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pomt-06330 | Over half of the people who would be taxed under (a millionaire surtax) are, in fact, small businesspeople. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/nov/10/john-boehner/boehner-equates-taxing-millionaires-hurting-small-/ | Will increasing taxes on millionaires squelch job creation? That’s the assertion behind Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s remarks on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, criticizing President Barack Obama’s jobs bill. The bill, which so far has been stymied in Congress, calls for a 5.6 percent surtax on incomes greater than $1 million to pay for tax cuts for workers, infrastructure spending, hiring incentives and cash for local governments to keep teachers and police from being laid off. Republicans oppose the so-called millionaires' tax because they say it will discourage investment and expansion by business owners who are best positioned to create new jobs. But the idea is popular with the public, a point raised by Amanpour in her Nov. 6, 2011, interview with Boehner. "Now, you obviously disagree with the idea of paying for this with extra taxes," Amanpour said. "Some 75 percent of Americans agree with an increase in tax on millionaires as a way to pay for these jobs provisions. Do you not feel that by opposing it you're basically out of step with the American people on this issue?" "Well," Boehner responded, "over half of the people who would be taxed under this plan are, in fact, small businesspeople. And as a result, you're going to basically increase taxes on the very people that we're hoping will reinvest in our economy and create jobs. That's the real crux of the problem." We see this argument raised regularly, so we decided to look further. Who are the small businesspeople? To determine the accuracy of Boehner’s statement, we first needed to define a small business owner. To be clear, we’re not talking about large companies that pay corporate taxes. We’re talking about individuals who have some amount of business income that they are able to account for on their personal tax returns. Still, defining a small business owner is no simple task. "A person who gets paid to give a speech shows up along with the owner of a small manufacturing plant, the guy who runs a pizza place, a lawyer in solo practice, a small investment firm and so forth," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow with the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "Some of them are what we think of as small businesses that might grow and hire more workers while others are not...Tax returns lack the information needed to sort out the different types of small businesses." For one thing, they don’t distinguish if a business has any employees. The Tax Policy Center did glean some valuable insights from tax return data, though, namely by calculating how many people in different income categories get various percentages of their income from businesses. The information, contained in this chart, shows that among people with income over $1 million, about 60 percent of them get more than 10 percent of their income from businesses. But just 37 percent get more than a quarter of their income from those sources and only 29 percent get half or more. "Are people who get relatively little income from business really small businessmen?" Williams asked. These millionaires are more likely earning the bulk of their income through wages or capital gains, he said. What’s a small business? The Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department recognized the vacuum in the debate over taxing small businesses without a clear definition of a small business. In an August analysis, the authors acknowledge that defining a small business is a matter of setting some subjective parameters. The ones they set include a limit of $10 million in income or deductions to be counted as "small" and a minimum labor deduction of $10,000 to distinguish businesses that don’t have any employees. Other tests they applied excluded businesses on the very low end of the scale, such as those with $4,600 or less net annual income. Not surprisingly, by narrowing the definition, far fewer tax filers qualified as small businesses. The authors found that: • one-fifth of small businesses are employers, using their definition. • slightly more than half of small businesses reported total income of less than $50,000, and half of those businesses reported a tax loss for the year. • only 0.5 percent of small businesses reported a profit in excess of $1 million. For those businesses, investment and rental income comprised roughly half of their reported income. The study paints a clearer picture of what many of us think of as a small business -- a bagel shop or dry cleaner -- that has several employees, earns a modest income for its owner and yields profits of much less than $1 million. Other evidence Boehner’s spokesman acknowledged the speaker could have worded his statement better. Then he referred us to a 2010 report by the Joint Committee on Taxation that examined Obama’s previous proposals to raise income taxes on high earners. The top two income brackets would have seen a bump from 33 percent and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent, respectively if the proposals had been adopted. That report said "50 percent of the approximately $1 trillion of aggregate net positive business income will be reported on returns that have a marginal rate of 36 or 39.6 percent." But half the income being taxed at that rate is not the same as half the earners being taxed at that rate. Furthermore, the report said, that $1 trillion income figure does not imply "that all of the income is from entities that might be considered ‘small.’ For example, in 2005, 12,862 S corporations and 6,658 partnerships had receipts of more than $50 million." We know of few bagel shops and dry cleaners with revenues anywhere near $50 million. Our ruling Boehner said, "Over half of the people who would be taxed under this plan are, in fact, small businesspeople." Boehner is wrong on two points -- the "half" and the "small businesspeople." Of the business income reported on tax returns, half of it would have been taxed at the top two rates, the Joint Committee on Taxation found. But that doesn’t mean half of the earners are paying those rates. And it’s incorrect to call small business owners and millionaires who would see a tax increase one and the same. The Joint Committee as well as the Tax Policy Center have given credible evidence that for top earners who report business income, it is often just a fraction of their total income. They are not the folks operating small manufacturing plants or neighborhood pizza parlors. In fact, only 0.5 percent of small businesses make that kind of money. More often, small businesses are small in every sense -- most have incomes of less than $50,000 and almost all have profits of less than $1 million -- and they wouldn’t be affected by the millionaires tax. We rate the statement False. | null | John Boehner | null | null | null | 2011-11-10T12:19:34 | 2011-11-06 | ['None'] |
hoer-00927 | He/She Arises Between the Comments Facebook Hack Warning | bogus warning | https://www.hoax-slayer.net/useless-heshe-arises-between-the-comments-facebook-hack-warning/ | null | null | null | Brett M. Christensen | null | Useless He/She Arises Between the Comments Facebook Hack Warning | May 6, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pose-00926 | Gimenez "pledged to maintain services and not lay off police officers" or close fire stations. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/florida/promises/carlos-o-meter/promise/958/no-lay-offs-police-or-firefighters/ | null | carlos-o-meter | Carlos Gimenez | null | null | No layoffs for police; no closed fire stations | 2011-12-08T11:21:37 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01966 | $3 billion over the next five years will be taken out of our public schools and be put into vouchers. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2014/jun/19/nan-rich/vouchers-take-3-billion-out-public-schools-nan-ric/ | While Gov. Rick Scott has portrayed himself as a champion of public education spending, he has overseen an expansion of a voucher program that hurts public schools, says former state Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston. And she also hurls some blame at Scott’s predecessors, including her Democratic rival Charlie Crist. "The education reform that started under Jeb Bush, it continued under Charlie Crist and now has gone to a new level with Rick Scott. That includes a bill that just passed the last day of this session -- a bad day for public education, folks -- $3 billion over the next five years will be taken out of our public schools and be put into vouchers," Rich said on May 10 in remarks to the Orange County Voters League. (Rejoice Magazine posted video of her remarks online.) We decided to fact-check Rich’s claim that $3 billion from public schools will go to vouchers during the next five years. Bill expanded eligibility for tax credits this session Rich called it a voucher progam; it actually works through a tax credit. Regardless of the specifics, opponents say it sends funding to private -- mostly religious -- schools and undermines the public school system. Supporters say that the money provides poor children, including many minorities, a deserved escape from underperforming public schools. Here’s how it works: In 2001 under Gov. Jeb Bush, the state established the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program to give scholarships to poor children to attend private schools. The program provides dollar-for-dollar income tax credits for corporations that give money to organizations that give the scholarships. (Both Scott and Crist, the Democratic primary frontrunner, are supporters of the program.) About 60,000 students have scholarships for the 2013-14 school year, and the maximum amount per student is $4,880. During the session, Republican lawmakers proposed allowing more children to get the scholarships. A watered-down version of the bill, Senate 850, passed on May 2, the last day of session. (It passed the Senate 29-11 and the House 70-44, largely along party lines with many Democrats voting against it.) Lawmakers expanded eligibility by allowing a family of four earning up to $62,010 a year to receive a partial scholarship. The previous limit was about $44,000. Scott has until June 28, 2014, to sign the law. A spokesman for Scott wouldn’t indicate if he will sign it, but Scott has generally been supportive of school choice. Do tax credits take money out of public schools? Rich arrived at the $3 billion figure by pointing to a chart from Fund Education Now, a group that opposes the tax credits. The chart shows that before this session, the tax credit program was on a path to add up to about $2.9 billion over the next five years. Though the chart doesn’t reflect the bill that ultimately passed, the program could add up to that amount over five years. But does that money get taken out of our public schools, as Rich suggests? Rich and other tax credit opponents argue that if Florida had no such tax credit program, those revenues would go into the state’s general fund, which pays for education and other services. "It’s money that could be, should be, by all rights put into the general fund and could be used to invest in public schools," said Kathleen Oropeza, co-founder of Fund Education Now. "They are diverting it." Not so, say supporters of tax credits -- for two reasons: • If the tax credit program didn’t exist, the money would go toward state general revenues. There is no evidence that the Legislature would then decide to direct those dollars to public schools. (State economist Amy Baker backs up that point in an email to PolitiFact Florida: "These numbers refer only to the revenue side of the state’s fiscal picture and don’t reflect what the Legislature may or may not spend" for public schools.) • Tax credits can save the state money because a single voucher is less expensive than what the state spends per child in public schools. "State education spending for students who receive scholarships is reduced by more than the amount of revenue lost," states a 2008 study by Florida’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability. The study noted that it is difficult to pinpoint the precise savings but estimated that in 2007-08, for every dollar lost in corporate income tax revenue, taxpayers saved $1.49 in state education funding. A later update estimated that the state saved about $36 million in 2008-09. We sent a summary of the arguments to two education professors who are experts on tax credits: David Figlio at Northwestern University and Kevin Welner at the University of Colorado. Both said it’s not as simple as Rich declared. "The answer to this is a little bit complicated. It is definitely true that, overall, taxpayers save money with this program, at least under the scenario that has been operating to date. The tax credits that the state provides are considerably smaller per student than the public obligation would be to these students were they attending public schools," Figlio told PolitiFact Florida. However, it’s hard to pinpoint the amount of savings because some students would have attended private schools anyway. Now that the raised the income eligibility limits opens up the program to more families, it’s likely that more will get scholarships that would have found a way to pay for private school regardless. Welner told PolitiFact Florida that "there clearly is an attempt here to shift resources from public to private schools." However, the $3 billion figure is just half the ledger. Our ruling Rich said that "$3 billion over the next five years will be taken out of our public schools and be put into vouchers." There's not $3 billion in funding that's being removed from a public schools budget and put into a voucher program budget. Instead, Rich was referring to the state’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which gives corporations tax credits when they give money to allow poor students to attend private schools. Based on the program’s size, it’s possible that it could fund a voucher program in the ballpark of $3 billion over the next five years. But there’s no guarantee that money would otherwise have gone to public schools. And, private school vouchers tend to cost less than what it costs to educate a child in public schools, which complicates how much money taxpayers would pay if the children in private schools instead went to public schools. That’s even more true now that the state raised the income eligibility requirements this year. We rate this claim Mostly False. | null | Nan Rich | null | null | null | 2014-06-19T14:17:52 | 2014-05-10 | ['None'] |
