07/greg-abbott/greg-abbott-misquotes-winston-churchill-fascism/ | In a wee-hours tweet, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott presented a meme showing celebrated British statesman Winston Churchill saying: "The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists." In his 1:10 a.m. Aug. 7, 2018 tweet, Abbott prefaced his citation of Churchill, who twice served as England’s prime minister: "Some insights are timeless." Why Abbott posted the quotation might be explained by the headline on the meme above the purported Churchill quotation; it says: "Churchill on the left wing." Later the same morning, multiple others--including Wes Wilson of Austin’s KXAN TV news staff--responded on Twitter by asserting that Churchill didn’t make the statement shared by Abbott. Also, within 10 hours of the Abbott tweet's appearance, it was no longer posted. Abbott then told reporters, Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune reported, that it was irrelevant to him "who may or may not have said that in the past. I didn’t want to be accused of plagiarism for saying it. If no one else said it, attribute the quote to me because it’s what I believe in." Like other news organizations, meantime, we'd already started to check the accuracy of the quotation. Text down the left side of the Abbott-shared meme mentioned the 9gag.com site, which TechCrunch, a technology news website, described in 2017 as "a Hong Kong-based site that hosts and distributes funny pictures, videos and memes." We visited the site and spotted the same Churchill meme under the headline: "A reference to G20 Thought you might enjoy this quote." We didn’t spot a posting date on the meme. But reader comments below it start from July 10, 2017. Our phone and email inquiries about Abbott’s claim didn’t draw elaboration from Abbott’s campaign spokesman. Experts spot no evidence Churchill made statement Separately by email, the chief curator of the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri, Timothy Riley, told us that there’s no evidence to suggest Churchill made the quoted statement in over 15 million words that he wrote encompassing his speeches, articles, books and other writings. "Whether he uttered the words in conversation is unknowable, but I am not aware of any of Churchill’s contemporaries who record or recall the statement," Riley wrote. Separately, the research director of a Hillsdale College project that has been publishing Churchill’s papers responded to us by advising that its internal archive folding in Churchill’s writings, speeches and official biography show no sign of Churchill making the Abbott-quoted statement. Soren Geiger said: "I feel confident in saying that Churchill never said the statement." Generally, Geiger said, "if anything sounds witty or edgy, people can quickly believe that Churchill said it." We asked Geiger if Churchill made other comments about future fascists. By email, Geiger also provided a copy of Churchill’s July 27, 1943, speech about World War II and Italy to the House of Commons. In it, Churchill said: "The keystone of the Fascist arch has crumbled, and, without attempting to prophesy, it does not seem unlikely that the entire Fascist edifice will fall to the ground in ruins, if it has not already so fallen. The totalitarian system of a single party, armed with secret police, engrossing to itself practically all the offices, even the humblest, under the Government, with magistrates and courts under the control of the executive, with its whole network of domestic spies and neighbourly informants – that system when applied over a long period of time, leaves the broad masses without any influence upon their country’s destinies and without any independent figures apart from the official classes." Our ruling Abbott said that Churchill said, "The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists." Abbott drew the quotation from a gag website,it appears, and neither he nor the site made available factual backup. Experts on Churchill’s writings and speeches say there’s no evidence Churchill made the statement. We rate Abbott's since-deleted claim False. FALSE – The statement is not accurate. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com UPDATE, 3 p.m., Aug. 7, 2018: We updated this fact-check to add Abbott's response to reporters about why he posted the quotation. This addition didn't change our rating of Abbott's claim. | null | Greg Abbott | null | null | null | 2018-08-07T12:10:39 | 2018-08-07 | ['None'] |
hoer-00844 | New Orleans Library Book Donation Request | true messages | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/library-book-donation.html | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | New Orleans Library Book Donation Request | April 2006 | null | ['None'] |
snes-04690 | Hillary Clinton will soon be indicted on racketeering charges. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-federal-racketeering-charges/ | null | Ballot Box | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Hillary Clinton to Be Indicted on Federal Racketeering Charges | 30 May 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15125 | There has never been a panther attack in the history of Florida. | mostly true | /florida/statements/2015/sep/08/ron-bergeron/no-human-has-been-attacked-florida-panther-state-h/ | A state wildlife official opposed plans to alter protections for the Florida panther, saying there was no pressing reason to fear the big cats. On Sept. 2, 2015, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission considered a policy proposal that critics said would have undercut efforts to expand the population. Opponents said the proposal favored ranchers, who have complained about panthers eating livestock and potentially threatening family members. Commissioner "Alligator" Ron Bergeron said he’d never had reason to be afraid of a panther. "I’ve been within three yards of panthers, multiple times," said Bergeron, a Broward County paving contractor who has been a commissioner since 2007. "There has never been a panther attack in the history of Florida." (Watch his comments here, at the 3:10 mark.) The commission voted 4-1 to approve the proposal, with Bergeron casting the lone vote against it. The group agreed to change the plan the next day, adding language Bergeron wanted to clarify the state would continue working with the federal government using "available staff and budgetary resources." The overall proposal still said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and not the state, will take the lead on efforts to grow the panther population in central and north Florida. We got to wondering, was he right about the felines never attacking a person? Well, none that anyone can prove. Panther primer Florida panthers are a subspecies of cougar that once roamed across the state. A male panther requires about 200 miles of open territory to thrive, so human expansion and development in Florida devastated the cat population. Since panthers historically prey on white-tailed deer and other animals, livestock often are a substitute. Ranchers would routinely shoot the cats until the animals became protected from hunting in 1958. The federal government declared panthers an endangered species in 1967, and the state did the same in 1973. By then there were as few as 20 to 30 panthers left. They’ve rebounded since then to between 100 and 180, but that doesn’t mean everything is great. A record 30 cats were killed in 2014, most by cars in Collier and Hendry counties. The panthers also had killed a record number of livestock and pets that year. While farm animals fare poorly when panthers are about, the cats usually give humans a wide berth. A Conservation Commission spokeswoman backed up Bergeron, confirming to PolitiFact Florida that in modern times, there had never been a verified panther attack on a human in the state. That’s the wide consensus, and is a part of the agency’s website and literature — even in a handout that says what to do to if a panther attacks. We should note there have been cougar (or puma, or mountain lion, or whatever you want to call them) attacks on people in other parts of the country. For example, a 35-year-old man was killed by a mountain lion while working on his bicycle in a wilderness park in Orange County, Calif., in 2004. The same cat attacked and injured a 30-year-old woman biking in the same area later that day. In 2008, a mountain lion killed a 55-year-old man close to his home near Pinos Altos, N.M. University of Florida wildlife ecology professor Madan Oli had not heard of any panther ever attacking anyone in Florida. "I am not aware of any documented/verified case of a Florida panther attacking humans," Oli said in an email. "I think one can safely say that such an attack has not happened in this century, but I cannot say when the last attack – if it ever happened – took place." The part about verifying an attack is what makes the claim tricky. Even an attack near Lake Kissimmee in 2014 couldn’t be verified, because the alleged victim waited three weeks to report it. Gary Mormino, professor emeritus at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg Florida Studies program, said word of panther attacks used to routinely fill the newspapers. One particularly harrowing account from 1899 said a man named F.D. Biggs was on a picnic with his wife and 2-year-old when a "big catamount," a common alternative description for panthers, attacked the child. "The cat bit Mr. Smith terribly on the arm, and, fastening its claws in his clothing, tore his coat and shirt almost completely from his body," the article read. Biggs allegedly choked the animal to death and displayed its body in his Thonotosassa store. Mormino’s research showed that accounts of attacks appeared in the media up through the 1960s, in local papers and the New York Times. Whether they are reliable is a different question. "I am struck as to how many late 19th- and early 20th-century century stories involve panther attacks and humans," Mormino told PolitiFact Florida. "And I am sure these figures from the past who claimed to have been attacked by panthers were speaking the truth, for them. As to the scientific truth, I simply do not know and yield to the experts." Our ruling Bergeron said, "There has never been a panther attack in the history of Florida." While that’s the official stance of the state’s fish and wildlife agency, saying "never" is perhaps overstating the case a bit. There historically have been accounts of people tangling with the big cats. But many of those stories come from newspaper articles that date back a century or more. Wildlife experts agree that in modern times, there have been no verified panther attacks on a person in Florida. Bergeron would have been better served if he had used the words "verified panther attack." We rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Ron Bergeron | null | null | null | 2015-09-08T16:36:27 | 2015-09-02 | ['None'] |
tron-01062 | Michigan Just Made Sodomy a Felony Offense | mostly fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/michigan-makes-sodomy-a-felony-offense-mostly-fiction/ | null | crime-police | null | null | null | Michigan Just Made Sodomy a Felony Offense | Feb 9, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01970 | Oregon school districts are directing 24 percent of their food budgets to purchase local foods. That’s the highest percentage in the country. | half-true | /oregon/statements/2014/jun/18/oregon-department-agriculture/do-oregon-school-districts-spend-more-local-food-a/ | Several themes have converged in recent years to increase attention on local food production: a desire to reduce carbon footprints, to combat childhood obesity and to increase "food security," among others. Flourishing farmers markets around the state -- they’ve grown from a dozen in 1988 to more than 160 -- indicate that Oregon embraces eating food produced close to home. And so does the amount individual districts are spending on local food for school lunches, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. The claim: A first-ever national "census" tracking farm-to-school food results revealed a surprising statistic, according to a department news release: "The assessment shows that Oregon school districts are directing 24 percent of their food budgets to purchase local foods," the release said. "That’s the highest percentage in the country. We decided to check. The analysis: We emailed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm-to-School program to get a complete copy of the census, then fielded a call from Deborah Kane, the program’s national director. Kane said she was tapped two years ago to implement a newly created farm-to-school program. The effort, she said, stemmed from the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which provided a congressional mandate to encourage schools to buy food from local producers and processors. To establish baseline information, questionnaires were sent last spring to the nation’s more than 13,000 public school districts, said Kane, a Portland resident who most recently worked as vice president of food and farms at Ecotrust. About 10,000 districts responded. Kane directed us to Page 20 of the USDA Farm to School Census. Oregon, at 24 percent, ranks first in the "average percent of school food budget spent on local food." Just behind is Utah at 23 percent. Nevada is last, having apparently spent so little that it fell somewhere between zero and 0.9 percent. "Local," by the way, is defined in Oregon as foods grown and/or processed anywhere within the state. Other states have their own definitions, which range from foods grown within 25 miles of a school to foods produced in the region. Additional figures from the census are