snes-03350 | McDonald's has a burger filled with Nutella. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fact-check-mcdonalds-creates-nutella-burger/ | null | Food | null | Bethania Palma | null | McDonald’s Creates Nutella Burger | 13 December 2016 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03458 | Al Gore calls Christians a “blight to the environment” | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/goremotherearth/ | null | religious | null | null | null | Al Gore calls Christians a “blight to the environment” | Mar 16, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-11975 | The soda tax can make a difference by reducing consumption of unhealthy soda pop and sugary beverages. | mostly true | /illinois/statements/2017/oct/02/michael-bloomberg/cook-county-soda-tax-should-make-dent-consumption/ | Is Cook County’s new sweetened drink tax about public health or about money? Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, the architect of the tax, has said she rejects the premise of that question. "In my view, this isn’t a vote to repeal or keep a revenue source we already approved," Preckwinkle told the City Club of Chicago on Sept. 13. "It’s about whether or not we want Cook County to be healthier, safer and more efficient or if we are willing to go backwards and let Cook County become sicker, less safe and less efficient." Voting to repeal the tax, as may happen at the Cook County Board’s Oct. 11 meeting, would be voting "to fire frontline health care providers: doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who help serve our most vulnerable patients," Preckwinkle said. In an Aug. 22 interview on "Chicago Tonight," Preckwinkle had offered another defense. "Our Cook County hospital system spends $200 million a year or more treating sugar consumption related diseases," she said, noting also that 87 percent of county government’s budget goes into health care. "Obesity, heart disease, diabetes, tooth decay. That’s a tremendous burden on our health care system. And we are facing a public health care crisis in this country related to sugar consumption." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com As public fury has raged over the penny-an-ounce tax, Preckwinkle has scrupulously avoided discussing the issue on either its health or fiscal aspects alone. Enter Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire former New York mayor and unabashed supporter of measures to limit sweetened drink consumption has become a major defender of the Cook County tax and the county officials who voted for it. He’s spent more than $5 million on ads touting the health benefits of the tax and funded a website, cookcountyhealthykids.org, that makes a claim county officials have avoided. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com "The soda tax can make a difference by reducing consumption of unhealthy soda pop and sugary beverages that contribute to diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other serious medical conditions," the site says. Does adding a penny per ounce to the cost of sweetened drinks cause a decrease in their consumption? As debate rages over the soda tax, we decided to check. Scarce research When Cook County began collecting its tax on Aug. 2, it became only the sixth jurisdiction in the United States to collect an excise tax on sweetened drinks and only the second to include artificially sweetened drinks. Two more cities, San Francisco and Seattle, have soda taxes scheduled to begin Jan. 1, 2018. The first excise tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks went into effect in Berkeley, Calif., on March 1, 2015. Governments have long levied so-called "sin taxes" on certain commodities, products and activities, ostensibly to offset their social costs while also raking in new revenue. Taxes on sweetened drinks are the latest effort by health advocates like Bloomberg to bring them into the "sin tax" category for their role in America’s obesity problem. But soft drink consumption is deeply entrenched in American culture, and the soft drink industry and many consumers have yet to accept the "sin" label for this tax. See Figure 3 on PolitiFact.com Given the recent nature of soda taxes, there’s not a deep reservoir of academic research on their effects. And we should note here that the soft drink industry rejects the basic premise of Bloomberg’s statement -- that any reduction in an individual’s soft drink consumption is a step toward better health. A study published in April by the Oakland Calif.-based Public Health Institute and the University of North Carolina found that sales of taxed beverages dropped 9.6 percent in the first year while sales of untaxed drinks rose 3.5 percent. But the researchers noted that Berkeley is not a typical test market because it consumed only 34 percent of the national average for sugar-sweetened beverages. "Population-based findings on (sugar-sweetened beverage) consumption were not definitive, and consumption should be further evaluated in more typical communities and with larger samples," the authors wrote. A study published in September 2016 in the American Journal of Public Health found that sugar-sweetened drink consumption in Berkeley decreased by 21 percent. That study was limited to low-income neighborhoods. The Public Health Institute study, like studies planned for Cook County and Oakland, Calif., was funded in part by Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies. This gets into what has been a thorny issue in the broader debate over the health implications of sweetened drinks, in which researchers have found that studies funded by the soda industry consistently find minimal adverse effects from sweetened drink consumption while independent studies consistently find the opposite. Bloomberg’s involvement in this early research may invite criticism from opponents of the taxes. Mexico, which instituted a 10 percent tax on soda in 2014, saw soda purchases decline steadily through the year, according to a study in the British Medical Journal. Sales declined by 6 percent early in the year and continued to decline to 12 percent by year’s end. That study also was funded partly by Bloomberg. A study published in November 2016 in the journal PLOS Medicine used the Mexican sales declines recorded in the British study and projected reduced soda consumption due to the tax "will likely prevent approximately 189,300 new cases of type 2 diabetes, 20,400 incident strokes and heart attacks, and 18,900 deaths over 10 years among adults 35–94 years of age." Researchers used the Cardiovascular Disease Policy Model, which has been used since the 1980s to estimate health benefits in the U.S., to create the report’s 10-year projection. In another modeling study, Harvard researchers projected that a penny-per-ounce nationwide tax on sugar-sweetened drinks in the U.S. "could substantially reduce (obesity) and healthcare expenditures and increase healthy life expectancy." Closer to home Less than two months into the Cook County tax, evidence of its effect on sweetened drink consumption is largely anecdotal but appears to support Bloomberg’s claim. "We have received reports from retailers in Cook County of lost sales between mid-40 percent near the border and teens near city center. Likewise, there are reports of significant increases in sales in collar counties that are very close to matching," Rob Karr, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association said in an email. "It is VERY difficult to get retailers to openly share such information as it is highly proprietary. They are scared to death of conclusions that competitors or others may draw with such data given the extraordinarily competitive nature and extremely narrow margins in grocery." Can the Tax, a group that opposes the tax, said in August that the tax had an immediate effect on sales, especially at stores near the Cook County border. See Figure 4 on PolitiFact.com Sales data during the beverage tax’s first weekend provided by three retailers for 21 total Cook County stores is alarming. Every store reported a decline in sales of at least 6 percent and as much as 39 percent," said an Aug. 17 press release. "Further, declines in beverage sales for stores near the Cook County border were among the highest reported amid concerns of mass consumer flight to Indiana and the collar counties as residents try to avoid paying the tax." For retailers, the decline is bad news. For supporters like Bloomberg, it’s a credible signal of less consumption. Unknown, however, is to what extent sales lost in Cook County are replaced by purchases in either the collar counties or in Indiana. The Philadelphia story If there’s a case study for Cook County’s sweetened drink tax, it might be Philadelphia. The city council there approved a 1.5-cent-per-ounce sweetened drink tax that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2017, with proceeds earmarked for pre-K education, parks and libraries. In its first six months, the tax generated $39.3 million -- short of both the original $42.6 million projection and a revised estimate of $39.7 million. A study there in August by the Florida marketing firm Catalina said sales had dropped 55 percent since the tax, while sales of carbonated soft drinks outside city limits had increased 38 percent. But city officials say the study is flawed because it looked only at retail sales, which account for less than half of total sales, and because the tax could not have generated $39.3 million if all sales had dropped 55 percent. Our ruling Bloomberg said Cook County’s sweetened beverage tax can bring health benefits by "reducing consumption of unhealthy soda pop and sugary beverages." Cook County is only the sixth jurisdiction in the U.S. to enact a sweetened drink tax since Berkeley, Calif., enacted the first one in March 2015. That means there’s been very little formal research on their effects, which makes proving or disproving Bloomberg’s claim difficult. Academic research in Berkeley and on Mexico’s soda tax has shown declines in sales, however. Anecdotal evidence from tax opponents in Illinois appears to show the same here, as does a recent marketing report in Philadelphia. Studies using modeling schemes to project health outcomes based on reduced consumption also tilt in Bloomberg’s favor. Cook County’s soda tax may not survive long enough to become part of the extended field study needed to judge the health effects of similar efforts nationwide. But there’s enough evidence out there to rate Bloomberg’s statement Mostly True. See Figure 5 on PolitiFact.com | null | Michael Bloomberg | null | null | null | 2017-10-02T09:29:02 | 2017-09-18 | ['None'] |
pomt-02528 | Americans work way more than an average of industrialized countries around the world. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2014/feb/09/keith-ellison/keith-ellison-says-americans-work-way-more-others/ | A recent Congressional Budget Office report is the latest spark in the Affordable Care Act debate. Conservatives on ABC’s This Week roundtable criticized President Barack Obama’s signature health care law for its predicted effect on the economy. As we’ve previously noted, the nonpartisan report shows that health care reform may reduce the total number of hours worked by 1.5 to 2 percent from 2017 to 2024 -- the equivalent of about 2 million jobs. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., pushed back against the Obamacare critics, arguing that a little less time in the office might not be such a bad thing. "We're going to have parents being able to come home, working reasonable hours. People are going to be able to retire," he said. "People might be able to actually cook dinner rather than have to order out and get some takeout. I mean, the fact is, is that if Americans can have more choices to open up a new business they've been wanting to start, this is a good thing. You know, if you look at international comparisons country by country, Americans work way more than an average of industrialized countries around the world." PolitiFact wondered how other developed nations stack up to the United States in terms of hours worked. We fact-checked a similar claim from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., back in 2011 and rated it False, but Ellison’s take is more nuanced. Ellison’s spokesman pointed us to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. They track the average annual number of hours worked for 34 countries, which include many of the most developed nations as well as developing economies. Experts confirmed OECD is a good resource for this information. This report, last updated in November 2013, shows by country the average number of hours an employee works per year. Across all OECD countries (except for Israel, which they didn’t provide data for), the average number of hours an employee works per year is 1,715. The United States does come in above that mean, at 1,790 hours worked per year. That’s 10th among OECD countries. It’s a far cry from No. 1 Mexico at 2,226 hours or No. 2 South Korea at 2,163. On the other end of the spectrum, the Netherlands recorded just 1,384 hours annually. The U.S. average of 1,790 hours is 75 hours higher than the OECD average. That translates to about 1.5 hours more per week. So Ellison’s claim that we work "way more" is misleading, considering that’s just 4.4 percent more time spent at work, on average. Our ruling Ellison said that an average U.S. employee works "way more than the average industrialized countries around the world." The data shows that U.S. workers spend about 1,790 hours per year on the clock, which is above an average of developed countries at 1,715 hours. So he’s right that Americans work a lot, but we’ll dock Ellison a notch on our Truth-O-Meter for exaggerating the difference. We rate his claim Mostly True. | null | Keith Ellison | null | null | null | 2014-02-09T15:25:58 | 2014-02-09 | ['United_States'] |
pomt-07277 | To give a sense of how families are struggling, a record four out of every 10 school kids in Ohio now qualifies for subsidized lunch. | true | /ohio/statements/2011/may/24/amy-hanauer/policy-matters-ohios-amy-hanauer-says-four-every-1/ | Whether overhauling Ohio’s collective bargaining law or proposing dramatic budget cuts, Republican Gov. John Kasich’s agenda has drawn thousands of protesters to the Statehouse this year. Amy Hanauer of the liberal think tank Policy Matters Ohio delivered a speech at the Statehouse on May 5 – the day the GOP-controlled Ohio House of Representatives passed the budget – that focused on the working class and the government policies that have damaged it. "To give a sense of how families are struggling, a record four out of every 10 school kids in Ohio now qualifies for subsidized lunch," said Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio. The statistic is effective because it’s easy to understand. Free or reduced-price school lunches are directly linked to poverty, and 40 percent seems like a high number of Ohio students who qualify for the subsidy. PolitiFact Ohio decided to look into Hanauer’s claim to see if she has her facts straight. Before we were able to reach Hanauer, Internet research produced news reports from this year about subsidized lunch statistics in Ohio. A story The Columbus Dispatch published February 13, citing statistics from the Ohio Department of Education, reported that four out of 10 Ohio students receive free or reduced-price lunch through a federal program for low-income students. We called the Department of Education for the statistics used in the story. A department spokesman handed over data it received from the National School Lunch Program, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The National School Lunch Program provides cash subsidies to public and private schools across the country to serve free and reduced-price lunches to eligible children. The data, collected in October and released in February, shows 825,469 Ohio students received free or reduced-priced lunch out of 1,876,355 students who attend Ohio schools participating in the National School Lunch Program. Of those students participating in the program, 716,084 receive free lunch and 109,385 received reduced-price lunch. Based on those numbers, about 44 percent of students at Ohio schools participating in the federal subsidized lunch program qualify for the benefit – exceeding the four-in-10 ratio Hanauer cited. But are there Ohio schools that don’t participate in the federal subsidized lunch program? If so, the overall percentage of Ohio students getting free or reduced-priced lunch could drop below 40 percent. We checked back with the Department of Education to get the total number of students in the state. There are about 2,042,538 students in Ohio, according to the department. So we plugged the new total into our calculation (825,469 students getting subsidized lunch divided by 2.04 million kids) and the result was 40.4 percent – equal to a 4-to-10 ratio. So Hanauer was correct in citing the ratio of Ohio kids getting a subsidized lunch. She also called the statistic a record. How does that stack up? Similar data from the Department of Education was readily available dating back to 2002. Since 2002, the highest percentage of students receiving subsidized lunch was, in fact, in 2010. In 2009, which saw the second-highest participation, 42 percent of students at schools participating in the federal program received subsidized lunch (compared to 44 percent in 2010). Hanauer’s speech was spot-on about the ratio of kids receiving subsidized lunch. As for calling the ratio a record, neither the Department of Education nor the USDA provided data that showed a higher percentage in the past. We rate the statement True. | null | Amy Hanauer | null | null | null | 2011-05-24T06:00:00 | 2011-05-05 | ['Ohio'] |
pomt-12893 | Some countries are contributing (peacekeeping) troops because they're making money off of them. | mostly true | /global-news/statements/2017/jan/24/nikki-haley/un-peacekeeping-money-maker/ | U.S. senators asked South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley about U.N. peacekeeping missions during her confirmation hearing to be America’s ambassador to the United Nations. They were especially concerned about the war-torn nation of South Sudan, but Haley tackled peacekeeping more broadly. Haley said there were red flags. "It's been devastating to see the exploitation, the fraud, abuse that's happening," Haley said Jan. 18. "We have to acknowledge that some countries are contributing troops because they're making money off of them. So if they are not willing to make sure that they are punishing the violators, then we actually need to pull that country's troops out, because they're harming the peace process." Haley was referring to cases where peacekeeping troops sexually abused the very people they were sent to protect. The most recent case involved soldiers from France, Chad and Equatorial Guinea. But it was her assertion about countries making money off of peacekeeping that caught our eye. We took a closer look. The experts we reached agreed that yes, there is a financial incentive for certain nations. On the other hand, there was equally broad agreement that money isn’t the only factor. A little background on peacekeeping Under the banner of the United Nations, countries provide troops and equipment to troubled corners of the world to help them bridge the gap between conflict and stability. Right now, the U.N. has 16 operations, and nine of them are in Africa. Between troops, police and military observers, about 100,000 personnel make up the global peacekeeping force at a cost of about $1.9 billion for the year. Who sends the most troops? Ethiopia (8,165), Pakistan (6,774), India (6,752), Bangladesh (5,635) and Rwanda (5,125). Those five countries provide nearly a third of all peacekeepers. Why they send troops Money is a factor. Brett Schaefer, a Heritage Foundation analyst, told us the countries with the largest participation tend to be middle- or lower-income nations. "Their payments to troops are low, and the amount they get from the U.N. is generally above that," Schaefer said. But he noted that gaining field experience, training and international prestige are powerful drivers too. Paul Williams at George Washington University also said the money should be put into perspective: "It is very rarely, if ever the case, that this is the sole factor behind a state's decision to contribute troops." For Bruce Jones at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based academic center, India proves that point. "It’s one of the most important contributors to U.N. peacekeeping," Jones said. "But it no longer makes money from peacekeeping. It now loses money, but it's still doing it. So that should tell us something." If there’s a red flag to be waved with the U.N.’s African peacekeeping missions, it might have more to do with complex regional politics. Dyan Mazurana, a professor of international affairs at Tufts University, said some countries sending troops have a clear self-interest in the fate of their neighboring states. "They are often playing a blurry role of peacekeepers, peace enforcement and being parties to the conflict, such as supporting various armed parties, selling weapons or extracting and profiting from natural resources," Mazurana said. None of the experts we reached found any connection between sexual assault and the payments to countries for the troops they send. They gave the U.N. credit for acting more swiftly to crack down on abuse, but they also said continued pressure is needed to ensure that the perpetrators actually face punishment. We reached Haley’s office but never received any comment on her statement. Our ruling Haley said that "some countries" contribute peacekeeping troops because they make money off the U.N. payments. Every expert we reached agreed that for some nations, the financial payoff is a factor. However, they all said that money was not the sole driver, and that countries gained military training and experience from the role they played. Haley offered an accurate but limited comment on peacekeeping troops. We rate this claim Mostly True. Share the Facts Politifact 1 6 Politifact Rating: "Some countries are contributing (peacekeeping) troops because they're making money off of them." Nikki Haley Nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. In a senate hearing Wednesday, January 18, 2017 -01/-18/2017 Read More info | null | Nikki Haley | null | null | null | 2017-01-24T15:20:12 | 2017-01-18 | ['None'] |
snes-05724 | 'Secret lists' reveal price tag coding at Target and Costco stores. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-store-price-codes/ | null | Business | null | David Mikkelson | null | Big Store Price Codes | 8 January 2014 | null | ['Costco', 'Target_Corporation'] |
vees-00387 | Filipino connection suspected in string of celebrity death hoaxes | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/filipino-connection-suspected-string-celebrity-death-hoaxes | null | null | null | null | fake news,death hoax | Filipino connection suspected in string of celebrity death hoaxes | August 29, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
goop-02067 | Paris Jackson’s Family Worried About Her Solo Backpacking Trip, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/paris-jackson-family-worried-solo-backpacking-trip-france/ | null | null | null | Holly Nicol | null | Paris Jackson’s Family NOT Worried About Her Solo Backpacking Trip, Despite Report | 4:47 am, December 8, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
tron-03622 | The Petroleum Equipment Institute report on gasoline fires started by sparks | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/sparks/ | null | warnings | null | null | null | The Petroleum Equipment Institute report on gasoline fires started by sparks | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
goop-00876 | Scott Disick “Devastated” Over Sofia Richie Split, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/scott-disick-sofia-richie-split-reaction-false/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Scott Disick NOT “Devastated” Over Sofia Richie Split, Despite Claim | 4:20 pm, June 5, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
peck-00057 | Do 70% of malaria deaths involve children under five? | true | https://pesacheck.org/do-70-of-malaria-deaths-involve-children-under-five-7a2a0d92fe76 | null | null | null | Soila Kenya | null | Do 70% of malaria deaths involve children under five? | Apr 30 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09582 | PWNED: House GOP Dominates Twitter, YouTube, Social Media in Congress. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jan/25/john-boehner/boehner-claims-house-republicans-dominate-twitter-/ | Quick quiz of your online fluency: Do you know what PWNED means? We'll admit we had to Google it. In Internet geek, it's trash talk that means you "owned" your opponent. Here it is in a recent press release from House Republican Leader John Boehner: "PWNED: House GOP Dominates Twitter, YouTube, Social Media in Congress." The release said, "The conventional wisdom is being turned upside down as House Republicans demonstrate an unmatched ability to connect with the American people on the Internet’s most popular communities. Once considered the party of online innovation, new research and a host of media reports show that Democrats are largely ignoring some of the most popular social media communities on the Web." Indeed, there's been a widespread perception that Democrats had the lead. During the presidential campaign, the Washington Post dubbed Barack Obama "the king of social networking." By nearly every social networking measure -- Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter -- Obama's engagement and influence dwarfed the McCain campaign. Obama's text messaging became a powerful grass-roots tool for getting out his message and raising money. The Obama campaign even mocked Sen. John McCain for his inability to navigate the Internet and ran an ad linking him to a record player and a Rubik's Cube. We decided to fact-check Boehner's boast about Republican domination of social media in Congress. First stop: Twitter. Earlier this month, Mark Senak, senior vice president and partner at Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations firm in Washington, D.C., issued a report titled "Twongress: The Power of Twitter in Congress" in which he analyzed the Twitter use of all members of Congress. The findings surprised him. In Congress, he found, there are 132 members using Twitter actively: 89 Republicans and 43 Democrats. It breaks down like this: In the Senate, there are 14 Republicans using Twitter compared to 11 Democrats; and in the House, there are 75 Republicans using Twitter (42.13 percent of the Republican caucus) and 32 Democrats (12.45 percent of the Democratic caucus). And the GOP leads in tweet production: "Republicans send out more tweets and have the attention of many more people than do the Democrats," the report says. The disparity in Twitter usage was most pronounced in the House. In the House, only one Democrat ranks in the top 10 in terms of the number of followers; and only two are in the top 20. Not only do more House Republicans actively use Twitter, they have many more followers and send out far more Twitter messages, 29,162 tweets compared to 5,503 for their Democratic counterparts, according to the report, which tallied their messages through the end of 2009. The power of Twitter, however, is not just in the number of followers you have and how many messages you send out a day. The idea is to get people on your followers list to "re-tweet" -- pass on -- your message, potentially exposing your message to an exponentially larger group. So analysts also look at your "influence" and "clout," which factors in how often people "re-tweet" and cite your messages. And by that measure, House Republicans are far outpacing Democrats. Measured by the sheer number of followers, Boehner leads the Republicans in the House with 18,800; followed by Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., with 16,500. But it was Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who led House Republicans in "clout" and "influence" because she is re-tweeted so often. And for the record, the supposedly out-of-touch McCain beats everyone in Congress for total followers, with nearly 1.6 million. "When I first saw the results, I was surprised," Senak told PolitiFact. "That was a counterintuitive finding after the Obama campaign. But when when I thought about it, the party that is not in power always has had to be more aggressive in using communication tools to get their message." So Round 1, Twitter, to House Republicans. What about YouTube? On Jan. 21, 2010, YouTube's CitizenTube posted a year-end wrap-up that showed 89 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats in Congress have started YouTube channels to engage their constituents. More importantly, people are watching the Republican channels much more often. According to the report, eight of the top 10 most-viewed and most-subscribed YouTube channels in Congress are from the GOP, though Democrats took two of the top three spots. The top 4, in order, are Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Boehner. A tracking of YouTube views by industry analyst TubeMogul shows that with few exceptions, Republican videos consistently drew more clicks than those from Democrats. None of the videos have gone viral, said David Burch of TubeMogul, and no one is getting huge viewership. "Obama spoiled us in terms of what 'a lot' means," during the campaign, he said. Obama remains on the cutting edge. On Jan. 25, 2010, the administration rolled out a new White House iPhone app which will allow users to watch White House live-streaming video. Still, in Congress, the GOP is ahead. Round 2, YouTube, to Republicans. And lastly, Facebook, the favorite of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Palin's Facebook page has more than 1.2 million fans. No one in the House has that kind of reach. And we couldn't find any comprehensive analysis of engagement on FaceBook by members of Congress. But as of Jan. 22, 2010, Boehner had 31,757 fans of his page, compared to 8,745 for Pelosi. Boehner's director of new media, Nick Schaper, said House Republicans are building an important lead in social media. "We're pretty proud of that," he said. For many Republicans, the Obama campaign was a real eye-opener to the power of social media tools. And so Republican leaders made a conscious effort to ramp up their involvement. In weekly meetings, members of the Republican conference routinely discuss their social media successes and talk about how best to use various tools. Engagement in new social media just makes sense, Schaper said. It's easy to use, but it takes commitment. Boehner typically tweets about 5 to 10 times a day. "The more active you are, the more followers you get," Schaper explained. "Everyone on the press team considers Twitter an important part of the process. We make it a focus, not a secondary kind of thing." It's a great resource to reach people with your message, he said. Boehner might only have about 19,000 followers on Twitter, but if enough people re-tweet some of his messages, he can reach a couple hundred thousand people in just a couple hours. But while House Republicans may rightly crow about deeper engagement in social media than their Democratic counterparts, Senak, the author of the study, says neither side is doing particularly well compared to other large institutions. Both parties have a minority of members engaged in Twitter. And neither side has fully embraced the give-and-take of Twitter. Most members have elected to follow very few other people and rarely "re-tweet." In other words, he said, they are mostly using Twitter as a soapbox. "Both sides have room for a tremendous amount of improvement," Senak said. But the bottom line is that Boehner is correct when he boasts that the House GOP dominates the Democrats on Twitter, YouTube and other social media in Congress. Still, we had to ask, is Boehner really so plugged-in that he knows what PWNED means? Schaper artfully sidestepped the question and said, "He surprises me every time I talk about it (social media). I think people would be surprised." On this claim, Boehner earns a True. | null | John Boehner | null | null | null | 2010-01-25T18:50:42 | 2010-01-22 | ['Social_media', 'YouTube'] |
snes-05260 | A vintage photograph shows a common workplace item from the 1960s: A whisky vending machine. | mixture | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/whisky-vending-machine/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Dan Evon | null | Whisky Vending Machine | 5 February 2016 | null | ['None'] |
vees-00509 | STATEMENT: In his inaugural address on June 30, President Rodrigo Duterte claimed an “erosion” of trust in government is the real problem confronting the Philippines. | none | http://verafiles.org/articles/so-erosion-faith-and-trust-government | FACT: Contrary to what he claimed in his inaugural address, Duterte starts his term at a time that people have trust in their government, according to surveys. In fact, he is taking off on the heels of one of the most trusted administrations after Martial Law as far as satisfaction ratings are concerned. | null | null | null | fact-check,is that so,trust ratings | Is that so? Erosion of faith and trust in government | July 16, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13541 | Says Hillary Clinton "is the one that labeled African-American youth as ‘superpredators.’" | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/28/reince-priebus/did-hillary-clinton-call-african-american-youth-su/ | In response to Donald Trump calling Hillary Clinton a "bigot" this week, GOP chairman Reince Priebus reminded people that Hillary Clinton once referred to African-American youth as "superpredators." Priebus took a swing at Hillary Clinton’s past, telling NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that her actions say a lot about her, adding "she’s the one that labeled African-American youth as ‘superpredators’." Trump, who is looking to increase his appeal among African-American voters, made the same "superpredator" claim days earlier on Twitter. It didn’t take long to find what Trump and Priebus were referencing, but for this fact-check, we wanted to take a close look at the full context of Clinton’s remark. ‘Superpredators’ in context The "superpredators" line comes from a 1996 speech in New Hampshire, where Clinton spoke in support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which her husband, Bill Clinton, had signed in to law. "We’re making some progress," Clinton said. "Much of it is related to the initiative called ‘community policing.’ Because we have finally gotten more police officers on the street. That was one of the goals that the president had when he pushed the crime bill that was passed in 1994." Provisions of the act included a ban on some assault weapons, more funding for community policing and an expansion of the death penalty. The legislation, which was championed by Bill Clinton as a way to reduce the number of African-Americans being killed in drug-related incidents, has drawn criticism in recent years for sending disproportionate numbers of African-Americans to prison. The "superpredator" remark, which Priebus and Trump referenced, was in the same speech a few lines later. "But we also have to have an organized effort against gangs," Hillary Clinton said in a C-SPAN video clip. "Just as in a previous generation we had an organized effort against the mob. We need to take these people on. They are often connected to big drug cartels, they are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators — no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel." The full context of this incident does link children and superpredators, but nowhere in the speech does she directly label African-American youth this way. However, backlash from this speech has followed Clinton into this year’s election. Two Black Lives Matter activists confronted Clinton at a private fundraiser in February, telling the candidate she owes black people an apology. One day after this confrontation, Clinton released a statement to the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, expressing regret for her word choice. "Looking back, I shouldn't have used those words, and I wouldn't use them today," she said. Later in the election cycle, former Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, also criticized her language at a debate in Brooklyn. When Sanders was asked by debate moderator why he called out Bill Clinton out for his defense of Clinton’s use of the term "superpredator," Sanders responded, "Because it was a racist term, and everyone knew it was a racist term." Our ruling Priebus said Hillary Clinton is "the the one that labeled African-American youth as superpredators." Clinton — in the midst of championing her husband’s 1994 crime legislation — did use the term "superpredator" when referring to "gangs of kids." She did not specifically label superpredators as African-American, but the context of her speech and her subsequent apology decades later suggests it was a reasonable inference. Priebus’ claim is accurate, but needs some clarification, so for that reason we rate his statement Mostly True. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Reince Priebus | null | null | null | 2016-08-28T16:46:55 | 2016-08-28 | ['None'] |