interesting, as well. In terms of dollars spent on local food by schools, California’s $51.2 million is at the top. Oregon’s $9.5 million is 13th, with Nevada again bringing up the rear. In checking Oregon’s 24 percent figure, however, we spotted a couple of snags. One, of the 197 public school districts in the state, only 123, or about 62.4 percent, chose to respond to the survey. Of those 123 respondents, 82, or about two-thirds, reporting having active farm-to-school programs. The 82 participating districts in Oregon represent about 714 individual schools with an estimated 366,066 students, according to the census. So the information about the amount Oregon districts spend for local food comes from slightly less than 42 percent of the state’s public school districts. Second, all of the data are self-reported. Neither the state Education Department nor the Agriculture Department tracks statewide figures for the amount of money individual districts spend on locally sourced food. The other states also self-reported their data, but with widely varying definitions of what constitutes "local." As a result, what appears in the state Agriculture Department’s news release as an indisputable fact appears far less reliable than stated. Oregon has spent time and money to make the program successful. It’s the only state to create farm-to-school coordinators in both the agriculture and education departments. A pilot program launched in 2011 grants about $1.2 million in every two-year budget cycle to schools to buy local food, and the program provides money to bring farmers into classrooms and to pay for school field trips to farms. But that sheds little light on the total amount Oregon schools spend on local food. The ruling: The Oregon Department of Agriculture, in underscoring the benefits of local food production, put out a news release saying Oregon school districts devote 24 percent of their food budgets to buying local food, the best rate in the nation. The release based its claim on the first USDA Farm to School Census, a collection of self-reported data from 10,000 of the country’s 13,000 public school districts. Among the many pages of information was one showing Oregon at the top in terms of percentages. All of the data, however, are self-reported, and state officials acknowledged that they have no way to verify the numbers. Districts also defined "local" in widely different ways, making comparisons difficult. Further, fewer than half of Oregon public school districts responded to the census, leaving the numbers incomplete. The claim contains elements of accuracy but leaves out important details that could lead to a different conclusion. We rate it Half True. | null | Oregon Department of Agriculture | null | null | null | 2014-06-18T17:03:53 | 2014-06-12 | ['Oregon'] |
snes-03174 | Meryl Streep was fired by director Ron Howard from a from a "Happy Days" reboot project for lying about Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/meryl-streep-fired/ | null | Junk News | null | David Emery | null | Meryl Streep Fired from Major Project for Lying About Trump? | 9 January 2017 | null | ['Ron_Howard', 'Meryl_Streep', 'Donald_Trump'] |
pose-00116 | Provide "funds to help communities, nonprofit organizations and police combat domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking." | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/121/fully-fund-the-violence-against-women-act/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | Fully fund the Violence Against Women Act | 2010-01-07T13:26:48 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01268 | America’s least-trusted news sources are also its most popular. | half-true | /punditfact/statements/2014/nov/06/leonard-pitts-jr/liberal-columnist-says-least-trusted-news-sources-/ | Many words have been said and many numbers crunched to explain political polarization in America. One theory is that liberals and conservatives swim in different waters when it comes to news and information. Liberal columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. offered a new spin on this theme. In a Nov.1 op-ed, Pitt said most of the fault lies on the right end of the spectrum. He blamed conservative hardliners who "are more rabid in support of those who validate their views than the rest of us are in pursuit of simple truth." To prove his point, Pitts cited a recent report from the Pew Research Center that explored the level of trust enjoyed by 36 news sources, ranging from television networks to partisan blogs. Pitts focused his column on two sources, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. In the Pew study, 39 percent of respondents said they distrusted Limbaugh, and 37 percent voiced the same misgivings about Fox News. Pitts noted that Rush Limbaugh "hosts the number one show on radio and Fox is the highest-rated cable news outlet." His conclusion? "America’s least-trusted news sources are also its most popular." A reader asked us to check that statement and we are happy to oblige. There are two elements to check: Are Limbaugh and Fox News the least-trusted? And are they the most popular with Americans? ‘Least-trusted’ Yes, the Pew survey found that more people distrusted Limbaugh and Fox News than any other outlet. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the two outlets are the "least-trusted" as Pitts claimed. To find that out, you need to account for the percentage of people who say that they trust Limbaugh and Fox News. For instance, while 39 percent of respondents said they distrusted Limbaugh, 12 percent said they trust him. And for Fox News, more people (44 percent) said they trust the network then said they distrust it (37 percent). Factoring that in, Limbaugh has the biggest trust gap of any of the 36 outlets polled. But Fox News is in the middle of the pack. Here’s the calculation for each outlet in the survey. News Source Pct. Trust Pct. Distrust Net trust CNN 54% 20% +34 ABC 50% 17 +33 NBC 50% 19% +31 CBS 46% 17% +29 BBC 36% 7% +29 PBS 38% 12% +26 Wall Street Journal 31% 10% +21 NPR 29% 9% +20 USA Today 33% 13% +20 New York Times 34% 17% +17 MSNBC 38% 22% +16 Google News 25% 11% +14 Washington Post 27% 14% +13 Economist 12% 2% +10 Fox News 44% 37% +7 New Yorker 14% 10% +4 Yahoo News 20% 16% +4 Blaze 6% 3% +3 Guardian 7% 4% +3 Bloomberg 11% 8% +3 Politico 7% 5% +2 Huffington 18% 17% +1 Slate 4% 3% +1 Mother Jones 6% 5% 1 Breitbart 4% 4% 0 Think Progress 2% 2% 0 Drudge Report 8% 9% -1 Daily Kos 2% 3% -1 Colbert Report 15% 16% -1 Daily Show 16% 18% -2 Ed Schultz 3% 5% -2 BuzzFeed 2% 8% -6 Al Jazeera 9% 16% -7 Hannity 12% 21% -9 Glenn Beck 10% 24% -14 Rush Limbaugh 12% 39% -27 So while it’s largely correct to conclude that Limbaugh’s program is the "least-trusted," the same cannot be as easily said about Fox News. Within cable news, Fox News rates last, but in a broader pool, it fares better. (We noted the Pew findings and called Limbaugh the "least trustworthy" news source in an Oct. 21 article. We did not do the same with Fox News.) ‘Most popular’ As for measuring popularity -- by the number of listeners, viewers or readers -- that can be complicated. For starters, the Pew survey includes newspapers, broadcast TV networks, cable TV networks, websites, radio organizations and individual radio shows. Pitts expanded upon his claim in terms of comparing Limbaugh to other radio programs and Fox News to other cable networks. We think that’s a fair metric. We’ll take Limbaugh first. Rachel Nelson with Premiere Networks, the company that distributes the Rush Limbaugh Show, said it is the No. 1 talk radio program in America. "The Rush Limbaugh Show is heard on nearly 600 stations by up to 20 million people each week and is the highest-rated national radio talk show in America," Nelson said. However, it’s hard to find objective confirmation for the size of the Limbaugh audience. In radio, the Arbitron/Nielsen Audio service is the leading source for independent data. In order to get firm statistics for Limbaugh, one would need to look at how his show performed in all of the markets where stations carry it. That has not been done. The closest approximation to Arbitron ratings comes from Talkers Magazine. In October, the magazine estimated Limbaugh’s audience at 12.5 million or more each week. But as the magazine notes, "these figures are non-scientific projections based upon a significant sample and do not represent exact Nielsen Audio or any other rating service totals." What might compete with Limbaugh? NPR’s Morning Edition. It airs on about 660 stations and according to NPR, in the Spring 2014 survey, 12,267,800 listeners tuned in each week, using Arbitron data. (In the Pew survey, 29 percent of people said they trusted NPR, 9 percent said they distrusted the public radio broadcaster.) Bob Thompson is a professor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. Thompson said the Arbitron numbers are themselves estimates based on statistical models. Thompson said that Morning Edition and the Rush Limbaugh Show could have similar-sized audiences. "Those Arbitron numbers put NPR reasonably in the range of 12.5 million people who listen that show," Thompson said. "It’s silly to look at them as exact, but they get us into the neighborhood." In summary, most everyone agrees that Limbaugh is near the top. But a definitive figure of listeners is elusive. On the television side, Pitts’ claim about Fox News popularity is right when compared to other cable news networks. Based on Nielsen data, in 2013, about 1.77 million viewers tuned in Fox News during the prime time hours between 8 and 11 p.m. That is more than the viewers for CNN and MSNBC combined. But we should note that all of the network news programs beat out Fox News many times over. On an average night, 8.4 million viewers chose NBC Nightly News, 7.7 million viewers picked ABC World News, and 6.5 million viewers tuned in CBS Evening News. "Cable news carves up a tiny slice of the population of this country," Thompson said. Our ruling Pitts said America’s least-trusted news sources are also its most popular ones and focused on the Rush Limbaugh Show on radio and Fox News on cable. According to the survey Pitts used, Limbaugh’s program is indeed the least-trusted news source. However, comparing the size of the gap between people who trust to those who distrust a source, Fox News falls in the middle of the pack. In terms of popularity, Fox News clearly is the most popular channel in its genre and the Rush Limbaugh Show is likely the most popular radio talk show (or at least very close to it). Pitts’ assessment also obscures the enormous reach of network television news. The lowest-performing network, CBS, has an audience three times that of Fox News. Pitts makes some valid points but he leaves out information that might lead someone to reach a different conclusion. We rate his claim Half True. | null | Leonard Pitts, Jr. | null | null | null | 2014-11-06T16:16:54 | 2014-11-01 | ['None'] |
goop-02000 | Britney Spears Did Get Engaged On Her Birthday, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/britney-spears-engaged-birthday-sam-asghari/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Britney Spears Did NOT Get Engaged On Her Birthday, Despite Report | 2:15 am, December 20, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11581 | Rep. Paul Gosar asks Capitol Police to arrest illegal immigrants attending State of the Union. | true | /punditfact/statements/2018/feb/01/usa-train-news/rep-paul-gosar-asks-police-arrest-illegal-immigran/ | A Republican representative from Arizona contacted law enforcement in response to reports that Democrats planned to bring Dreamers, immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union. "Rep. Paul Gosar asks Capitol Police to arrest illegal immigrants attending State of the Union," stated the Jan. 30 headline on USA Trainnews, a right-leaning website. Facebook users flagged the post as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social network’s efforts to combat fake news. However, we found that the article correctly cites Gosar’s efforts to summon law enforcement to arrest Dreamers. The fate of Dreamers, which played a role in the January federal government shutdown, appears uncertain. In September, Trump announced that he was ending Obama’s program that temporarily deferred deportation for certain illegal immigrants, prompting talks about how to come up with a permanent solution. A White House framework would offer a path to citizenship over 12 years in exchange for $25 billion for the border wall and other improvements, but members of both parties have raised objections. Gosar, who was first elected to his Arizona district in 2010, received an A+ from NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for lower levels of immigration. Gosar posted a few tweets from his U.S. House account at 1:33 p.m. Jan. 30, hours before Trump’s State of the Union address: "Today, Congressman Paul Gosar contacted the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asking they consider checking identification of all attending the State of the Union address and arresting any illegal aliens in attendance. "Additionally, Congressman Gosar asked that they arrest those using fraudulent social security numbers and identification to pass through security. "Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress. Any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise, should be arrested and deported." Gosar’s tweet drew criticism from members on both sides of the aisle on twitter. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., fired back at Gosar: "Oh my goodness, Rep. Gosar. Dreamers don't pose a threat to us,'' she tweeted. "This is so drastic and cruel. Dios mío." A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said that Ryan clearly does not agree" with Gosar's suggestion. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin tweeted: "How many Republican members of the House and Senate will condemn this attempt to punish Dreamers who were brought to this country as kids?" Gosar’s chief of staff Tom Van Flein told PolitiFact that Gosar spoke on the phone with the Capitol Police chief, but he didn’t know how the police ultimately responded to Gosar’s request. We sent an email and left messages for spokespersons for the Capitol Police and the Justice Department and did not get a reply. USA Trainnews wrote that "Rep. Paul Gosar asks Capitol Police to arrest illegal immigrants attending State of the Union." Gosar tweeted on Jan. 30 that he contacted police and Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking that they arrest any illegal immigrants attending the State of the Union. We rate this claim True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | USA Trainnews | null | null | null | 2018-02-01T12:19:14 | 2018-01-30 | ['None'] |