pomt-10115 | The centerpiece of Senator McCain's education policy is to increase the voucher program in D.C. by 2,000 slots. | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/16/barack-obama/centerpiece-more-like-a-side-dish/ | Sen. Barack Obama mocked his rival's education policy during the final presidential debate, saying Sen. John McCain planned to help a couple thousand students in Washington, D.C., and more or less ignore the rest of the country. His attack came late in the debate, as the candidates sparred over how to improve schools. Here's the exchange in context: "I'm sure you're aware, Senator Obama, of the program in the Washington, D.C., school system where vouchers are provided," McCain said in the Oct. 15, 2008, debate. "There's a certain number, I think it's a thousand and some and some 9,000 parents asked to be eligible for that...They wanted to choose the school that they thought was best for their children...That was vouchers, Senator Obama. And I'm frankly surprised you didn't pay more attention to that example." Obama countered: "Even if Senator McCain were to say that vouchers were the way to go — I disagree with him on this, because the data doesn't show that it actually solves the problem — the centerpiece of Senator McCain's education policy is to increase the voucher program in D.C. by 2,000 slots. That leaves all of you who live in the other 50 states without an education reform policy from Senator McCain." The senators were referring to the four-year-old D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, under which 1,903 children from low-income families have received up to $7,500 a year for tuition to private schools. Republicans in Congress – who believe in improving public schools through competition by providing vouchers parents can use to pay for private-school tuition – created the program in 2004. It's true that McCain is a strong advocate of the D.C. program. On his campaign Web site, he lists 13 items under the heading, "John McCain's Education Policy," including: "John McCain Will Expand The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program." He devotes 87 words to the subject, while the average item receives 67 words. "In our nation's capital, we have seen the dramatic benefits of giving parents control of money and choices," the site says. "The Opportunity Scholarship program serves more than 1,900 students from families with an average income of $23,000 a year. More than 7,000 more families have applied for that program. The budget for the Opportunity Scholarships is currently $13 million. John McCain believes that this extremely successful program should expand to at least $20 million benefiting nearly a thousand more families." Obama actually overstated the number of slots McCain would add to the program. But more importantly, there's no indication that plan is the "centerpiece" of McCain's education policy. True, there are just two items to which McCain's education page devotes more words. But three of the items outline different ways McCain would, as the site puts it, "Ensure that our children have quality teachers," an effort that would be national in scope. He would devote 5 percent of certain federal funds (Title II funds) to recruit teachers who graduated in the top quarter of their class, set aside 60 percent of those funds as bonuses for high-performing teachers, and use 35 percent of the funds for teacher development. It was clear to us that McCain's plan to use — or continue using — Title II funds to improve teaching is the centerpiece of his education policy, even before McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this in an e-mail: "The focus of our plan is the reform of...Title 1 and 2 funding – which is in excess of 16 billion dollars...Moreover, we have higher ed and early ed policy which have nothing to do with the DC opportunity scholarship expansion." We agree. On this one, Obama gets an F for False. | null | Barack Obama | null | null | null | 2008-10-16T00:00:00 | 2008-10-15 | ['Washington,_D.C.', 'John_McCain'] |
goop-02827 | Angelina Jolie “Terrified” Brad Pitt Will Begin “Dating Again,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-terrified-brad-pitt-dating-fake-news/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Angelina Jolie NOT “Terrified” Brad Pitt Will Begin “Dating Again,” Despite Fake News Story | 2:17 pm, April 30, 2017 | null | ['Angelina_Jolie', 'Brad_Pitt'] |
pomt-11540 | There are more immigrants in our country right now than any other time. | mostly true | /punditfact/statements/2018/feb/13/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-claims-more-immigrants-now-united-/ | Fox News’ Tucker Carlson shared on Twitter a key detail of the immigration debate: how many immigrants are in the United States. "There are more immigrants in our country right now than any other time. Is the country more united? Stronger? Just the opposite & everyone knows it. Maybe that's bc our elites welcome immigrants by telling them how flawed America is and how bigoted its native population #Tucker," tweeted Carlson, host of Tucker Carlson Tonight on Feb. 8. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com We wondered about the first part of Carlson’s tweet: Does the United States have more immigrants now than ever before? Carlson linked us to reports from the Center for Immigration Studies and Pew Research Center on the growing foreign-born population in the United States, which is now at a record high. It’s also worth noting, however, that the immigrant share of the total U.S. population was its highest in 1890. Background on the foreign-born population The U.S. Census Bureau in 1850 began asking people where they born. Large-scale immigration from Europe contributed to an increase of the foreign-born population in the United States from 1850 (2.2 million) to 1930 (14.2 million). "The late 19th and early 20th century was a time of high immigration (relative to total population) because we had a growing economy (industrialization and urbanization)," said Mae M. Ngai, a professor of Asian American studies and history at Columbia University. Nonpartisan think tank the Migration Policy Institute said restrictive immigration laws in the 1920s, the Great Depression and World War II then reduced the number of new arrivals. The number of immigrants dropped to 9.6 million by 1970, but has continued to grow since then. Today, the majority of the foreign-born population is from Latin America and Asia, according to the Census bureau. Carlson pointed us to a May 2017 post from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center that said the U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 43.2 million in 2015. "Since 1965, when U.S. immigration laws replaced a national quota system, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. has more than quadrupled," Pew Research Center reported. Carlson also noted that the Center for Immigration Studies in October 2017 said the U.S. immigrant population hit a record 43.7 million in July 2016. (The center, which favors low levels of immigration, analyzed data from the Census’ 2016 American Community Survey. It said the total number of immigrants was likely 45.6 million because some immigrants are missed by the survey.) So the number of immigrants in the United States is the highest it’s ever been. But it’s worth mentioning that 1890 holds the record for the highest percentage of immigrants as a share of the population. The total U.S. population in 1890 was about 63 million, and immigrants accounted for an estimated 14.8 percent. The total population in 2016 was about 323 million, which means about 13.5 percent were immigrants. Through a spokeswoman, Carlson said he never claimed immigrants were at the highest level as a proportion of population. An absolute number has no meaning by itself, "because it would mean something totally different in a country of 100 million, 200 million, 300 million or for that matter, 1 billion," said Ngai, the Columbia University professor. Susan Martin, professor emerita of international migration at Georgetown University, said absolute numbers and proportion can help understand the scale and impact of immigration. "Absolute numbers are important because each person presents needs and opportunities; proportion is equally important because impacts vary depending on whether the needs of a larger or smaller share of the population must be addressed," Martin said. Overall, immigrants’ distribution across the country, how long they’ve been here (on average), their educational levels and and other socio-economic characteristics are also important, Martin said. Our ruling Carlson tweeted, "There are more immigrants in our country right now than any other time." The number of immigrants in the United States is the highest it’s ever been: about 43.7 million. The number of immigrants in the United States has been increasing since 1970, according to the Census bureau. Carlson pointed to the absolute numbers as backup for his claim. But it’s worth noting that immigrants as a share of the population reached its peak in 1890, at 14.8 percent. In 2016, immigrants accounted for 13.5 percent of the population. Carlson’s statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Tucker Carlson | null | null | null | 2018-02-13T09:12:00 | 2018-02-08 | ['None'] |
pomt-04065 | Says Chris Christie’s plan "to kick-start our economy" is to propose an "income tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, and...he's still proposing it." | pants on fire! | /new-jersey/statements/2013/jan/24/barbara-buono/barbara-buono-claims-chris-christie-still-proposin/ | Looking to unseat Gov. Chris Christie this year, Democratic state Sen. Barbara Buono has tried to portray the Republican governor as being steadfastly committed to an income tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy. But for the second time in less than five months, the truth has stood in Buono’s way. Buono, the only Democrat to enter the gubernatorial race so far, repeated a claim about Christie’s tax cut plan during a video interview posted Jan. 13 on bluejersey.com, a left-leaning blog. The governor’s plan "to kick-start our economy" is to propose an "income tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, and...he's still proposing it," said Buono (D-Middlesex) Buono received a False for claiming in late August that Christie was demanding "an immediate tax cut that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest." By repeating a line we’ve already debunked, the senator’s latest claim is outrageously wrong. Let’s review our findings: Christie initially proposed in January 2012 to cut income tax rates by 10 percent across-the-board over three years. Under that proposal, higher-income taxpayers, who pay more in income taxes, would have benefited more than lower-income taxpayers. But the governor has since backed off that plan and endorsed a proposal to cut income taxes only for New Jerseyans below a certain income level and based on their annual property tax bills. The governor unveiled that proposal on July 2, when he conditionally vetoed a bill that would have raised the income tax rate on taxable income exceeding $1 million. Christie suggested turning that legislation into a tax cut plan based on a proposal made by Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat. Under Christie’s latest proposal, homeowners with taxable income of $400,000 or less would receive an income tax credit based on their property tax bills. The credit would be phased in over four years and ultimately reach 10 percent of the first $10,000 in property taxes paid. The proposal would not disproportionately benefit the wealthy, since homeowners earning more than $400,000 would be ineligible and the amount of the tax credit would be based on property tax bills, not income levels. In a news release from the governor’s office on Jan. 13 -- the same day as Buono’s interview -- the Christie administration affirmed its support for that tax cut proposal. According to the release, Christie "has proposed a bipartisan compromise" under which "New Jersey taxpayers will be able to claim an income tax credit of up to 10 percent of their property tax bill." To support Buono’s latest claim, her chief of staff, Christina Zuk, pointed to lines in two news articles, including this sentence from a Jan. 13 Star-Ledger story: "Christie also renewed his commitment for a 10 percent income-tax cut that he could not get last year." But immediately following that sentence is this quote from Christie: "All those things are good, and the tax cut proposed (last year) by Senator Sweeney is good." The second news article, published Jan. 13 on NorthJersey.com, only states that Christie "is still pushing for an income tax cut." The governor’s latest proposal is an income tax cut, but not in the way suggested by Buono. In response to our findings, Zuk said in an e-mail: "There are numerous news reports from the past few weeks that indicate that Governor Christie has not abandoned his misguided plan for an across-the-board income tax cut, one that independent experts say would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest in our state." Our ruling In a recent interview, Buono claimed that Christie’s plan "to kick-start our economy" is to propose an "income tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, and...he's still proposing it." But the governor has backed off such a plan and endorsed a proposal similar to one put forth by the Senate Democrats. Under that proposal, an income tax credit would be limited to taxpayers below a certain income level and based on their property tax bills. Buono received a False for making a similar claim in August, but we obviously need to add a little sizzle to get our point across. Pants on Fire! To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com. | null | Barbara Buono | null | null | null | 2013-01-24T07:30:00 | 2013-01-13 | ['None'] |
pomt-14291 | Evidence shows Zika virus turns fetus brains to liquid. | pants on fire! | /global-news/statements/2016/apr/04/blog-posting/website-stirs-zika-fears-false-claim-about-liquefi/ | A claim moving on the Web paints a horrific image of how the Zika virus can damage a fetus. "Evidence Shows Zika Virus Turns Fetus Brains to Liquid" blared the headline on the website Weekly Observer, which is based in England. At least two other websites ran similar stories April 3 and 4, 2016. The claim is completely wrong, and has the barest connection to any actual research. Seeing as it showed up in quick succession in Australia and the United Kingdom, we thought we should move quickly to squash it. The Weekly Observer piece has the gloss of authentic reporting. A recent study published by the New England Journal of Medicine shows that the Zika virus kills developing fetal brain cells. According to the doctors, the study was performed on a woman who got infected by the virus while she was 3 months pregnant. Her fetus was monitored through blood tests and MRIs, and the doctors watched as the baby’s brain was basically liquefied within 9 weeks. The woman underwent an abortion at 21 weeks. The Australia Network website was equally somber. In a (sic) recent research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers tracked the development of a foetus whose mother contracted the virus on a trip to Central America, when she was 3 months pregnant. The blood tests and the magnetic resonance images showed that the virus was slowly turning the baby’s brain into liquid over a course of nine weeks. At 21 weeks the woman aborted the foetus. The New England Journal of Medicine did publish an article on March 30, 2016, about a 33-year-old Finnish woman who was with her husband in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize in November 2015 when she was 11 weeks pregnant. Ultrasound examinations up until the 17th week of the pregnancy showed no abnormalities. That changed by the 19th week. Basic structures in the cranium were not as they should be. That combined with proof that the mother was infected with the Zika virus and a more detailed view using MRI led the parents to terminate the pregnancy at 21 weeks. An autopsy found Zika virus in the fetal brain tissue. Areas of the brain had dead cells and some that had begun to break down. But did the researchers say that the brain had been liquefied? "This is absolutely NOT what we said," wrote Adre du Plessis, one of the lead authors and director of the Fetal Medicine Institute at the Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C. A second author, Rita Drigger, a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, called the description a "false interpretation" of the case. A third author, Olli Vapalahti at the Department of Virology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, told us some reporter might have misunderstood him during an interview. "I may have tried to explain -- perhaps in too simple terms -- that there was thinning of the cortex and enlargement of the ventricles in the brain, meaning that some of the brain tissue had been replaced by cerebrospinal fluid," Vapalahti said. "I can now see that this has emerged to some hype message which certainly I have not intended to deliver." In other words, it wasn’t that brain tissue was turned to liquid. Rather, space where brain cells would normally be found contained fluid instead. In a conference call with reporters on March 30, du Plessis said the main point of the article was to caution doctors and parents that an extremely small head might not be the sole indicator of brain damage associated with the Zika virus. In this case, the brain was small but the head was still within the normal range. "What this says is that the current criteria may be falsely reassuring," du Plessis said. Further, while the presence of the Zika virus in fetal brain tissue strongly indicated that the virus caused the harm, the researchers stopped short of saying this case proved a causal connection. Several news organizations, including the Washington Post, NBC News and Reuters, reported the story accurately. We reached out to the Weekly Observer and so far have not heard back. Our ruling The Weekly Observer and other websites said that researchers had found that the Zika virus turned a fetal brain into liquid. The Observer referred to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. The three lead researchers for that study declared the Observer's version was wholly inaccurate. They found signs of dead brain cells and cerebrospinal fluid where it shouldn’t be. They never said that the virus liquefied brain cells. We rate this claim Pants on Fire. Update (April 5, 2016): After we published, we heard from the staff of the Weekly Observer. Elise Bou Malham, chief content officer, emailed us, apologized for the mistake and explained that she had first seen the article on another website. "In no way was it meant to 'stir fears' or promote any false claims," Malham said. "We assure you the article was deleted as soon as we received your email. I offer my sincere apologies on behalf of the entire editorial team." While the article was not deleted, it was eventually updated. The new version reads. "Claims about Zika Virus Turning Fetus Brains to ‘Liquid’ Completely FALSE" It then explains its original error. "Earlier this week, The Weekly Observer aggregated an article from various sources online, saying that Zika Virus is responsible for turning Fetus brain into liquid. "The original article on Uproxx.com ‘New Data Shows That The Zika Virus Can Turn Fetal Brain Into Liquid’, as well as several others, turned out to contain false claims as the study was misinterpreted by various sources." | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2016-04-04T16:06:46 | 2016-04-04 | ['None'] |
pomt-10574 | (John McCain) was even mentioned as a running mate with John Kerry. | true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/feb/04/citizens-united-political-victory-fund/thats-the-ticket/ | Republicans have often questioned Sen. John McCain's conservative stripes, and the idea that he was a potential running mate for Democrat John Kerry in 2004 stokes their suspicions even more. The advocacy group Citizens United Political Victory Fund is currently on the attack, launching an ad that at first appears to be aimed at Hillary Clinton. "One candidate voted against the Bush tax cuts, both times. ... And was even mentioned as a running mate with John Kerry." A photo of Clinton slides over to reveal McCain; the narrator says, "Hillary Clinton? No. John McCain." We checked the claim on McCain's votes here. As for the charge that McCain was mentioned as a running mate with Democratic nominee John Kerry in 2004? That's true. There are many, many references in the media to the idea that McCain was possible for the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket. Here are just a few: • In March 2004, reports about the offer prompted Good Morning America host Charles Gibson to ask McCain about it in an interview on the show. McCain answered: "John Kerry is a very close friend of mine. We've been friends for years. Obviously, I would entertain it. But there's, I see no scenario, no scenario, no scenario where I, I foresee no scenario where that would happen." • After Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate in July 2004, the Washington Post reported that Kerry initiated phone calls to McCain about a possible crossover ticket, "but McCain made clear he was not interested." • A February 2007 article in Vanity Fair magazine titled "Prisoner of Conscience" says: "Kerry felt close enough to McCain at the time to make multiple and serious inquiries about McCain's interest in running for vice president on a national-unity ticket (and McCain basked in the courtship, even if he knew nothing could ever come of it). • And, in an April 2007 interview with the Web site myDD.com (Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics), Kerry says McCain's people approached him about being on the Democratic ticket. Responding to suggestions that McCain had approached prominent Democrats about switching parties, Kerry says: "It doesn't surprise me completely because his people similarly approached me to engage in a discussion about his potentially being on the ticket as vice president. So his people were active — let's put it that way." We're not saying McCain gave the idea much thought or even that he was offered the job, but it's clear he "was mentioned as a running mate with John Kerry." We rule this statement True. | null | Citizens United Political Victory Fund | null | null | null | 2008-02-04T00:00:00 | 2008-02-01 | ['John_McCain', 'John_Kerry'] |
chct-00028 | FACT CHECK: Did Beto O’Rourke Raise More In A Single Quarter Than Jeb Bush’s Entire Presidential Campaign? | verdict: true | http://checkyourfact.com/2018/10/15/fact-check-beto-orourke-jeb-bush-campaign/ | null | null | null | Emily Larsen | Fact Check Reporter | null | null | 10:42 PM 10/15/2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14777 | Last year, I stopped an Obamacare bailout and saved taxpayers $2.5 billion. | mostly false | /florida/statements/2015/dec/07/marco-rubio/rubio-says-he-prevented-25-billion-obamacare-bailo/ | Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio is taking credit for potentially sounding the death knell for Obamacare, claiming legislation he introduced eventually prevented Washington from giving billions of tax dollars to insurance companies. "Last year, I stopped an Obamacare bailout and saved taxpayers $2.5 billion," Rubio said in a Dec. 1, 2015, tweet. It linked to a Fox News story giving Rubio credit for dealing a blow to President Barack Obama’s signature health care legislation. Declaring he saved heaps of tax money and prevented a government bailout linked to a divisive law is a campaign coup for Rubio, who has risen to second among GOP candidates in the latest national Quinnipiac poll. But can he truly claim he kept billions from being used for a so-called bailout? Risk corridors rundown To set the table, we need to take a deep breath and go over a provision of the Affordable Care Act known as "risk corridors." The ACA upended the traditional health insurance model of selling mostly to healthy people, mandating that insurers must provide policies to everyone, regardless of health or pre-existing conditions. That presented a problem for the companies, which didn’t know how much they would need to charge in premiums in order to cover their expenses for all the new policies. To help companies stay solvent as they adjusted their rates to proper levels, the law provided a three-year period in which the government would spread the risk among all insurers in ACA marketplaces. This program, set to last between 2014-16, is known as risk corridors. If some insurers are successful in setting their marketplace rates properly and make more than a certain amount, Washington gets some of that extra money, referred to as user fees. Companies that don’t do well have a portion of their losses covered by the government. Rubio has opposed the risk corridors since 2013, introducing legislation in the Senate to repeal the program. His bill didn’t go anywhere, but Rubio continued to speak out against the provision, referring to the program as a "bailout" for unsuccessful insurance companies. But is it really a bailout? Several experts told us no, stressing that a bailout usually refers to a program used to save a company after the fact, not a mechanism in place to deal with a problem that everyone assumes could occur. The risk corridors program was modeled after a successful plan through Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage set up during George W. Bush’s presidency. The Part D program is a bit different than the ACA’s version, but it was still designed to spread risk among insurers. "Then, no one called it a bailout, when a new private insurance market was being created for Medicare drug benefits," said Mark Hall, a law and public health professor at Wake Forest University. But the problem with Obamacare’s risk corridors is really about how it’s funded. And that’s the heart of Rubio’s claim of saving taxpayer money. Funding fight The ACA did not specify where it was getting the money to cover any risk corridor payments. To get around this, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said they would keep the program budget-neutral by making payments strictly from the user fees successful insurers sent to the government. Rubio’s concern has been that CMS promised in 2013 that "regardless of the balance of payments and receipts" in the program, insurers who said they needed money would get it. His point is that if there wasn’t enough money to cover the payments, the Obama administration would ask Congress for money. But CMS said in April 2014 that it didn’t plan to ask Congress for an appropriation. If they didn’t take in enough money the first year, they would make it up in later years, when marketplaces hopefully stabilized enough to cover losses. To make sure CMS didn’t ask for cash, Rubio wanted to cut off other sources of funding that could be used to pay off those companies. He urged then-Speaker of the House John Boehner in October 2014 to block potential appropriations for risk corridor payments. When Congress passed a spending bill in December 2014, it included a sentence, or a "rider" in legislative speak, that said the CMS’ parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, could not move money around in its budget to pay extra risk corridor expenses. Other legislators have credited Rubio with inspiring this language. Rubio has since reintroduced his bill to repeal risk corridors. Everyone had to wait until insurance companies turned in their results to see how the risk corridors were working. The first year didn’t go as well as CMS and the Obama administration had hoped. In October 2015, CMS announced the risk corridors program took in $362 million for 2014, while less successful insurers asked for a total of $2.87 billion. That left a $2.5 billion shortfall CMS can’t pay. CMS said it would pay out 12.6 percent of claims from 2014 this year, leading some insurers to leave the marketplaces or even collapse altogether. Rubio now is on the campaign trail trumpeting the move as potentially being "a big part of ending Obamacare for good." Some legal observers, however, doubt whether Rubio’s efforts had any long-term effects. "All the rider did is say, ‘If you’re going to go scrape the couch cushions for money to pay for this, don’t,’ " Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor, told PolitiFact Florida. "The Rubio rider is preventing the administration from coming up with a workaround to a problem the law already had." There are still two years left in the risk corridors program, which the Congressional Budget Office said will likely eventually break even. If the program is in the red after 2016, CMS will either have to somehow find the money or ask Congress to decide whether to approve cash to pay the bill. Otherwise insurers could potentially sue to get what the law says they’re owed. "What he did is throw a wrench in the process," Bagley said of Rubio, who is trying to include the same kind of roadblock in the current spending bill. The deadline for that bill is Dec. 11. "It’s perfectly reasonable to assume those insurance companies are going to eventually want the money that was promised to them." Our ruling Rubio said, "Last year, I stopped an Obamacare bailout and saved taxpayers $2.5 billion." He’s referring to a provision in the Affordable Care Act called risk corridors, which faced a $2.5 billion shortfall for 2014. Rubio, whose efforts to repeal risk corridors have so far failed, helped persuade Congress last year to prevent Health and Human Services from being able to cover the difference with money from its own budget. But experts said calling the program a bailout is not accurate. They also noted CMS has said they want the risk corridors to pay for themselves through fees from insurers. Most importantly, experts also said Rubio did not necessarily save that money in the long run. His best argument is he temporarily limited one way CMS could have tried to pay for insurance companies' losses. The program has two more years to cover its expenses. If any bills are due after that time, CMS or Congress will have to find a way to pay them because they are obligated to do so. Rubio oversimplified a complex process that is still largely unresolved. We rate his statement Mostly False. | null | Marco Rubio | null | null | null | 2015-12-07T10:39:39 | 2015-12-01 | ['None'] |
snes-04229 | U.S. Gymnastics coaches Bela and Marta Karolyi were illegal immigrants. | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/karolyi-illegal-immigrants/ | null | Sports | null | Kim LaCapria | null | U.S. Gymnastics Coaches Bela and Marta Karolyi Were Illegal Immigrants? | 17 August 2016 | null | ['United_States', 'Márta_Károlyi'] |