hoer-00098 | Anthrax in Tide Detergent Packs | bogus warning | https://www.hoax-slayer.com/anthrax-tide-detergent-hoax.shtml | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Hoax Warning - Anthrax in Tide Detergent Packs | 5th January 2012 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12550 | Says Jon Ossoff wants to "allow illegal immigration." | mostly false | /georgia/statements/2017/apr/17/donald-trump/trump-makes-false-claim-about-jon-ossoffs-immigrat/ | A day before a special election in Georgia to replace former U.S. Rep. Tom Price, President Donald Trump went on Twitter to criticize the top Democratic contender. "The super Liberal Democrat in the Georgia Congressioal (sic) race tomorrow wants to protect criminals, allow illegal immigration and raise taxes!" Trump tweeted April 17. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com Eighteen candidates from all parties are seeking Atlanta’s 6th Congressional District seat, which Republicans have held for decades and is now up for grabs after Price joined the Trump administration as secretary of Health and Human Services. While Trump did not explicitly name Jon Ossoff in his tweet, the 30-year-old Democrat has emerged as the leading contender in the closely-watched race. In his tweet, Trump inaccurately characterized Ossoff’s immigration stance. The candidate has spoken in favor of securing the U.S. borders. The White House did not provide comment. Ossoff dismissed Trump’s tweet. "While I’m glad the president is interested in the race, he is misinformed," Ossoff said in a statement. At an April 9 candidate forum, Ossoff spoke in favor of securing the borders. He did, however, have harsh words for Trump’s immigration promise to deport all undocumented immigrants. "The notion that we are going to massively deport more than 11 million people is absurd. There is no way a program like that could be implemented constitutionally, in a way that is fiscally responsible or in a way that is humane," Ossoff said. "The only real solution is comprehensive immigration reform that secures our borders and provides a path to legal status for non-felons who are here without proper documentation." That message is also delivered in a civil rights and liberties section on his campaign website. "America needs a strong border policy that protects American citizens and American jobs," the section said. "We should welcome those strivers who, like our own forebears, seek the opportunity to work hard, play by the rules, and build better lives in America." Ossoff also scoffed at another idea Trump floated during the presidential campaign. Ossoff’s campaign website says he believes "it’s unconstitutional to ban anyone from entering our country on religious grounds." Trump’s executive orders to temporarily stop the entry of individuals from certain countries have been criticized by immigrant advocates and Democrats as a "Muslim ban." (Those orders have been halted by courts.) NumbersUSA, an advocacy group that promotes reduced immigration, rates candidates on a wide range of issues, such as their position on amnesty, ending birthright citizenship and border security. On whether Ossoff is on the side to secure the border, NumbersUSA gave Ossoff a "Yes" rating. NumbersUSA said it bases its ratings on responses to its survey or on candidate statements on campaign websites and in news reports. Trump’s tweet called out Ossoff for wanting to "protect criminals" and "raise taxes." But those characterizations also misrepresent the facts. Ossoff’s campaign website said he would work to empower law enforcement with tools and resources needed to bring down organized criminals, but would also seek to reduce mass incarceration of nonviolent offenders. Ossoff also said he would work to "reduce the tax burden on small businesses and simplify small business tax filing." Our ruling In a tweet alluding to Ossoff, Trump tweeted that Ossoff wants to "allow illegal immigration." Trump’s vague attack mischaracterizes Ossoff’s stance. Unlike Trump’s plan, Ossoff’s approach to immigration includes a path to citizenship or legal status for immigrants here without permission. Ossoff has also criticized Trump’s one-time promise to deport all immigrants in the country illegally as not feasible. Trump neglects that Ossoff supports strong border security — to prevent illegal immigration. We rate Trump’s statement Mostly False. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2017-04-17T15:57:45 | 2017-04-17 | ['None'] |
bove-00226 | Arun Jaitley Claims More Violence In Kerala During Left Rule: Is It True? | none | https://www.boomlive.in/arun-jaitley-claims-more-violence-in-kerala-during-left-rule-is-it-true/ | null | null | null | null | null | Arun Jaitley Claims More Violence In Kerala During Left Rule: Is It True? | Aug 08 2017 2:31 pm, Last Updated: Aug 08 2017 2:48 pm | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06207 | Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/08/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-some-billionaires-have-tax-rate-/ | On Dec. 6, 2011, President Barack Obama gave a speech at Osawatomie High School in Osawatomie, Kan., the site of an address by Theodore Roosevelt just over a century earlier. In it, Obama sought to warn Americans about the perils of economic inequality. Here’s what he said: "Today, the wealthiest Americans are paying the lowest taxes in over half a century. This isn’t like in the early ‘50s, when the top tax rate was over 90 percent. This isn’t even like the early ‘80s, when the top tax rate was about 70 percent. Under President Clinton, the top rate was only about 39 percent," he said. "Today, thanks to loopholes and shelters, a quarter of all millionaires now pay lower tax rates than millions of you, millions of middle-class families. Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent. One percent." Several readers urged us to check Obama’s claim that "some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent." Before we can begin answering this question, we’ll need to define "billionaire." It means someone whose wealth is worth $1 billion or more. In 2010, there were slightly more than 400 billionaires in the U.S., according to the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. Fewer Americans have income of more than $1 billion. Every year, the Internal Revenue Service releases aggregated income and tax data on the 400 filers who had the highest incomes that year. In the most recently released data, covering 2008, to be included required an adjusted gross income of least $110 million. A back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests that somewhere between zero and 100 people had an income of at least $1 billion in 2008. So the first thing to point out is that we are talking about a very small pool of people. And one of the consequences of having a very small pool of people to study is that data is scarce. This is especially true given that privacy rules carefully shield income and tax data for individuals from public scrutiny. "I don't know of any data that address the question," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. But we gave it our best shot. When it comes to individuals with wealth of $1 billion or more, you really can’t draw any conclusions at all. Any estimate of how much a Forbes 400 member pays in taxes is pure speculation. And while there’s undoubtedly some overlap between the Forbes and IRS lists, they're not a match. So we’re left with the IRS list. (And we're assuming that the White House was not sifting through the IRS data behind the list, since doing so would be illegal.) But the list doesn't really back up Obama’s point. • As we indicated, inclusion on the IRS 400 list doesn’t mean you are a billionaire. It means you had an adjusted gross income of least $110 million. The actual number of billionaires on the list is unknowable. It's not possible to say with certainty even how many of them had income of $1 billion or more or how many might have incomes of less than $1 billion but wealth that would put them in the billionaires' club. • The IRS data hints at -- but doesn’t confirm -- that some of the 400 tax filers had effective tax rates of 1 percent. (An effective tax rate is not the official tax rate on the books but rather your tax bill measured as a percentage of your total income before deductions, exclusions, exemptions and credits.) The IRS offers a breakdown of what the 400 top earners paid in effective tax rates: 0 percent to 10 percent: 30 filers 10 percent to 15 percent: 101 filers 15 percent to 20 percent: 112 filers 20 percent to 25 percent: 52 filers 25 percent to 30 percent: 46 filers 30 percent to 35 percent: 59 filers So 30 of the top 400 filers paid an effective tax rate of between zero and 10 percent. How many of those paid 1 percent? We have no way of knowing. If the percentages are distributed roughly equally across the range provided, it would mean three to five tax filers paid an effective tax rate of 1 percent or less. But it could easily be zero filers paying that little. We simply don’t know -- and we also have no idea whether these filers are actually billionaires. We also tried to extrapolate by looking at a different data set, from Williams’ group. The Tax Policy Center tracks which Americans have zero liability for the federal individual income tax. It found that of 433,000 tax filers with incomes of at least $1 million, 7,000 of those -- or 1.6 percent -- paid no federal income tax. But this data doesn’t help much, either. First, the cutoff is $1 million in income; the data are silent on how many of those people have $1 billion in wealth. And second, this only covers the federal income tax; the 7,000 people in question might be liable for enough other kinds of federal taxes to rise above a 1 percent effective tax rate. The Washington Post Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, reported that the White House offered as backup "a clip of a conversation on Bloomberg TV, in which correspondent Gigi Stone made this assertion during a discussion about the tax strategies that the very wealthy use to avoid paying taxes. The TV clip was promoted by the left-leaning website Think Progress. Stone quoted froma Bloomberg News article last month that reported on such tax strategies, which mostly involve complicated ways to defer paying capital gains taxes. But the article never made the 1 percent claim. It also noted that the IRS had gotten more hostile to such transactions in recent years." We watched the clip and read the article and agree with the Fact Checker that the material isn’t strong enough to support Obama’s claim. Stone cited the now-famous example of billionaire Warren Buffett paying a lower effective tax rate, 17 percent, than his secretary. "The real figure for billionaires," she continued, "is often a lot smaller than that. Sometimes they even have a tax rate as low as 1 percent. That’s because they derive the bulk of their income from stock appreciation, and they use complicated strategies -- some of them -- to make sure that some of those gains don’t get classified as taxable income." Stone cited the IRS 400 study in her report, and she has a point that tax rates for those very rich filers "is often a lot smaller" than Buffett’s 17 percent rate. At least 131 of the 400 had a lower rate than Buffett, according to the IRS. Her next comment -- "sometimes they even have a tax rate as low as 1 percent" -- is less certain. Finally, we were unable to get any additional backup from the White House for the figure Obama used. Our ruling Stone’s remark that "sometimes (billionaires) even have a tax rate as low as 1 percent" may be an acceptable shorthand for cable television chatter, but as a linchpin statistic in a major policy address by the president, the claim falls short. The best publicly available data, the IRS 400, suggests that it’s possible that some billionaires pay an effective tax rate of 1 percent or less. But this data doesn’t confirm it. In addition, the IRS 400 is made up primarily of people with less than $1 billion in annual income, and provides no information about whether a tax filer on the list has $1 billion in wealth. Despite this, Obama made it sound like a certainty that "some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent." He would have been on safe ground if he’d noted that more than half the filers on the IRS 400 list had an effective tax rate of 20 percent or less. Obama did not have to gild the lily with a statistic this weak. If he wasn’t able to back it up with hard statistics, he shouldn't have said it. Because of that same uncertainty, we can't rule out that there isn't a billionaire out there who has a tax rate as low as 1 percent, but we haven't been able to find any evidence that there is. If the White House or anyone else produces evidence that it's true, we'd be open to changing our ruling, but based on what we know, we rule it Mostly False. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2011-12-08T18:12:13 | 2011-12-06 | ['None'] |
pomt-02804 | Only 25 percent of what people buy is subject to Rhode Island’s sales tax. | false | /rhode-island/statements/2013/dec/01/joseph-henchman/tax-foundation-official-says-only-25-percent-what-/ | Rhode Island’s 7-percent sales tax is the second-highest rate in the nation. Whether it should stay that way, be reduced or even abolished, is being examined by the Special Joint Legislative Commission to Study the Sales Tax Repeal Act of 2013. During the commission’s most recent hearing, on Nov.19, it heard testimony from Joseph D. Henchman, vice president of the Washington D.C.-based Tax Foundation. Among other things, he said part of the reason Rhode Island’s sales tax rate is so high is because it taxes so little. "Only 25 percent of what people buy is subject to Rhode Island’s sales tax," Henchman said. "Only Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey have narrower sales taxes. You are exempting 75 percent of the economy from the sales tax already and imposing a higher rate on the rest that you do tax." Is Rhode Island’s sales tax really as narrow as Henchman says? Like most state sales taxes, Rhode Island’s is limited to the sale of so-called tangible goods, not services, such as lawn-mowing or legal fees. It is further diminished by about 83 categories of exempted items such as food, most clothing, medicines, and, more recently, art works and wine. Henchman told us he got Rhode Island’s 25 percent figure from analysis done by John L. Mikesell, chancellor’s professor of public and environmental affairs at the Indiana University. Mikesell is considered one of the nation’s experts on state taxation policies. Henchman said the figure came from a statistic Mikesell calls "breadth of base," which estimates how much of a state’s commerce is subject to its sales tax. Mikesell starts by taking a state’s total sales tax revenue and determining how much in retail sales was needed to produce that amount, a figure he calls the "implied retail sales tax base." He then expresses that base as a percentage of the state’s total personal income, the amount of money residents in the state have to spend. In 2011, Rhode Island’s 7-percent sales tax raised $824 million, which, by Mikesell’s calculation, required $11 billion in taxable sales. Its total personal income that year was about $44 billion, according to the state Department of Labor and Training. The $11-billion figure is 25 percent of $44 billion, and that’s the 25-percent figure that Henchman cited. But there’s a problem. Mikesell is measuring the percent of a state’s total personal income that is captured by its sales tax. Henchman was talking about the percent of a state’s total personal spending that is taxed, a very different amount. To get that figure, you’d have to know the total amount of retail sales in the state. Coming up with that number is next to impossible because the state doesn’t track sales it doesn’t tax, said Paul Dion, chief of revenue analysis for the Rhode Island Department of Revenue. "I can’t even tell you what our retail tax base is," Dion said. "We’d have to extrapolate that." In 2012, the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research was looking at that state’s sales tax rate and it used Mikesell’s percentage also, but it made the point that Mikesell’s comparison was to income, not sales. "In other words, 26.19 percent of Connecticut personal income is spent on goods and services subject to the sales tax," the report said. When we got back to Henchman, he said Mikesell’s personal income figure provides a uniform number that allows state-by-state comparisons. Dion agreed, and said when he heard Henchman’s statement, that’s how he understood it. Our ruling Joseph Henchman of the Tax Foundation said: "Only 25 percent of what people buy is subject to Rhode Island’s sales tax." But the figure he cited actually referred to personal income, not what people buy. In fact, no one knows what percentage of everything that Rhode Islanders buy is subject to the sales tax because no one calculates total spending. Dion might have understood what Henchman meant, but we have to go by what he said. We rule his statement False. Correction: In the initial version of this item, Joseph Henchman was incorrectly identified as John Henchman in the Source List. | null | Joseph Henchman | null | null | null | 2013-12-01T00:01:00 | 2013-11-19 | ['None'] |
pomt-12842 | We've dropped from a top 10 state in elementary reading to 30th in the nation under State Schools Superintendent Tony Evers’ watch. | mostly false | /wisconsin/statements/2017/feb/06/john-humphries/schools-candidate-john-humphries-says-tony-evers-o/ | In his bid for state school superintendent, John Humphries is trying to use incumbent Superintendent Tony Evers’ long tenure against him. "It's time for Tony Evers for State Superintendent to be held accountable for statewide outcomes," Humphries posted Jan. 12, 2017 on Facebook. "We've dropped from a top 10 state in elementary reading to 30th in the nation under his watch while other states have made substantial gains." Humphries, a consultant with the Dodgeville School District, is in a three-way primary battle with Evers and retired Beloit Superintendent Lowell Holtz. The primary election is Feb. 21, 2017. To back up his claim, Humphries’ campaign pointed to an analysis by the Wisconsin Reading Coalition, a grassroots group of educational advocates that wants changes in reading instruction. The group has endorsed Humphries and believes Evers has not pushed education schools to use new methods for instructing teachers how to teach reading, said Steven Dykstra, a psychologist who co-founded the coalition. The coalition published a historical look at Wisconsin’s reading ranks based on annual results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which bills itself as the "largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know." The ranking The NAEP test, taken by a small sample of students, is the best source to analyze Humphries’ claim, though it is not without drawbacks. Let’s take a look at the 4th-grade scores, the only elementary-school grade that NAEP tests. NAEP publishes two types of rankings. One simply orders states by their average reading scores. But because those scores often are too closely bunched to be significant, NAEP also reports how many states have statistically higher or lower scores. Here’s the history on Wisconsin’s rankings, using both methods: 1998: 6th by raw order; 1 state significantly higher 2003: 22nd, 8 states significantly higher 2005: 24th, 11 states 2007: 25th, 8 states 2009: 30th, 19 states 2011: 25th, 15 states 2013: 31st, 15 states 2015: 25th, 12 states So by the cruder measure, the raw ranking, Wisconsin was a top-10 state. The most recent year showed a ranking of 25th -- not the 30th Humphries claimed. But its ranking has been as low as 31st on 4th-grade reading during Evers time as superintendent. (Wisconsin’s scores were stagnant while the national average increased). On Evers’ watch? So the history helps Humphries’ case, but did that decline come, as Humphries claimed, under Evers’ watch? Only if you define Evers’ "watch" as dating to 2001, when he was appointed deputy superintendent of public instruction under newly-elected State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster. Evers took control of the agency after he won the spring 2009 election. At that point, Wisconsin’s reading rank already had fallen to 30th, with 19 states significantly ahead. That gives a different perspective on Evers’ record. Comparing the first test in Evers’ time atop the agency to the most recent, the ranking improved from 30th to 25th, and from 19 states significantly better to 12 states. Two final notes before we grade this. The picture for Wisconsin is somewhat brighter using the second, more statistically precise ranking method published by NAEP. In 1998, Wisconsin was sixth in raw order, but only one state was "significantly higher." In the most recent three tests, Wisconsin’s rank in raw order was 25th to 31st, but only 12-15 states were "significantly higher." The state Department of Public Instruction, the agency Evers heads, has used both measurements in its public statements on NAEP over the years. Finally, Wisconsin looks better on 8th-grade reading, where it ranks 9th. But Humphries’ claim focused on referenced elementary school, generally considered Kindergarten-5th grade. Our rating Humphries said Wisconsin has "dropped from a top 10 state in elementary reading to 30th in the nation" under Evers. The drop is real, by an oft-cited ranking from a credible source, but the latest rank is 25th, not 30th. And Facebook readers who aren’t deeply familiar with Evers' career might assume from Humphries claim that the decline happened while Evers was state superintendent. Evers was a top staffer for much of that time, but most of the decline came before he took over. We rate the claim Mostly False. Share the Facts Politifact 3 6 Politifact Rating: "We've dropped from a top 10 state in elementary reading to 30th in the nation" under State Schools Superintendent Tony Evers’ watch. John Humphries Wisconsin state school superintendent candidate In a Facebook post Thursday, January 12, 2017 01/12/2017 Read More info | null | John Humphries | null | null | null | 2017-02-06T05:00:00 | 2017-01-12 | ['None'] |
tron-02406 | Senator Feinstein Said That “All Vets Are Mentally Ill” | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/senator-feinstein-vets/ | null | military | null | null | null | Senator Feinstein Said That “All Vets Are Mentally Ill” | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14268 | Mexico receives "approximately $24 billion a year in remittances from Mexican nationals working in the United States. The majority of that amount comes from illegal aliens." | half-true | /arizona/statements/2016/apr/08/donald-trump/donald-trump-claims-most-wire-transfers-mexico-are/ | Donald Trump’s new plan to get Mexico to pay for a wall along the Southern border is drawing comments from all sides. Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said if the plan works, it’s "fantastic." President Barack Obama, on the other hand, called it "half-baked." The plan, released on April 5, 2016, reads as a series of hypotheticals. Trump claims barring undocumented immigrants from sending wire transfers would entice Mexico to pay for the wall. "They (Mexico) receive approximately $24 billion a year in remittances from Mexican nationals working in the United States. The majority of that amount comes from illegal aliens," Trump said. In turn, Trump argues that he would not let the wire transfer ban go into effect if Mexico contributes "the funds needed to the United States to pay for the wall." We were curious as to whether most Mexican wire transfers, using services such as Western Union, come from undocumented immigrants. Hard to tell We did not hear back from Trump’s press office but readily found data on remittances -- or how much money is transferred from the United States to Mexico. According to Bank of Mexico, there was $24.77 billion in remittances to Mexico in 2015. So Trump’s first claim checks out, but the second part is not that simple. "We don’t know of any estimate by any organization or researcher of what share of remittance senders are unauthorized immigrants – or indeed are immigrants of any legal status," said Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokeswoman at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. "Keep in mind that some number of U.S. born who are of Mexican heritage might also still send remittances." San Diego State University economics professor Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes worked on a paper on remittances published in the 2005 Economic Review. The paper estimates that 75 percent of undocumented Mexican immigrants have the probability to remit money. It also notes that these immigrants send almost $439 a month on average to Mexico. The Pew Research Center estimates that there are 5.6 million undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the United States as of 2014. Using these three numbers, Alfredo Cuecuecha Mendoza, an economic expert and president of El Colegio de Tlaxcala, A.C. in Mexico, estimates that 48 percent of remittances are sent by undocumented Mexican immigrants. Overall, Pew estimates that there are 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Amuedo-Dorantes said undocumented immigrants are more likely to remit money than documented immigrants, who are often settled with their family in the United States. "That said, it is also the case that legal migrants have better paying jobs and, in absolute terms, are able to remit more than the undocumented. So I am not sure his (Trump’s ) statement is correct," she said. Manuel Orozco, a remittance expert at Washington D.C. think tank Inter-American Dialogue, said it is "not possible" to say how much of the billions Mexico receives from remittances come from undocumented immigrants. "Sounds like a guess to me," said Roy Germano, a remittance expert and international relations professor at New York University. Our ruling Trump said, "they (Mexico) receive approximately $24 billion a year in remittances from Mexican nationals working in the United States. The majority of that amount comes from illegal aliens." The number is right, but saying the majority of that money comes from undocumented immigrants is a pure guess. One estimate, based on data more than a decade old, could associate 48 percent of remittances with undocumented Mexican immigrants. But that’s a stretch at best -- and it’s still not the majority -- as Trump claims. Experts we spoke with said there is no way to track undocumented remittance senders. All in all, we rate Trump’s claim Half True. | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2016-04-08T12:00:00 | 2016-04-05 | ['United_States', 'Mexico'] |