pomt-05864 | Says that as Wisconsin governor he "never raised taxes." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2012/feb/10/tommy-thompson/gop-senate-candidate-tommy-thompson-says-tax-cutti/ | When it comes to reciting the tax cutting he did as Wisconsin’s governor, Tommy Thompson can riff as well as any politician. The Republican U.S. Senate candidate launched into his litany with reporters after giving a speech at the Milwaukee Press Club on Jan. 23, 2012. John Mercure, host of the afternoon news show on WTMJ-AM in Milwaukee, noted that some Republicans prefer a more conservative nominee in 2012 and asked Thompson if he is conservative enough. Thompson said yes. Mercure then asked: "What do you say to those critics that say that you're not?" Cue the riff. "Ninety-one times I cut taxes; 91 times," Thompson replied. "Three times, income taxes. Eliminated the inheritance taxes, eliminated the gift taxes. Gave the people of this state $2.1 billion in property tax (relief) -- and never raised taxes. If you want a conservative, follow me." We’ve rated Mostly True Thompson’s claim that Wisconsin’s overall tax burden went down while he served as governor from 1987 to 2001. As we said in that item, tax burden is a broad measure: "Tax burden" takes those total collections -- including property, income, sales, corporate and other taxes -- and divides them into all personal income earned in the state. It does not reflect what every individual experienced; it’s a composite measure of the composite statewide tax bite, or burden. The "burden" measurement is considered the gold standard for measuring tax impact. But in saying he never raised any taxes, Thompson raised the bar awfully high, so we decided to take a look. Darrin Schmitz, Thompson’s campaign spokesman, told us Thompson "was referring to Wisconsin’s general taxes: income, sales, property and corporate taxes." But that’s an attempt to lower the bar. Thompson did not qualify the statement when he made it. In fact, he listed a variety of taxes. With a little research we found examples of taxes Thompson raised -- including some of the ones his campaign mentioned as not being raised. General taxes: The 1995-1997 state budget contained $63 million in tax increases -- including boosts in the general tax increases Thompson cited, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the neutral scorekeeper that tallies tax hikes and tax cuts. The budget projected an increase of $17.5 million in sales tax revenue over the two-year period by eliminating an exemption for certain office equipment. And eliminating an exemption for certain health care providers raised corporate income taxes by a projected $900,000. (That budget also raised fees by $120 million over two years.) The 1997-1999 budget contained $125 million in tax increases, the fiscal bureau said. That included an increase of $36 million in sales tax revenue over two years by imposing a "use tax" on catalog sales. Cigarettes: The cigarette tax was 25 cents per pack when Thompson took office. It was raised four times during his tenure and was 59 cents when he left to join President George W. Bush’s administration. (The tax is now $2.52.) Gasoline: The gas tax rose to 18 cents per gallon shortly after Thompson took office, based on a law adopted before he took office, and rose by more than 8 cents to 26.4 cents before he left. (It’s now 30.9 cents.) Twelve of the 14 gas-tax increases under Thompson were automatic annual adjustments, which occurred because of the previous law. But Thompson did not take action to stop the automatic increases and two of the increases -- which totaled 3 of the 8 cents -- were raised by budgets adopted during his tenure. That’s not an exhaustive list, but it provides enough for the claim at hand. Our rating Thompson stated flatly that as governor, he "never raised taxes." Thompson has a long list of taxes he cut and, on balance, he can claim to have reduced taxes. But he also raised some specific taxes along the way. We rate his statement False. | null | Tommy Thompson | null | null | null | 2012-02-10T09:00:00 | 2012-01-23 | ['Wisconsin'] |
pomt-08178 | [Georgia] Republicans have mismanaged unemployment benefits. | false | /georgia/statements/2010/nov/30/democratic-party-georgia-georgia/state-republicans-blame-unemployment-benefit-gap/ | When Channel 2 Action News recently reported that the state of Georgia has borrowed several hundred million dollars to pay unemployment benefits, state Democratic Party leaders knew who to blame. "[Georgia] Republicans have mismanaged unemployment benefits and now might have to cut them or hike taxes on small businesses," the party wrote in a Nov. 18 message on its Facebook page. Some intrepid AJC PolitiFact Georgia readers (disgruntled Democratic politicos, party officials say) alerted us to the posting and asked us to investigate. The claim took us by surprise since the man in charge of unemployment benefits, Georgia Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, is a Democrat. One of those critics, Andre Walker, objected to the Democratic Party's claim on his website, Georgia Unfiltered. Walker said the Republican-led state Legislature allocated about $47 million a year between 2006 and 2008 for unemployment benefits. In 2009, the total rose to $60 million. Earlier this year, the Legislature approved $56 million. Walker also noted that Thurmond is a Democrat. "Where's the mismanagement?" Walker asked in his blog. The state Labor Department said the Legislature does not allocate funding for unemployment benefits. Those funds, the department said, come from taxes paid by Georgia employers. To sort this all out, let's begin by looking at how the Georgia unemployment program works. Businesses in Georgia pay into a state fund that the Labor Department uses to pay unemployment when workers are laid off or terminated through no fault of their own. In 1998, Georgia had $1.9 billion in the fund, said Brock Timmons, chief of the Labor Department's employment insurance legal section. In 2003 and 2004, the state paid out about $722 million a year from the fund, Timmons said. In 2009, at the height of the Great Recession, Georgia paid $1.47 billion in unemployment benefits. Georgia's unemployment rate has been above the national average in recent years. It is currently at 9.9 percent; the national average is 9.6 percent. "It took us by surprise," Timmons said of the rising unemployment. Some employers, as a result of the tax cuts that took effect between 2000 and 2003, paid little or no money to the unemployment fund. The percentage Georgia employers paid in the fund increased by 15 percent in 2009 and by 13 percent in 2010. State officials say Georgia has received advances totaling $454.5 million from the federal government. Georgia must pay back the money but has not set up a timetable to do so. Timmons said Georgia employers could pay more in federal unemployment taxes if the loan isn't repaid by November 2011. Georgia Democratic Party spokesman Eric Gray told us the Facebook message could have been more precise. He posted a column on Georgia Politico explaining the party's point. The column says state GOP leaders did not make the "tough choices" necessary to avert this problem when the recession hit. The column does not say what the "tough choices" were. "With the unemployment fund nearly broke, they reluctantly accepted stimulus money from the federal government to replenish the unemployment fund. This bought them time to address the problem," the column says. "Yet Republicans stuck with what they are good at -- ignoring it even more." The column does not specify what state leaders should have done to avoid the current problem of borrowing money from the federal government. The funds are still managed by the state Labor Department, which is run by a Democrat, not a Republican. Democratic Party officials say they should have been more precise in their description of the problem on Facebook. We agree. We rate it as False. | null | Democratic Party of Georgia | null | null | null | 2010-11-30T06:00:00 | 2010-11-18 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-00150 | Canada Pays Off Entire Federal Debt One Day After Marijuana Legalization | pants on fire! | /facebook-fact-checks/statements/2018/oct/24/blog-posting/did-canada-pay-its-debt-day-after-legalizing-marij/ | Canada legalized marijuana on Oct. 17, 2018. It didn’t take long for jokes to waft onto social media. One of the most popular of these was an Oct. 18 article headlined, "Canada Pays Off Entire Federal Debt One Day After Marijuana Legalization." See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com This story was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) While some sites did not clearly make the distinction, the story originated on a Canadian publication called the Daily Bonnet, which is open about being a satire site. Here’s a portion of the article: "Less than 24 hours after cannabis became legal in Canada, the federal government announced they had made so much money in tax revenue from the sale of legal weed that they were able to pay off the country’s entire $650 billion debt. " ‘I told you so,’ said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, looking considerably less handsome than usual with his blood-shot eyes. ‘It’s remarkable! You’re crippled with debt one day and the next it’s all vanished into thin air. It’s just one more thing that makes Canada the great country that it is!’ " Millions of Canadians potheads lined up outside their local marijuana shops to legally purchase weed and pay their taxes for the first time. "It’s like the 60s all over again! But this time the government likes us!" said one Ottawa man, who purchased three hash brownies and a half dozen joints. "Who would have thought getting stoned would have such a beneficial impact on the Canadian economy! This is better than the oil sands!" "The Daily Bonnet "is a Mennonite satirical news site from the heart of the Bible belt, Steinbach, Manitoba," the site’s "about us" page says. "Apart from the names of local and international celebrities, all characters and situations presented are entirely fictitious." Anyone sharing this without clearly noting that it’s satire is sharing inaccurate content. We rate it Pants on Fire. See Figure 2 on PolitiFact.com | null | Bloggers | null | null | null | 2018-10-24T16:48:35 | 2018-10-18 | ['None'] |
snes-00568 | Is CNN Permanently Closing Their Doors After a Ratings Plunge of 30 Percent? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cnn-ratings-plunge/ | null | Junk News | null | David Emery | null | Is CNN Permanently Closing Their Doors After a Ratings Plunge of 30 Percent? | 21 May 2018 | null | ['None'] |
tron-02255 | Treating Burns With Flour Has Miraculous Results | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/flour-burns/ | null | medical | null | null | null | Treating Burns With Flour Has Miraculous Results | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-07389 | Currently, there is no one from South Austin on the (Austin City) Council! | true | /texas/statements/2011/may/03/max-nofziger/max-nofziger-says-austin-city-council-bereft-south/ | When Max Nofziger, a South Austin resident seeking to rejoin the Austin City Council, was asked whether the city should stop electing council members by citywide vote, he answered that he’d prefer a mix of members chosen at-large and from single-member districts. Pitching his case, Nofziger is quoted in the just-published "Voters Guide" from the League of Women Voters of the Austin Area: "Currently, there is no one from South Austin on the (Austin City) Council!" We left a message for Nofziger, a council member from mid-1987 to mid-1996, then re-read a Jan. 23 Austin American-Statesman news article supporting his claim. The story revealed Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell’s desire to seek a voter-approved reorganization of the council resulting in six members elected from regional districts plus two members and the mayor elected citywide. Currently, the story said, "three council members live in or near downtown, two live in East Austin, one lives in Hyde Park, and Leffingwell lives northwest." And, the story continues: "None lives south" of the Colorado River, which separates South Austin from the rest of the city. Next, we contacted Matt Curtis, the mayor’s communications director, who told us no one has moved since that article was published. Curtis said Leffingwell lives in the Balcones Drive part of West Austin and among other council members, Sheryl Cole lives in Wilshire Woods, Laura Morrison resides in Old West Austin, Chris Riley is downtown, Randy Shade lives in Clarksville and Bill Spelman hails from Hyde Park. Council Member Mike Martinez told us he lives in the Senate Hills part of East Austin, but plans to move later this year to East 11th Street near Chicon. Curtis said the latest South Austinites on the council, Betty Dunkerley and Jennifer Kim, finished their terms in June 2008. As we closed this check, Nofziger called to say he’d originally heard from local activists that the council now lacks South Austin residents. We rate his statement True. | null | Max Nofziger | null | null | null | 2011-05-03T06:00:00 | 2011-05-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-05207 | Says "Tommy Thompson's tax plan amounts to an average tax cut of almost $87,000 for the top 1 percent." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2012/jun/10/tammy-baldwin/tammy-baldwin-says-tommy-thompsons-tax-plan-would-/ | If you haven’t heard U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, say she is fighting for the middle class in her bid for the U.S. Senate, you haven’t been listening. But you can be forgiven. The gubernatorial recall all but filled Wisconsin’s political bandwidth until the election was held June 5, 2012. Now, more attention will turn to Baldwin and the four Republicans seeking to succeed Democrat Herb Kohl in the November 2012 Senate election. Baldwin sounded the middle class theme in attacking the best known GOP candidate, former governor Tommy Thompson, in a memo released to the media May 30, 2012. She declared: "Thompson’s tax plan amounts to an average tax cut of almost $87,000 for the top 1 percent." The 1 percent are people with incomes over $343,000, according to the memo. Sounds like a good deal for them. But is Baldwin on target? Baldwin’s evidence Baldwin campaign spokesman John Kraus said Baldwin's is based on a flat tax provision in a tax reform plan that Thompson released in April 2012. Two paragraphs in the four-page document are devoted to the flat tax. For two years, individual taxpayers could opt to file a tax return with a 15 percent rate, or file a return using existing exemptions. After two years, Thompson "would move to an across-the board flat tax with provisions to encourage savings, investment, home ownership and support for charities," the plan says. Here’s the Baldwin math: In 2009, according to the latest figures available from the Internal Revenue Service, the top 1 percent of federal income tax returns amounts to nearly 1.38 million people. They all earned more than $343,927. That group generated just over $1.32 trillion in adjusted gross income, which resulted in a total of just over $318 billion in income taxes paid. Had a 15 percent flat rate been in effect, the "1 percent" would have paid $198.7 billion in taxes or $119.3 billion less, under Thompson’s plan. That means those taxpayers would have paid an average of $86,502 less in income taxes. Thompson campaign spokesman Brian Nemoir noted that tax rates ranged from 10 percent to 35 percent in 2009 (as they do now). He said Thompson’s plan "better balances the nearly half of all Americans that don’t pay income taxes against the nation’s top 1 percent of earners, who pay 37 percent of the income taxes collected." As for Baldwin’s figures, he said her analysis "seems sufficient." While Thompson's proposal lacks enough detail for analysis, the Tax Policy Center evaluated the more detailed 15 percent flat tax plan advanced by Newt Gingrich during his 2012 run for the Republican presidential nomination. The center concluded that no one, regardless of income, would see a tax increase under Gingrich's plan. Under one scenario, which divided all taxpayers into five groups based on income, all five groups would get a tax cut under Gingrich's plan. So, it’s likely Thompson’s plan would benefit many more groups than the 1 percent cited by Baldwin, who is using that approach to bolster her underlying point. As for the specifics of Baldwin's claim, we ran her numbers by three tax experts: Tax Policy Center senior fellow Roberton Williams and Tax Foundation economist Mark Robyn, both in Washington, D.C.; and Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance president Todd Berry in Madison. All three said Baldwin is generally on target, but that Thompson’s plan is too short on details to know for sure whether Baldwin’s $87,000 figure is on the money. Williams said Baldwin’s numbers, on their face, are accurate. "It’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, that’s what it is," said Robyn. Robyn and Berry agreed the 1 percent would almost certainly get a tax break under Thompson’s plan, but they couldn’t say whether Baldwin’s figure is accurate because Thompson’s plan doesn’t specify what deductions and exemptions might remain under his flat tax and who would qualify for them. "Her calculations are probably overstated a little, but we don’t know how much," said Berry. Our rating Baldwin said Thompson's tax plan "amounts to an average tax cut of almost $87,000 for the top 1 percent" and Thompson didn’t refute the figure. Tax experts said Baldwin’s figure is in the ballpark, at least as an estimate, but that Thompson’s flat tax proposal lacks too much detail to know for sure. Baldwin’s claim is accurate but needs additional information -- our definition of Mostly True. | null | Tammy Baldwin | null | null | null | 2012-06-10T09:00:00 | 2012-05-30 | ['Tommy_Thompson'] |