pomt-01511 | Says Sen. Mark Begich is ineffective because he has only "passed one bill, the naming of a building." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/sep/22/dan-sullivan/senate-candidate-dan-sullivan-says-sen-mark-begich/ | Dan Sullivan, the Republican Senate candidate in Alaska, is charging that his opponent, Sen. Mark Begich, is an ineffective lawmaker compared to other Alaska senators. According to a recent Sullivan campaign mailer, Begich -- who has been in office since 2009 -- has passed zero pieces of legislation during his first term. The Sullivan campaign reinforced this line of attack in a Facebook meme that said Begich has passed one bill, and all it did was name a building. This meme compared Begich’s record to that of other Alaska senators, saying that Begich’s predecessor, the late Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, passed 13 bills during his first term in the chamber, and that current Sen. Lisa Murkowski, also a Republican, passed five during her first term. We wondered: Did only one of Begich's bills pass during his first term? And is that the only way to measure his effectiveness as a legislator? We searched the Congressional Quarterly congressional database and found that since becoming a senator in 2009, Sen. Begich has only sponsored one bill that was eventually enacted, and that bill was to name an Alaska courthouse. So Sullivan has a point. But it’s a point that should be taken with a grain of salt. First, the claim has quickly become outdated. Last week -- after the mailer and meme first appeared -- the Senate and House passed a Begich-sponsored bill to increase veterans’ disability compensation that President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law. Second, counting the number of passed bills sponsored by a lawmaker is not the only -- or even the best -- way to gauge their effectiveness. In reality, there are many ways for a member of Congress to get desired legislation to the president’s desk beyond being the bill’s chief sponsor, said Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "There are some lawmakers who sponsor or cosponsor a lot of bills, but it doesn't reflect much of anything," he said, adding that the name on a bill that passes may be more of a reflection of who chaired the committee of jurisdiction rather than the member who actually drove the bill. Begich has co-sponsored 37 bills that became law. For seven of these laws, he was one of five or fewer co-sponsors, meaning he likely would have had tangible influence over the bill. And on three of these, Begich was the sole cosponsor of bills put forward by Murkowski, his fellow Alaska senator. All three dealt with Alaska-specific issues, such as Denali National Park. Meanwhile, a lawmaker’s name doesn’t have to be on a bill to accomplish legislative goals. Here are a few examples for Begich: • The Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2012 included a provision authored by Begich that explored the possibility of a deep-water port in the Arctic. Begich didn’t sponsor or co-sponsor that bill, which originated in the House, but he did sponsor the corresponding Senate version. • In a previous fact-check, we found that Begich had played a key role in getting Washington to open up the Arctic Ocean to oil drilling for the first time in decades. A lawyer involved with the efforts told PolitiFact at the time that Begich’s "biggest influence has been picking up the phone or having those people into his office or in hearings and saying ‘Dammit, we need to get this done.’ " • In 2012, Alaska Native tribal health programs signed an agreement with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs that allowed Alaska Native veterans to receive medical care in tribal areas, rather than having to travel to Anchorage or Seattle. The Alaska Army National Guard and the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium both said Begich supported that effort. • In the 2009 economic stimulus package, Begich fought for funds that benefited Alaska military bases and that helped build a hospital in Nome, Alaska, McClatchy reported. Additionally, Begich heads the Senate’s Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee, which has responsibilities beyond passing legislation, including improving the party’s relationship with traditionally Republican constituencies, according to his profile in Congressional Quarterly. So simply looking at the number of Begich-sponsored bills signed into law doesn’t give a full sense of his activities in the Senate. It’s also worth remembering that partisan gridlock has meant that a historically low number of bills are passing these days, meaning fewer opportunities for Begich -- or anyone else -- to get their names on a signed bill. As of July, about 800 bills have become law since Begich took office in 2009, according to compiled GovTrack data. If every member of Congress were to pass the same number of bills, that would break down to about 1.5 bills per person over the 5.5-year period. It was much different in Stevens’ first term, which ran from 1969 to 1974. Congress passed nearly 800 bills between 1973 and 1974 alone. (We don’t have data back further than that.) That breaks down to about 1.5 bills per person in just two years. Our ruling Sullivan said Begich is ineffective because he has passed only "one bill, the naming of a building." Technically, Sullivan has a point -- at the time Sullivan’s post went up, Begich had only sponsored one bill that was eventually enacted, and it named a courthouse. Another Begich-sponsored bill concerning veterans’ issues subsequently passed both the House and Senate. However, this is an oversimplification, since Begich has had success pushing a legislative agenda in ways that don’t end up with his name on an enacted bill. Notably, Begich has been one of a small number of co-sponsors on bills that have passed, and legislative language he sponsored has ended up enacted in bills with someone else’s name on it. The claim is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so we rate it Half True. | null | Dan Sullivan | null | null | null | 2014-09-22T12:24:03 | 2014-09-17 | ['Mark_Begich'] |
snes-01586 | The phrase "a shot of whiskey" originated in the Old West, as a single bullet was worth roughly the same as the drink and often substituted for currency. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shot-whiskey-origin/ | null | Language | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Did the Phrase ‘a Shot of Whiskey’ Originate in the Old West? | 14 October 2017 | null | ['American_frontier'] |
pomt-10014 | The 1908 Model T earned better gas mileage than a typical SUV sold in 2008. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/mar/19/barack-obama/model-t-better-mileage-SUVs/ | President Barack Obama lamented the nation's dependence on foreign oil when visiting an electric car testing center in California on March 19, 2009. "The problem is that, for decades, we have avoided doing what must be done as a nation to turn challenge into opportunity," Obama said. "As a consequence, we import more oil today than we did on 9/11. The 1908 Model T earned better gas mileage than a typical SUV sold in 2008. And even as our economy has been transformed by new forms of technology, our electric grid looks largely the same as it did half a century ago." We've written about Obama's positions on imported oil and the electric grid before. But the Model T gets better mileage than an SUV? Really? To answer this question, we first wanted to look at the mileage for "a typical SUV sold in 2008." There are many ways to slice and dice fuel efficiency numbers, and looking up the mileage for your own particular vehicle is far easier than deciding on mileage for a "typical SUV." But the Environmental Protection Agency found that light trucks — the class of vehicle to which SUVs belong — averaged 18.1 miles per gallon for model year 2008. The most efficient SUVs do much better than that — a Jeep Compass gets 23 mpg in the city and 28 on the highway — but Obama said "typical." To find out what a Model T averaged, we consulted Bob Casey, author of The Model T: A Centennial History , and the curator of transportation at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. (The museum is named for Ford but independent of the Ford Motor Co.) He said the best estimate for a Model T's mileage is 20 miles per gallon, though it might be able to get 25 under the right conditions. So technically Obama is right. But his implication is that we haven't gotten more fuel efficient in 100 years. And that's a reach. Let's look at the differences between today's SUVs and the Model T of 1908. To start with, Casey said, Model Ts reached top speeds of only 40 miles an hour. They guzzled motor oil, about a quart a month. The original tops were made of canvas, and they had no heating or cooling systems. They also had none of the safety features of modern cars: no bumpers, no air bags, no seat belts, no antilock breaks. The cars had large, skinny wheels to more easily clear the obstacles on rocky, rutted roads. Corner them too fast and they could tip over. And if you crashed, the windshield would usually shatter into sharp, jagged pieces that could slice you to ribbons. "The government would not allow anyone to sell Model Ts today because they're so unsafe," Casey said. "It's a car that no one would use on a regular basis today. It's not a fair comparison." We agree that the two cars are totally different. But Obama was careful in the way he phrased his statement: "The 1908 Model T earned better gas mileage than a typical SUV sold in 2008." As long as you don't consider any factors other than mileage, he's right. We rate his statement Mostly True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2009-03-19T13:50:57 | 2009-03-19 | ['None'] |
pomt-11068 | Busted: Obama is holding secret meetings to overtake the White House | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2018/jun/21/blog-posting/-website-falsely-claims-obama-was-bust/ | A recent clickbait headline claimed former President Barack Obama was caught holding private meetings in an effort to retake the White House. The headline spins the narrative in a way that could mislead readers. "Busted: Obama is holding secret meetings to overtake the White House," said a June 11, 2018, headline from Redstate Watcher, a conservative website that seeks "to forward the Trump agenda," according to the about section on its Facebook page. The same story appeared on several other conservative blog sites. Obama trying to take over the White House? It's not like that, based on what's been reported. Facebook 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.) "Obama is continuing to break former president protocol by trying to infiltrate current administration," the story said, citing a report from the Washington Examiner detailing Obama’s private, one-on-one meetings with prospective Democratic presidential candidates. The story said Obama was eager to play a role in advising leading Democrats and shaping the party’s future. The story said he has insisted that 2020 hopefuls continue framing discussions around the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election because it "sticks with voters in the long run." We decided to take a look at the story and see how its claim checked out. We found that its contents can be traced back to a June 11, 2018, report from Politico. (The Washington Examiner story cited Politico as its source). But the few discrepancies between the original Politico report and the post from Redstate Watcher cast a misleading light on the latter’s narrative. For one, the Politico report said of the Russia investigations: "Many of the conversations have circled around Obama holding forth about how much Democrats should be heading into the midterms talking about the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election versus focusing on kitchen table issues … Think about what’s going to stick in the long term." The Politico story also said nothing about Obama breaking any formal or informal protocol for past presidents or attempting to "infiltrate" President Donald Trump’s administration. We searched Google and Nexis and could not find any credible reports saying that. Redstate Watcher responded to a Facebook message by noting that the story featured "a clickbait title" and criticizing readers and fact-checkers who "pick and choose which words you feel like taking literally and which words you take figuratively." Obama did arrange multiple private meetings with potential Democratic presidential candidates. But the former president was never "busted" for working in secret to "infiltrate" and "overtake" the Trump White House. We rate this statement Mostly False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-06-21T10:21:40 | 2018-06-11 | ['White_House', 'Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-02237 | Says Charlie Crist "implemented Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan." | true | /florida/statements/2014/apr/15/progressive-choice/charlie-crist-implemented-jeb-bushs-plan-group-say/ | Gov. Rick Scott isn’t the only one attacking presumptive gubernatorial rival Charlie Crist. An outside group called Progressive Choice Florida has taken a few shots as well -- although there’s some question as to which side the group is on. In a flier that appeared in Florida mailboxes around March 30, the group attacks Crist’s history as a GOP member, saying "Conservative Republican Charlie Crist is no friend of progressive Democrats." It then lists several examples: "Charlie Crist’s record proves he is … -- Pro-life -- NRA A+ rated -- ‘Chain Gang Charlie’ -- Implemented Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan -- Signed petition banning gay marriage" Interesting to note is the mystery over exactly who funds Progressive Choice, the Florida chapter’s parent organization. It claims on a bare bones website that the larger group is "a diverse coalition of fair-minded, forward-thinking individuals and organizations advocating for leadership that stands firm on progressive principles and genuinely reflects the interests of all progressives across the nation." The site also lists the group as "a 501(c)(4) social welfare advocacy organization." There has been some speculation that Progressive Choice is a GOP front funded to draw Democratic voters away from Crist, particularly in the upcoming primary against Nan Rich. The group is not yet listed with the Federal Election Commission or the Florida Division of Elections, so contributions so far are untraceable. The mailer lists a Washington P.O. box and says the mailers were sent from Orlando. We’ve dealt with some of those claims before, but the part about Bush’s education plan gave us pause. Then we remembered that before he was governor, Crist was education commissioner. We dug into the archives to find out the whole story. The A+ Plan Bush floated the idea of overhauling Florida education standards during his 1998 campaign, crafting a plan with then-Education Commissioner Frank Brogan, who was his running mate. The plan suggested expanding the use of the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test, which at the time was new and administered to fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders. Student test performance (along with attendance and violence rates, and graduation rates at high schools) would be used to give schools a letter grade of A, B, C, D or F. The proposal rewarded with monetary bonuses schools that earned an A, or improved their grade in a year. Failing schools had two years to improve or would be turned over to the state. The state could then change school staff and implement changes as it saw fit. Students at F schools could transfer to private schools with taxpayer-funded vouchers. Critics were especially vocal about the vouchers, saying it would take much-needed funding away from public schools. The use of standardized test scores also was controversial. Bush was elected and announced his A+ Plan for Education his first month in office. This version required annual FCAT testing for grades 3 through 10 each year, with a passing grade required for promotion. The grading and voucher components remained, with higher school grades resulting in more funding. The Republican-controlled Legislature approved the plan in 1999. Enter Education Commissioner Crist. Crist won a statewide election for the post after Tom Gallagher, who became commissioner in 1999, resigned to run for U.S. Senate in 2000. Crist took office in 2001 and served until 2003, when the elected Cabinet post changed to an appointed position under a new law. One of Crist’s duties was to follow the education agenda set by Bush and the Legislature before Crist took office. His campaign acknowledged that Crist put Bush’s plan into action. "Charlie was education commissioner from 2001-2003, so of course he would be responsible for implementing A+," campaign spokesman Steve Geller told PolitiFact Florida in an email. "A+ was passed by the Florida Legislature ... and any education commissioner would have had to implement these plans." But did he support the plan he was putting into effect? Progressive Choice certainly thinks so. Jamie Fontaine-Gansell, a Progressive Choice spokeswoman, cited a 2000 Orlando Sentinel voter’s guide article in which candidate Crist said, "I am an ardent supporter of Gov. Jeb Bush's A+ plan, which provides for an even balance of testing and accountability and has proven to improve performance in our public schools." Then-Attorney General Crist tripped over standardized testing while running for governor in 2006, most notably being ridiculed for telling the Palm Beach Post he didn’t know what time of year the FCAT was administered to students, or even what a passing score was. He also waffled on strict education standards. ''I think it's important, as we make these decisions regarding education, we're willing to be flexible,'' he told the Miami Herald in 2006. "I'm willing to be flexible as it relates to the timing (of the FCAT), as it relates to the subject matter, as it relates to how students are prepared for the test. But I think it's important to test." During his current run for governor, Crist said he supported new Common Core standards and focusing on teacher support, spending most of his time bashing Scott’s early record of cutting school funding after Crist left office in 2011. Standardized testing hasn’t been a major talking point, but he hasn’t specifically opposed it, either. Meanwhile, Florida still embraces testing and its grading program, though it is considering new programs and testing regimes. Current Education Commissioner Pam Stewart this year suggested simplifying the process, focusing on new math and language arts parameters, and a new standardized test already being adopted. Stewart in February proposed a system based on a combination of test scores, grade level performance, graduation rates and college credit or industry certifications. She also wanted to get rid of monetary bonuses and penalties. It’s currently on the agenda in Tallahassee. Our ruling Progressive Choice Florida said Crist "implemented Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan." Since Crist was education commissioner after the plan was passed by the Legislature, that’s to be expected. When we went back to see if Crist approved of the plan’s details, he said he did. He has been a supporter of the FCAT and how it’s been used to grade schools. We rate the statement True. | null | Progressive Choice Florida | null | null | null | 2014-04-15T10:47:02 | 2014-03-30 | ['Charlie_Crist'] |
hoer-00464 | Posts About ISIS Attacks in Australia | statirical reports | http://www.hoax-slayer.net/bogus-posts-about-isis-attacks-in-australia-link-to-scam-website/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Bogus Posts About ISIS Attacks in Australia Link to Scam Website | February 11, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
snes-02713 | Devin Nunes' financial wealth is invested in a wine company with "strong ties" to Russia. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/devin-nunes-wine-russia/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Bethania Palma | null | Is Devin Nunes Invested in a Wine Company That Does Business in Russia? | 29 March 2017 | null | ['Russia'] |
pomt-09760 | The truth is any oil that would be drilled could be sent to any other country in the world, reducing our use of foreign oil not by one single drop. | half-true | /florida/statements/2009/oct/05/bill-nelson/Bill-Nelson-says-offshore-oil-drilling-in-the-Gulf/ | The whole fervor behind "Drill, baby drill!" was to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, right? We thought so, too. So listen to this: U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat opposing drilling closer to Florida's shoreline, says increased drilling in the Gulf of Mexico might not help America at all. "Supporters of opening up the eastern gulf say that we need to do it to help get America off foreign oil," Nelson said on the Senate floor in June. "Tell me then why isn't there a clause in the drilling amendment that was passed specifying that all oil and natural gas that would be produced in the eastern gulf … stay in the United States for domestic consumption? "But no, that's not there. Because the truth is any oil that would be drilled could be sent to any other country in the world, reducing our use of foreign oil not by one single drop." Naturally, we wondered if Nelson's claim about oil drilling in the gulf is true. His comments refer to the massive energy bill sitting in the U.S. Senate. The bill, officially called the American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009, would allow oil drilling within 45 miles of the Florida coastline and closer in areas near the Panhandle. We examined the 532-page bill to see what would become of that newfound oil and found no restrictions on where it ends up. We confirmed that with David Marks, press assistant at the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. "There are no restrictions in the bill," he said. While the bill contains no limits on where the oil can flow, there have been limits placed on American oil previously. During the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Congress authorized the construction of a Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to funnel oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska. But the approval came with a restriction: Alaska oil could not be exported. The ban remained in place until 1996, according to the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. So without a ban, the crude oil collected in the eastern Gulf of Mexico could indeed be shipped anywhere. Would it though? The answer is most likely not. Currently, almost all of the crude oil pumped in the western Gulf of Mexico is transported via a 10,000-mile pipeline network to U.S. shores. That crude oil is then mixed with imported crude oil and refined at onshore facilities into gasoline, jet fuel and kerosene. Some of the oil even becomes asphalt. Paul Hess, an analyst at the Energy Information Administration, said "very little" gulf crude oil is exported, if any. "It's a very small amount," Hess said. "We don't track that level of detail." Offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico produced about 1.17 million barrels of crude oil a day in 2008. In 2006, for instance, the EIA recorded crude oil exports in its gulf coast region — which is made up of more than just the Gulf of Mexico — at 1,000 barrels of crude oil a day. In 2008, there were no recorded exports. Mickey Driver, a spokesman with Chevron, said that all of his company's 200,000 barrels a day of gulf oil is shipped via pipeline to the United States, where it is consumed. "It would make no economic sense and it would absolutely make no process sense to do anything else," Driver said. In other words, why pay to ship gulf crude around the world when an oil-hungry U.S. market is right there waiting to pay for it? The United States already has to import about two-thirds of the crude oil it uses. It should be noted that a Brazilian company, Petrobras, is in the process of building a type of offshore refinery that would process crude oil offshore rather than build a pipeline to the Louisiana coast. That refined oil then would be moved by tanker ship. Petrobras America spokesman Ciro Ribeiro said the offshore processing facility will be up and running in 2010. "The destination should be the domestic market," Ribeiro said. "Any port in the Gulf of Mexico." Nelson is right when he says that "oil that would be drilled could be sent to any other country in the world," because the federal legislation doesn’t now include any limits. But he doesn't offer the broader context. History shows that most domestic crude oil is used domestically. On the whole, we rate Nelson's claim Half True. | null | Bill Nelson | null | null | null | 2009-10-05T10:19:51 | 2009-06-11 | ['None'] |