tron-02016 | Anne Frank Was a Refugee Denied by the U.S. | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/anne-frank-was-a-refugee/ | null | immigration | null | null | null | Anne Frank Was a Refugee Denied by the U.S. | Nov 25, 2015 | null | ['United_States'] |
goop-02937 | Angelina Jolie Sad After “First Trip Without” Brad Pitt, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/angelina-jolie-sad-brad-pitt-trip/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Angelina Jolie NOT Sad After “First Trip Without” Brad Pitt, Despite Report | 7:58 pm, March 14, 2017 | null | ['Brad_Pitt'] |
snes-04671 | President Obama has demanded all Americans "celebrate gay sex" for the month of June 2016. | mostly false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-forces-americans-to-celebrate-gay-sex/ | null | Politics | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Obama Forces Americans to ‘Celebrate’ Gay Sex | 2 June 2016 | null | ['Barack_Obama', 'United_States'] |
tron-03338 | Muslim Students Question Swiss Handshake Custom | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/muslim-students-question-swiss-handshake-custom/ | null | religious | null | null | null | Muslim Students Question Swiss Handshake Custom | Jul 13, 2016 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-14077 | Puerto Rico’s $70 billion debt is unsustainable and it is unpayable. And the reason why it is unsustainable has everything to do with the greed of Wall Street vulture funds. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/may/19/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-links-puerto-ricos-debt-crisis-wall/ | Bernie Sanders condemned Wall Street for creating and now profiting off Puerto Rico’s debt crisis during a campaign stop on the island. Puerto Rico is currently $72 billion in debt and, in the words of its governor, in "a death spiral." Unlike other states and cities, it cannot legally declare bankruptcy. So Sanders called for the Federal Reserve to help the U.S. territory out, just as it bailed out the financial sector responsible for imperilling 3.5 million Puerto Ricans in the first place. "I think all of us understand and your government understands that Puerto Rico’s $70 billion debt is unsustainable and it is unpayable," Sanders said May 16 at a town hall in San Juan. "And the reason why it is unsustainable has everything to do with the greed of Wall Street vulture funds." So is Wall Street to blame for the island’s economic woes? Sanders has a point that hedge funds and banks are certainly exacerbating the situation and, in some cases, attempting to block a solution. However, experts told us and the research shows that Puerto Rico has been accumulating debt long before Wall Street got involved. Origins of the debt This $72 billion debt did not appear solely thanks to the maneuvers of Wall Street. Rather, it’s been building up for decades, resulting from a combination of U.S. policy, local mismanagement and economic decline. The local government has essentially maxed out a very special credit card given to it and other U.S. territories. When the island became a commonwealth in 1917, Congress also made bonds issued by the Puerto Rican government "triple tax-exempt" (meaning they can’t be taxed at the federal, state or local level) and thus very attractive to investors. For decades, this allowed the government to overspend, in part out of necessity and in part out of sheer irresponsibility. Puerto Rico has had to pick up a disportionate chunk of the tab for federal social programs. More than 60 percent of its residents receive Medicare or Medicaid, but federal funding is considerably lower than the states. (For example, $3 billion for Oklahoma’s Medicaid program and $3.6 billion for Mississippi’s compared to $373 million for the island, a fraction of its $2.9 billion in expenses.) Disparities in funding aside, the local government has also made some poor management and spending decisions. Inefficient public utilities have been running up the tab since the 1940s and now account for the largest portion of Puerto Rico’s debt ($20 billion). Meanwhile, the state-run power authority continues to dole out free electricity. Similarly, public employees enjoy "lavish pension benefits" like holiday bonuses and loans for international travel but the pensions remain severely underfunded ($1.9 billion in assets versus $45.5 billion in liabilities). Now add in changes in federal policy, economic depression and population decline and you’ve got a recipe for even less revenue and total debt unsustainability. For decades, U.S. businesses operating in Puerto Rico received significant tax breaks, an economic boon for the island. But that all ended in 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed legislation phasing out the incentives over 10 years. By 2006, Puerto Rico was already $43 billion in debt and fell into a recession that, compounded by the global financial crisis, continues to this day. Marc Joffe, the principal consultant at Public Sector Credit Solutions, tracked Puerto Rico’s debt from 1910 to 2015. Here’s a chart we made using his data: Wall Street’s role The island was already knee-deep in debt by the time the financial industry got involved, but Wall Street is certainly profiting off of the situation. According to Sanders in his San Juan address and his campaign, hedge funds now hold about 50 percent of Puerto Rico’s debt. This is the high end of estimates we found, which range from 20 percent to 50 percent. But this is a relatively recent development. Prior to 2014, most of Puerto Rico’s bonds were owned by traditional mutual funds and retail investors, according to Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who previously worked in the Obama administration's Treasury Department. Morningstar, the research investment firm, estimated that some 180 mutual funds had Puerto Rican bonds in their portfolios in 2013. In 2014, multiple credit ratings agencies downgraded Puerto Rico’s bonds to junk status. Because of the high risk associated with this low grade, most traditional investors were unable or unwilling to invest. Enter Wall Street. Hedge funds and other non-traditional buyers "eyeing fat yields and possible trading gains" purchased $3.5 billion worth of junk bonds at a tax-free interest rate of just under 9 percent (the high rate reflecting the high risk). As Puerto Rico’s debt had already topped $70 billion in 2013, $3.5 billion wouldn’t have made much of a difference. "The combination of Puerto Rico’s decision (to sell more bonds) and the availability of Wall Street financing helped Puerto Rico dig itself into a bigger hole," said Setser. In fact, if the hedge funds hadn’t purchased these bonds, which were after all issued to pay off old debt, "the crisis would have come a little earlier since the level of debt was already unsustainable," said Joffe of Public Sector Credit Solutions. That being said, Wall Street should be held accountable for its opportunism as some hedge funds and banks have certainly chosen to take advantage of the situation, said Rafael Fantauzzi of the National Puerto Rican Coalition. Since 2014, hedge funds have been buying up bonds on the cheap in the secondary market (those previously owned by traditional investors). Sanders’ campaign provided PolitiFact an example of bonds bought for 29 cents on the dollar yielding an interest of 34 percent. Bloomberg has reported yields ranging from under 10 percent to as high as 80 percent. Sanders in his San Juan speech and his campaign also noted that banks like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and UBS have received hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to manage the island’s bond sales. The exact figure, according to the Wall Street Journal, is $1.4 billion for $61 billion worth of bond sales since 2006. That’s the equivalent of a service charge of 2.3 percent, double the average rate for municipal bond sales but quadruple the rate for corporate bond sales. Exacerbating the situation The most damning evidence for "the greed of vulture funds" is Wall Street’s efforts to prevent Puerto Rico from digging itself out of the hole. As we’ve previously reported, Puerto Rico is legally unable to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy. But there is currently legislation in motion to allow the island to restructure the debt. The Sanders campaign forwarded us a New York Times report of a letter representatives of BlueMountain, a hedge fund that holds Puerto Rican bonds, sent to Republican staff members urging against allowing debt restructuring. The Center for Individual Freedom, a dark money group, has also spent $2 million on issue ads against debt relief efforts in Congress, supporting the hedge funds’ position. "That’s very concerning that financial interests, specially these so-called ‘vulture funds,’ are disrupting the political process and preventing Puerto Rico having a smoother landing in this situation they got themselves into," said Joffe, adding that that’s what they did in Argentina as well. In lieu of debt restructuring, Wall Street recommends cutting spending. A report commissioned by 34 hedge funds advises Puerto Rico to raise taxes, lay off teachers, close schools, and cut wages and worker benefits, Medicaid, and welfare. (About 45.4 percent of Puerto Ricans live below the poverty line and the commonwealth already closed 150 schools in the last five years and increased its sales tax.) So while the hedge funds and banks "have played a relatively modest role in creating the need for a comprehensive debt solution," said Setser, they are "playing a more important role in hindering a bipartisan solution." Our ruling Sanders said, "Puerto Rico’s $70 billion debt is unsustainable and it is unpayable. And the reason why it is unsustainable has everything to do with the greed of Wall Street vulture funds." Puerto Rico’s debt was already unsustainable by the time Wall Street hedge funds and banks began playing a role as a result of decades of local mismanagement, U.S. policy and economic misfortune. But Sanders has a point that the financial sector has taken advantage of and is excerbating the situation. What's more, they're effectively preventing crisis relief by actively working to stop Puerto Rico from restructuring its debt. We rate his claim Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/569f5ee5-ad45-4c6b-aa2e-370eeada25bf | null | Bernie Sanders | null | null | null | 2016-05-19T10:00:00 | 2016-05-16 | ['None'] |
pomt-03835 | There is no clinical evidence that vaccinating healthcare workers protects patients. | false | /rhode-island/statements/2013/mar/17/service-employees-international-union-committee-po/seiu-district-1199-says-theres-no-clinical-evidenc/ | The Rhode Island Department of Health and a union representing health-care workers in hospitals and nursing homes recently set aside their court dispute over state regulations requiring that the workers get flu immunizations. The Department of Health required health-care workers to get immunized or, if they refused, to wear surgical masks when having contact with patients, in an effort to help reduce the spread of flu to patients. The SEIU Healthcare Employees Union, District 1199, in a suit filed in December, argued that the regulations violated due-process and collective-bargaining rights. The union withdrew its suit as the flu season was winding down, saying it hoped to reach a compromise with the health department. A March 5 Providence Journal story on the dispute prompted us to look at the union’s complaint, where we found this claim: "There is no clinical evidence that vaccinating healthcare workers protects patients." The debate over whether to mandate vaccinations for employees has been going on nationally for years. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated, from a survey it did, that across the health-care worker population, including doctors, nurses and others, 66.9 percent of workers were vaccinated for the 2011-12 flu season. Several national health agencies, including the CDC and the American Medical Association, strongly recommend that all health-care employees get vaccinated. We wondered whether there really was no evidence that vaccinating health-care workers protects patients. We quickly found several relevant, peer-reviewed studies that indicated otherwise, though their findings were not uniformly the same and methodologies differed. One was done by researchers at the Institute of Virology at the University of Glasgow and published in 2000 in The Lancet, one of the most respected medical journals in the world. The study, which looked at health-care workers in 20 long-term elderly care hospitals in Scotland, concluded that vaccinations of health-care workers "was associated with a substantial decrease in" death among patients but that surveillance of those involved in the study "showed no associated decrease in non-fatal influenza infection in patients." Another study, published in BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, was conducted at a chain of nursing homes in England. It said it found decreases both in deaths of nursing home residents and in "influenza-like illness" when more workers were vaccinated during the winter of 2003-04. And a study published in the journal Vaccine in 2009 used computer modeling to simulate a flu outbreak. Its authors, four researchers from the Netherlands, said their model showed that health-care employee vaccinations reduce flu transmission. We contacted the union to ask for data supporting its position and ultimately heard by e-mail from Bill Borwegen, the occupational health and safety national director for the SEIU in Washington, D.C. "From a common sense standpoint, it would certainly seem to be a "no-brainer," Borwegen said of vaccinating health-care workers to prevent flu transmission to patients. "However there have been three systematic reviews of all of the epidemiological evidence ... and they have all concluded remarkably that there is no clinically proven connection." Borwegen added that "of course we all should strongly promote voluntary flu vaccination for self-protection, but we also need to understand the limitations of the current vaccine." He sent us links to three studies. One largely focused on the effectiveness of the vaccine generally and not on health-care workers. But the other two were more relevant to the union’s claim. The most on point was a review published in 2010 by the Cochrane Collaboration, an organization of international experts that reviews medical research. The Collaboration reviewed studies of whether vaccinating health-care workers protects elderly patients, including those that PolitiFact Rhode Island had reviewed. Its review cited problems or inconsistencies with the studies and concluded that vaccinating health-care workers who care for the elderly "did not show any effect on the specific outcomes of interest, namely laboratory proven influenza, pneumonia or deaths from pneumonia" among the patients. However, it said vaccinations did have an effect on influenza-like illnesses, hospital admissions and "overall mortality of the elderly." The third study referenced the Cochrane findings and said there was a "paucity of evidence" to support mandatory vaccinations. But one of the three authors of the Cochrane review -- Dr. Roger Thomas of the University of Calgary -- was quoted in the New York Times "Well" blog as saying: "Not having evidence doesn’t prove it doesn’t work; we just don’t know." It’s also worth noting that there is debate over the effectiveness of current flu vaccines. For example, an October 2012 study by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, at the University of Minnesota, asserted that coming up with more effective flu vaccine should be a priority. Our ruling SEIU Healthcare Employees Union, District 1199, said in its lawsuit that "there is no clinical evidence that vaccinating healthcare workers protects patients." That’s an unequivocal statement. But in fact, researchers found such evidence and published their findings in peer-reviewed studies in respected medical journals. The fact that other researchers disputed the evidence doesn’t mean the evidence doesn’t exist. We’ll leave it to the scientists to fight over how conclusive the evidence is. But our judges rule this claim False. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.) | null | SEIU | null | null | null | 2013-03-17T00:01:00 | 2013-03-05 | ['None'] |