goop-02300 | Gigi Ha “Desperate” For Zayn Malik To Propose Because Joe Jonas Is Engage | 1 | https://www.gossipcop.com/gigi-hadid-propose-zayn-malik-engaged-joe-jonas/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Gigi Hadid NOT “Desperate” For Zayn Malik To Propose Because Joe Jonas Is Engaged | 9:52 pm, October 25, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02768 | Obamacare is going to increase the divorce rate. | false | /punditfact/statements/2013/dec/11/rush-limbaugh/rush-limbaugh-says-obamacare-will-cause-increase-d/ | If you think divorce is prevalent now, just wait. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh says marriage in the United States is poised to crumble for a whole new reason. Yes, the culprit is Obamacare. The point came up as Limbaugh chatted with a caller from Jacksonville, Fla., on his Dec. 6, 2013, talk show. Jim the caller: "Greetings, Rush. My concern is about unintended social consequences of the Obama No Care Act. Think about it. There's supplements for having a lower income. ... Will there be an incentive not to be married or to get divorced? You'll get incentives on the Obamacare side." Limbaugh: "You know, you are very shrewd, Jim, because there is a story we had, it might have been late last week, that people are divorcing in order to afford Obamacare. It is busting up families. Obamacare is going to increase the divorce rate." We decided to fact-check Limbaugh’s claim that "Obamacare is going to increase the divorce rate." A month-old anecdote The news story Limbaugh referenced was about a New York couple considering a divorce so they could qualify for subsidies individually to offset the cost of health care under the new law. The story did not address Limbaugh’s claim that the health care law will increase the country’s divorce rate, leading us to wonder if there is credible research to support his assertion. The early verdict: Experts say there is no evidence or research that suggests the health care law will grow the divorce rate. But the law does contain a "marriage penalty," which essentially means unmarried couples could pay less for health insurance because they have separate, smaller incomes than married couples whose combined income exceeds the cut-off for federal financial assistance. And at least one couple considered divorce to avoid increased health care costs. Emphasis on "considered." The Atlantic spotlighted one married couple to illustrate the "marriage penalty" disparity, and a CBS affiliate in New York picked up the story the next day. Writer Nona Willis Aronowitz told the magazine she got married in 2009 so her freelance filmmaker-husband Aaron Cassara could receive health insurance through her employer. But her job ended when her employer laid off her editorial division. The layoff left her with a COBRA plan that was more expensive but allowed her to maintain temporary health coverage at a group rate. Faced with a Jan. 1 end date for that coverage, which did not extend to her husband because it cost too much, she checked out her options on the New York health insurance exchange set up under the health care law. She and her husband earned more than 400 percent of the 2012 federal poverty level, or $62,040 for a family of two, which made them ineligible for premium assistance. Under the law, people whose family income is between 100 and 400 percent of federal poverty are eligible for premium support. However, had they not been married and sought health insurance on their own, their individual incomes would have qualified for them for subsidies because they would have been under the cut-off income for one person, or $45,980. "In our case, it would be worth it," Aronowitz said of getting divorced to CBS2. "In other people’s cases, where marriage is really, really important to them and they had a big wedding and it was this sacred experience, I think it would be a really tough decision for them." We reached out to Aronowitz to find out what’s happened in the month since word of her story broke. Aronowitz told PunditFact she recently obtained a full-time job and can now afford health insurance for her and her husband in 2014 on the state exchange. The couple, therefore, is not seeking a divorce. Broader impact? The health care law is not the first government program to have a "marriage tax" issue. It also comes up under current U.S. income tax law and for programs such as food stamps, temporary cash assistance and others. Whenever eligibility for a program depends on a sliding-scale subsidy based on income and family size, there is the potential for "encouraging" couples to marry or not marry, said Gail Wilensky, director of Medicaid and Medicare under President George H.W. Bush. Teasing out the effect of the Affordable Care Act marriage penalty on divorce rates would not be easy. "My guess is that at the most, this kind of effect is more annoying than impactful. You would have to be pretty indifferent as to whether you married or didn’t marry to have tax or subsidy consequences determine your decision," Wilensky said. "But small is not the same as none." In the case of health insurance, marriage actually also brings benefits. Married couples have more access to insurance, as many large employers offer family plans that extend to an employee’s married spouse and dependents. That’s why Aronowitz said she and her husband got married in the first place. According to an October 2013 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the percentage of uninsured married adults is about 15 percent of the population, compared to 33 percent for single adults living together. Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said married couples are most affected by the "marriage penalty" when two things happen: Neither person is eligible for affordable health insurance under an employer's plan, and the couple is eligible for a more sizable government insurance subsidy as two unmarried adults rather than as a married couple. But the law also contains some "marriage bonuses," similar to U.S. tax law, he said. Some companies will feel compelled to offer health insurance to their employees so they do not face tax penalties. Many will offer family insurance plans, which would be enticing for the married spouse of an employee, Burtless said. "I’m sure we’ll hear anecdotes over the next few months and years, and I’m sure some of the anecdotes will be described in occasional press stories," Burtless said. "But it will be many years, if ever, before a careful examination of the evidence shows whether the ‘marriage penalty’ in the ACA has a bigger impact discouraging marriage or encouraging divorce than the ‘marriage bonus’ in the ACA has in encouraging marriage or discouraging divorce." Limbaugh’s statement is "pure conjecture" at this point, said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of public policy and sociology at Johns Hopkins University. "It could also have a positive effect on marriage, as it lowers health insurance premiums for low-income couples (who have a higher divorce rate) and as it makes people healthier, which could increase their earnings," Cherlin said. "We don't know what the balance will be." Divorce statistics are a whole other matter. The country does not keep comprehensive data. One measure is the rate of divorce per 1,000 population. The divorce rate was 3.6 divorces per 1,000 population in 2011, according to rough numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, those CDC statistics are imperfect because several states do not report divorce and annulment data to the feds, including the most populous state of California. Divorce has been on the decline since 1980, said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Marriage has become more selective, and more couples are living together without getting married. Couples who are better educated and more affluent are more likely to get married and are less likely to divorce, he said. "So if Obamacare exacts a major marriage penalty on couples, it may increase divorce at the margins," he said. The oft-repeated stat that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce is essentially true for the overall population, but the odds decline when factors such as college education, religious affiliation, home life and marrying at a later age are considered, according to a 2012 report by the National Marriage Project and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values. An October 2013 report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found the likelihood of a marriage ending in divorce a bit lower, between 40-45 percent. We emailed Limbaugh's show but did not hear back. Our ruling Limbaugh said, "Obamacare is going to increase the divorce rate." There is concern about a "marriage penalty," which exists for other federal programs with sliding income eligibility scales, with the Affordable Care Act, and there is anecdotal evidence that at least one couple considered divorce to avoid it. (The postscript: She got a new full-time job and can afford insurance on the exchange, so they’re still married.) But there is no research that suggests this will substantially affect the country’s divorce rate, which is a little hard to measure in the first place. Experts said the effect may be marginal, as no one has done the research to nail down reasonable expectations. We rate this False. | null | Rush Limbaugh | null | null | null | 2013-12-11T13:49:50 | 2013-12-06 | ['None'] |
pomt-00547 | Our real unemployment is anywhere from 18 to 20 percent. Don't believe the 5.6. Don't believe it. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/16/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-real-unemployment-rate-18-20-per/ | Don’t trust government unemployment statistics, Donald Trump said during his presidential campaign announcement speech. "Our real unemployment is anywhere from 18 to 20 percent," Trump said. "Don't believe the 5.6. Don't believe it." We’ve previously debunked the notion that the government somehow cooks the books when it calculates the unemployment rate. But is there a legitimate statistic that reaches as high as 18 to 20 percent? (Trump's staff did not return inquiries from PolitiFact.) As it happens, there are measures of unemployment beyond the familiar unemployment rate (which, we’ll note, is actually 5.5 percent, not 5.6 percent as Trump said). However, none of the more expansive measures comes close to the level Trump suggests. The most expansive statistic calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, called the U-6 rate, is sometimes offered as a more "complete" picture of joblessness. It doesn’t just include those BLS officially considers "unemployed" but also those working part time for economic reasons as well as those who are "marginally attached" to the work force, meaning they want to work but have not looked for work recently enough to count as being actively in the labor force. Currently, the U-6 rate of "labor underutilization" is 10.8 percent. That’s higher than the more familiar 5.5 percent unemployment rate, but it’s also well below the 18 to 20 percent Trump claimed. So is there another credible way to calculate it? Maybe. One could assemble a more expansive measurement of under-employment than U-6 -- one that ropes in even more Americans whose job outlook has been affected by the weak post-recession labor markets. For instance, U-6 doesn’t count recent graduates who never entered the labor market in the first place because they feared there would be no jobs for them, and it doesn’t count people who chose to take care of their kids full-time, went back to school or retired early to avoid having to compete for a job. Pinpointing the size of this group is not possible given the type of data BLS collects, but we can at least calculate something approximating an upper limit. To do this, we can use data that shows the number of people 16 and over who are "not in the labor force" -- that is, those who are neither working nor looking for work. If you take the number of people in this category at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s term and compare it to the number today, it gives a sense of how many people have shied away from the workforce in the wake of the last recession. In January 2009, there were 80.5 million Americans 16 and over who were not in the labor force. Today, that number is slightly below 93 million. So the number not in the labor force has increased by about 12.5 million. If you factor this number into the U-6 calculation (and subtract the "marginally attached" category to avoid double counting) you get a back-of-the-envelope rate of 16 percent. But even this is almost certainly too high, since that would assume that every one of those 12.5 million Americans staying out of the workforce in the Obama years has done so because of the poor job market. In reality, we’re in the midst of the first big wave of Baby Boom retirements, so a share of those 12.5 million likely reflect this historically large pool of retirees. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that half the additional increase in people out of the labor force comes from the Baby Boom retirement surge. That would mean the "new" unemployment rate -- perhaps we can call this new statistic "U-7" -- is about 13 percent. Other guesstimates would produce slightly higher or lower percentages, but the important thing is that the numbers in this range are well short of the 18 to 20 percent Trump mentioned. Getting the number up to 18 or 20 percent would probably require roping into the count people who are high-school and college students and people who are happily retired -- that is, people who technically aren’t working, but who have no reason to be. And that’s a bridge too far. "A candidate for president should know the definition of unemployment," said Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist. Our ruling Trump said, "Our real unemployment is anywhere from 18 to 20 percent. Don't believe the 5.6. Don't believe it." Setting aside his paranoia about the federal government cooking the books, Trump is off-base even if you give him the maximum benefit of the doubt. The highest official government statistic for under-employment is 10.8 percent -- roughly half as high as Trump says. And if you make a quick and dirty attempt to expand the scope of this measurement to include other Americans left uncounted in the standard statistics, there’s no plausible way to get it past 16 percent -- and even that’s stretching it. That’s well below the range Trump cited, so we rate the claim False. | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2015-06-16T18:40:36 | 2015-06-16 | ['None'] |
pomt-06882 | Our government has spent $2.6 million to teach Chinese prostitutes how to drink responsibly. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/29/judson-phillips/founder-tea-party-nation-claims-us-government-has-/ | America has a spending crisis, not a debt crisis, Judson Phillips, founder and chief executive of Tea Party Nation, argued in an opinion piece published by the Washington Post on July 27, 2011. He called the federal government bloated and lambasted legislators for funding too many wasteful programs. And then he offered a few examples. "Americans rightly think there is something wrong when our government has spent $2.6 million to teach Chinese prostitutes how to drink responsibly," Phillips wrote. We fact-checked a similar claim during the midterm elections. The claim was that members of Congress voted for the project as part of the stimulus. Actually, the project was not part of the stimulus, and members of Congress had no way of knowing research funding would go to study prostitutes. Because of these other distortions -- that the op-ed doesn't make -- we gave the 2010 claim a Pants on Fire. But there's not nothing here. In November 2008, the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health awarded a 5-year, $2.6 million grant to Wayne State University in Detroit to allow Dr. Xiaoming Li, professor and director of the university's Prevention Research Center, to "establish and evaluate whether an alcohol and HIV intervention center can assist in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS among sex workers in China," according to a university press release announcing the grant. According to the release, "The findings could have ramifications for at-risk populations throughout the world." The research will take place specifically in Guangxi, China, where the sex trade is prevalent and the rate of HIV is ranked third among the country's provinces, the release states. A spokesman for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health told us the ad distorted the aim of the project. The grant "was not awarded for that purpose," John Bowersox told us via e-mail back in November 2010. "Rather, the researchers will use the grant to develop, implement and evaluate an alcohol use and HIV risk reduction intervention program among female sex workers in China. This is in line with previous studies showing that social norms and institutional policy in commercial sex venues greatly influence alcohol use and sexual behavior among the sex workers in those venues. Studies such as these are needed to translate and adapt interventions that have proven to be effective in the U.S. to other settings and to learn from other conditions and cultures to inform our understanding of the causes, consequences and differences in HIV-related risks, morbidity and mortality in diverse populations. Preventing HIV infection is NIH’s highest priority for HIV-related research. We need to explore a range of research avenues in vulnerable populations around the world to learn the best ways to control the transmission of HIV." Bowersox noted that the grant went through the NIH's two-tier review process, "which includes a scientific and technical review as well as consideration by an Advisory Council that includes public representatives. The Council makes recommendations based on alignment of the grant application with the research priorities of the NIH." The grant first came into the national discussion after CNSNews.com (The Right News. Right Now) ran a story under the headline, "U.S. Will Pay $2.6 Million to Train Chinese Prostitutes to Drink Responsibly on the Job." In an interview with CNSNews.com, Professor Li said, "The purpose of the project is to try and develop an intervention program targeting HIV risk and alcohol use. So basically, it’s an alcohol and HIV risk reduction intervention project." "We want to get some understanding of the fundamental role of alcohol use and HIV risk," Li told CNSNews.com. "We use the population in China as our targeted population to look at the basic issues. I think the findings will benefit the American people, too." The CNSNews story ran on May 11, 2009. That was about the time that a lot of Republican members of Congress were putting out lists of stimulus projects they said were wasteful or unrelated to job creation. But, as the CNSNews.com story noted, the grant for the project was awarded in November 2008. That's pre-stimulus. It's also pre-Obama administration. But Phillips did not refer to the spending as a stimulus program. Nor did Phillips assign responsibility for funding it to any particular party (though earlier in the article, he referred to the "Obama-Pelosi-Reid axis of fiscal evil"). However, Phillips does distort the purpose of the grant. And while some may question the actual purpose of the grant, it was awarded by the National Institutes for Health based on its own internal review process and was determined to be within the institution's mission and priorities. There is an alcohol intervention aspect to the project, but the larger purpose is HIV study and prevention. We rate the claim Half True. | null | Judson Phillips | null | null | null | 2011-07-29T09:53:43 | 2011-07-27 | ['China'] |
snes-00395 | Did Barack Obama Oversee the Separation of 89,000 Children From Their Parents? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-trump-child-separation-meme/ | null | Politics | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did Barack Obama Oversee the Separation of 89,000 Children From Their Parents? | 29 June 2018 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02012 | Bindi Irwin, Chandler Powell Engaged, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/bindi-irwin-engaged-chandler-powell-not-true-wedding/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Bindi Irwin, Chandler Powell NOT Engaged, Despite Report | 6:40 pm, December 18, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10380 | We're borrowing money from China and Saudi Arabia "to finance this war" in Iraq. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jun/20/barack-obama/other-countries-too/ | The presidential candidates are fond of talking about how we like to borrow from Peter to pay Paul, and how bad this is. ( Read our story on this phenomenon here .) "We took out a credit card from the bank of China and the bank of Saudi in the name of our kids, borrowing money to finance this war," Obama said on the campaign trail in May 2008. "You're going to be paying them interest for generations to come -- that makes us weaker." Obama's correct in his implication that the U.S. is borrowing money to fund the war, because the U.S. government is running budget deficits, meaning the government is spending more money than it brings in through taxes and fees. Of course, the government cannot just print extra paper money when it needs to spend or it would devalue U.S. currency. Instead, it issues, or more precisely sells, U.S. Treasury securities, which are simply IOUs that guarantee repayment with interest. Many U.S. citizens buy them, often in the form of U.S. bonds, but so do many foreign countries, who see them as a safe, stable investment. The number one holder of U.S. Treasury securities among foreign countries isn't China or Saudi Arabia. It's actually Japan. China is number two, the United Kingdom is number three, and a group of oil-producing countries (which includes Saudi Arabia) is number four. So, here's the problem with Obama's argument. And with McCain's. And with Clinton's, while we're at it. All have made similar statements. The bonds the government sells are not program-specific so there is no direct relationship between the holder of bonds and any particular expense of the U.S. government. Obama could have easily said that Japan or the United Kingdom is lending us money to pay for the war, and that would have been just as true as what he did say. So Obama is correct in his point that the government is spending borrowed money, and that some of our lenders include China and Saudi Arabia. But the lenders also include countries that we think of as friends and allies. By naming only lending nations that might alarm voters, Obama is distorting the picture somewhat. So for this reason, we find his statement Half True. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-06-20T00:00:00 | 2008-05-13 | ['Saudi_Arabia', 'China', 'Iraq'] |
pomt-05626 | Nearly 45 percent of the women who receive health screenings through (the Women’s Health Program) do so at a Planned Parenthood health center. | half-true | /texas/statements/2012/mar/24/elliott-naishtat/democratic-legislators-say-nearly-45-women-who-get/ | Speaking out against the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from a Texas family planning program for low-income women, five Democratic legislators aired a statistic indicating that the group is a crucial provider. "Nearly 45 percent of the women who receive health screenings through this program do so at a Planned Parenthood health center," said a commentary in the March 6, 2012, Austin American-Statesman by Austin state Reps. Elliott Naishtat, Dawnna Dukes, Eddie Rodriguez, Mark Strama and Donna Howard. We looked into that figure amid debate over the state’s decision, which led the Obama administration to set in motion a phased-in cutoff of about $30 million in annual federal funds for the Texas Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which has served tens of thousands of women a year since its launch in 2007. To participate in the program, providers may not perform elective abortions. Since the program’s start, dozens of Planned Parenthood health centers in Texas have qualified because they don’t provide abortions and are legally separated from Planned Parenthood clinics that do. That is changing, however. The Texas health and human services commissioner signed a rule in February 2012 barring entities affiliated with abortion providers from the program, which had the effect of disqualifying Planned Parenthood health centers that do not provide abortions. In response, the Obama administration declined to renew the program, arguing that Texas’ new rule violates federal law by restricting women’s abilities to choose their own caregivers. Perry has pledged to continue the program with state money — and without Planned Parenthood. Under the program, participating women may receive health screenings, including a Pap smear, during the one family planning exam per fiscal year that the program covers. Examples of other screenings, related to family planning, that women can get during their visit: breast exam, pregnancy test, routine urinalysis, as well as testing for diabetes, sexually transmitted diseases and high blood pressure. Screenings are not covered outside of the annual exam. The program also pays for birth control such as pills and condoms. Naishtat aide Nancy Walker told us by email that the "nearly 45 percent" figure came from "multiple sources," including the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. She said the agency told her that in fiscal 2010, about 46 percent of clients in the state’s Women’s Health Program had received services from Planned Parenthood — which, we noticed, is a wider description than the legislators’ reference solely to "health screenings." Commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman told us that the state has not compiled data on where women in the program receive health screenings. Asked about the figure that Naishtat’s aide cited from the commission, Goodman told us that the figure is based on a data analysis for fiscal 2010 — Sept. 1, 2009, through Aug. 31, 2010 — showing that of the 106,711 women who were served by the program, 49,162 received a service from a Planned Parenthood clinic. That’s 46.1 percent. We wondered, though, if it’s correct to assume that all women in the program received health screenings, as the Democrats’ article suggests. Goodman speculated that it might be, pointing out that all women in the program are entitled to an annual exam with health screenings. Also, the Democrats’ article leaves the impression that the referenced women solely depended on Planned Parenthood clinics for their screenings. That might not be so. According to the commission’s figures, 27,256 of the 49,162 Women’s Health Program clients who were served by Planned Parenthood in fiscal 2010 also received a Women’s Health Program service from a provider not linked to Planned Parenthood. In a previous fact-check, we laid out a couple of possible explanations for those women being served by both Planned Parenthood and another type of provider. For one, some portion of the 27,256 women may have had their exams and screenings at a Planned Parenthood clinic and then any tests processed at an outside lab. In those cases — and the state couldn’t tell us how many of them there were — the only "services" that a woman would have received from a non-Planned Parenthood provider was lab testing. These women would not affect the Democrats’ statistic, since they received their screenings at Planned Parenthood. But under the program, it’s also possible for women to switch providers during the year and receive another exam and screenings. So some portion of the 27,256 women may have received screenings from both a Planned Parenthood and a non-Planned Parenthood provider during fiscal 2010. And if the number were large enough, the percentage of women in the program who received their screenings exclusively from a Planned Parenthood clinic would be smaller than 46 percent. Goodman told us the state has not teased out the detailed data that would settle this issue. Our ruling The Democratic legislators wrote that nearly 45 percent of women who received health screenings through the targeted family-planning program in fiscal 2010 had them at Planned Parenthood clinics. That could be so, but we identified a couple of unsettled hitches. According to the state, 46 percent of the cited program’s clients went to a Planned Parenthood clinic, but the state has no breakdown of the number of women who were screened overall, which is what the Democrats focused on. Also, the Democrats’ statement implies that 46 percent of women rely on Planned Parenthood exclusively for screenings, but some women included in the 46 percent could have had screenings at a different kind of clinic, though (again) such details are not available. We rate the claim Half True. | null | Elliott Naishtat | null | null | null | 2012-03-24T18:54:43 | 2012-03-05 | ['None'] |
snes-05964 | A summary of the 1956 Republican platform describes a significant divergence from the party's focus in recent decades. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1956-republican-platform/ | null | Politics | null | David Mikkelson | null | 1956 Republican Platform | 23 October 2014 | null | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
Subsets and Splits