pomt-12257 | The GOP health care proposal would slash more than $135 million in federal funding available to PA schools. | false | /pennsylvania/statements/2017/jul/11/bob-casey/trumpcare-fight-casey-overstates-gops-potential-me/ | U.S. Sen. Bob Casey says the Senate GOP’s healthcare plan could devastate already cash-strapped public schools that receive Medicaid reimbursements for programs benefiting poor children and students with disabilities. Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat who has been outspoken on social media against the Senate GOP plan, tweeted last week: "The GOP health care proposal would slash more than $135 million in federal funding available to PA schools." But Casey didn’t specify in the tweet where that number came from, and Republican officials say their bill doesn’t target vulnerable populations like children with disabilities. So what’s the deal? First, a little background on the Medicaid funding that schools receive. Since 1988, schools can register with the federal government as Medicaid providers and receive reimbursements, similar to hospitals. For the last 30 years, Medicaid reimbursements subsidized primary or preventive services at schools — think hearing and vision tests — for children already covered by Medicaid under the School Based ACCESS Program. It’s also been used to fund special education and services to children with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. Now, as the Senate GOP is floating its healthcare plan (A.K.A. the Better Care Reconciliation Act), some school administrators and advocacy groups say they’re concerned cuts to Medicaid could impact their ability to provide services to both children living in poverty and children with disabilities. About $4 billion in Medicaid funding goes to schools annually. Under the GOP’s most recent plan, Medicaid spending would be 26 percent lower in 2026 than it would be under the agency’s extended baseline, and the gap would widen to about 35 percent in 2036, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO estimated that overall Medicaid spending would drop by $772 billion between 2017 and 2026 under the BCRA. The vast majority of that reduction, per the CBO, would come from three key provisions: The repeal of the individual mandate, a reduction in the federal matching rate for adults covered by Medicaid after it was expanded under the Affordable Care Act and a per capita cap on Medicaid payments beginning in 2020. This reduction in Medicaid spending is likely to push more financial responsibility onto states and municipalities in the coming decade, should the bill become law as is. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, the School Superintendents Association and dozens of related groups wrote: "Under the per-capita caps included in the BCRA, health care will be rationed and schools will be forced to compete with other critical health care providers — hospitals, physicians, and clinics — that serve Medicaid-eligible children." So now we come back to Casey, who claimed in a tweet that the GOP’s healthcare plan would "slash more than $135 million in federal funding available to PA schools." Casey’s spokeswoman Jacklin Rhoads said the figure came from the Department of Health and Human Services, and provided a spreadsheet that indicated how much each Pennsylvania school district received from Medicaid in the 2014-15 fiscal year. For example, the School District of Philadelphia, which has an annual budget of about $2.5 billion, received about $10.9 million that year in total reimbursement for direct claims and administration. In total in fiscal year 2014-15, Pennsylvania schools received about $134.5 million, according to the figures provided by Casey’s office. That’s the key figure referred to in the tweet. In the same document was a second column titled: "How much money would be lost from a 30 percent cut." That column indicates Pennsylvania schools could stand to lose $40.3 million per year, with the School District of Philadelphia losing about $3.3 million, or less than 0.2 percent of its total budget. (The District largely declined to comment, though a spokesman said officials are "monitoring the proposed legislation and will assess the impact when there is a final version for consideration.") The 30 percent figure cited by Casey's office came from a report published by the School Superintendents Association. Here's their rationale from the report: "Republicans have expressed a desire to reduce federal Medicaid spending by 25 percent by distributing Medicaid funding through a block-grant or a per-capita cap, which would shift costs to states. However, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the block grant like the one proposed in the House 2017 budget would cut Medicaid spending by $1 trillion over a decade, which would be the equivalent in 2026 of cutting away one-third of the program’s budget. Other estimates include a proposed cut closer to 30 percent or 35 percent in the long-term since it encompasses a 25 percent cut over 10 years on top of the cuts that would occur with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act." The report was released in January, several months before the Senate GOP unveiled its healthcare plan. Our ruling In a tweet, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said: "The GOP health care proposal would slash more than $135 million in federal funding available to PA schools." His office pointed to data that indicated schools in the state received a total of $134.5 million in the 2014-15 fiscal year in Medicaid reimbursements for School Based ACCESS services. First off, $134.5 million is not "more than" $135 million. Beyond that, Casey’s tweet implies all $135 million in Medicaid reimbursements to schools would be cut under the GOP healthcare plan. But there is no provision in the GOP healthcare bill that specifically cuts Medicaid funding to schools. Overall, the CBO estimates Medicaid spending would decrease by about 26 percent by 2026, meaning a statewide cut of $35.1 million to schools might have been a more reasonable estimate. But even that cut wouldn’t be guaranteed under this plan and would occur if states chose to reduce Medicaid reimbursements to school districts because of cuts in funding from the federal government. We rate the claim False. | null | Bob Casey | null | null | null | 2017-07-11T09:10:02 | 2017-07-05 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
pomt-07412 | After the U.S.-led military alliance ejected Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait in 1991, the Kuwaitis "never paid us." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/27/donald-trump/donal-trump-says-kuwait-never-paid-us-back-ousting/ | During an April 27, 2011, news conference in Portsmouth, N.H., Donald Trump -- the businessman and potential Republican presidential candidate -- was asked what he would do differently from President Barack Obama. "What I would do differently is come down really hard on OPEC," Trump said, referring to the cartel of oil-producing states, including many in the Middle East, which are behind the recent rise in gasoline prices. "If you look at these nations, they wouldn't be there except for us. You take a look at Kuwait. I mean, we handed Kuwait back to the people that right now essentially own Kuwait, because it's really ownership more than anything else. We handed it back. They never paid us." Trump was referring to the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when a U.S.-led military alliance drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait after the Iraqi dictator invaded the small, wealthy, oil-producing emirate. Is it really true that Kuwait didn’t bother paying us back after we bailed them out? Not at all. We turned to the final report on the war presented to Congress in 1992. According to the report, the U.S. was on the hook for the cost of more than 500,000 U.S. troops and associated equipment beyond what the military would have had to pay for ordinary, non-war activities. But rather than shouldering this burden alone, the administration of President George H.W. Bush secured financial pledges from fellow coalition members. The report says that these war costs, known as "incremental costs," were estimated to be $61 billion. In 1990 and 1991, coalition nations committed almost $54 billion to offset that cost -- roughly two-thirds from Persian Gulf states directly threatened by the invasion and one-third from other countries, largely Japan and Germany. By March 11, 1992, the United States had received nearly all of the money that had been pledged. Here’s a breakdown, in descending order by pledge size, according to a report to Congress: Saudi Arabia: $16.8 billion pledged, $12.0 billion paid in cash, $4.0 billion paid in kind. Total paid: $16.0 billion Kuwait: $16.1 billion pledged, $16.015 billion paid in cash, $43 million paid in kind. Total paid: $16.1 billion Japan: $10.0 billion pledged, $9.4 billion paid in cash, $571 million paid in kind. Total paid: $10.0 billion Germany: $6.6 billion pledged, $5.8 billion paid in cash, $683 million paid in kind. Total paid: $6.5 billion United Arab Emirates: $4.1 billion pledged, $3.9 billion paid in cash, $218 million paid in kind. Total paid: $4.1 billion South Korea: $355 million pledged, $150 million paid in cash, $101 million paid in kind. Total paid: $251 million Total reimbursements: $54 billion pledged, $47.3 billion paid in cash, $5.6 billion paid in kind. Total paid: $52.9 billion A final accounting published a decade later by the House Budget Committee’s Democratic staff found that the final reimbursements eventually crept up slightly, to $54.1 billion. Of that, $48.4 billion was in cash, and $5.7 billion was in kind. So Trump was flat wrong that Kuwait "never paid us." When the books were closed on the war, the United States found itself out of pocket by about $7 billion -- less than half of the $16 billion shelled out by the Kuwaitis. We rate his claim Pants on Fire! | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2011-04-27T18:16:19 | 2011-04-27 | ['Kuwait', 'Saddam_Hussein'] |
pomt-10386 | Obama has maintained a friendship with a now convicted felon. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/jun/18/republican-national-committee-republican/friends-perhaps-but-out-of-touch/ | Less than an hour after Antoin "Tony" Rezko's June 4, 2008, conviction on federal charges of fraud and money laundering, the Republican National Committee fired off a news release titled "Rezko: Obama's Longtime Friend and Money Man." The first line reads: "Obama has maintained a friendship with a now convicted felon." There is no question Rezko was a longtime friend of Sen. Barack Obama's. In a lengthy interview with the Chicago Sun-Times published March 15, 2008, Obama detailed a relationship that dated back to when Obama was finishing law school at Harvard and Rezko approached him about coming to work for his development company. Obama declined. He got to know Rezko, he said, when Obama's law work overlapped occasionally with Rezko's development business. But the two became friends when Obama made his first run for Illinois state Senate. Rezko was a key supporter and fundraiser for Obama. "So we became friendly at that point, and through most of my years in the Senate, he was somebody I considered a friend, and I'd probably see maybe when I wasn't in the midst of a campaign, I would probably see maybe six times a year," Obama said. "We'd have lunch or we'd have breakfast." Obama and his wife, Michelle, had dinners with Rezko and his wife a couple times, Obama said, and they once visited the Rezkos' home at Lake Geneva, in Wisconsin, for the day. When Obama ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, Rezko served on his finance committee and was a significant fundraiser. Rezko even hosted a fundraising event in his home. In the wake of Rezko's October 2006 indictment, the Obama campaign took all campaign contributions tied to Rezko — $160,000 as of January 2008 — and donated them to charity. Although the GOP's support material for its claim that Obama "has maintained a friendship" with Rezko relates much of this prior relationship, the words "has maintained" suggests that Obama has an ongoing friendship with Rezko. In the March interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama said he had not spoken to Rezko since the indictment. Obama was asked if he still considered Rezko a friend. "Yes, with the caveat that obviously if it turns out that the allegations are true, then he's not who I thought he was, and I'd be very disappointed with that," Obama said. In a statement issued after the verdict, Obama said he was "saddened" by Rezko's conviction. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew," he stated. Obama said that if elected president, he would not pardon Rezko for his corruption convictions or reduce his prison time. (Rezko is in federal custody pending his Sept. 3, 2008, sentencing.) Any implication that Obama continues to maintain a friendship with Rezko — getting together, even speaking on the phone — is misleading. But the GOP says it only meant that Obama had, in the past, maintained a friendship with Rezko — which he certainly did. And "maintained a friendship" is a bit ambiguous as well. Obama said in March he hadn't spoken to Rezko in more than a year, and it's a safe bet the two won't be kicking back at a sports bar any time soon. But still, even in March, Obama said he still considered Rezko a friend. We rate the GOP statement Mostly True. | null | Republican National Committee | null | null | null | 2008-06-18T00:00:00 | 2008-06-04 | ['Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-09145 | The final pitch of Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series "was a foot and half probably high and outside." | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/11/george-will/george-will-says-final-pitch-don-larsen-1956-was-f/ | At PolitiFact, we try to fact-check statements about serious topics like war and peace, the economy and health care policy. But we also think it's important to take the occasional detour. George Will, the syndicated columnist who's a regular roundtable member on ABC's This Week, gave us such an opportunity. To close out the show's roundtable segment on June 6, 2010, This Week host Jake Tapper brought up Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga's near-perfect game on June 2, 2010, which fell apart when umpire Jim Joyce blew a call at first base. Joyce later acknowledged that he should have called the runner out, which would have cemented the perfect game, and baseball fans argued passionately over whether Commissioner Bud Selig should have overruled Joyce's call retroactively. (Selig decided to let the call, and the not-quite-perfect game, stand.) Will -- a bestselling author on baseball and one of the game's most prominent fans -- took Tapper's bait as if it were a hanging curve ball. Will argued that Joyce's incorrect call should stand, arguing, among other things, that the sterling sportsmanship displayed by Galarraga, Joyce and the other players after the mistake amounted to a far richer gift to the game and its fans than recording another perfect game. As evidence of how the sport can overcome bad calls, Will cited the final pitch of New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen's legendary 1956 perfect game during the World Series -- the only one ever thrown in more than a century of World Series games. Will characterized umpire Babe Pinelli's call of a third strike on Brooklyn Dodgers pinch hitter Dale Mitchell as clearly incorrect, even suggesting that Pinelli rushed the game to a conclusion in order to preserve the perfect game. Yet Will concluded that baseball has survived quite nicely despite Pinelli's error. "In the most important perfect game ever pitched -- 1956, Don Larsen in the World Series -- the 27th out was made by Dale Mitchell," Will said. "A wonderful batter's eye he had. He struck out 119 times in 4,000 Major League at-bats. The umpire (Pinelli) -- it was his last game, by the way -- called strike three on Dale Mitchell. It was a foot and half probably high and outside. He was so eager to get the game over." A foot and a half outside the strike zone seemed to us like a pretty badly blown call. We thought it would be worth checking to see if Will was correct in how he described Pinelli's call. Will would have been 15 at the time of the 1956 World Series, and we wondered if he had a seat behind the batter's box that day, or maybe watched the pitch on one of those primitive black-and-white televisions of the era. Had he reviewed a video of the game? We sought comment from the noted columnist, some explanation of how he would know so precisely the way the ball strayed from the strike zone, but he and his staff did not provide a comment. Let's note that Will is correct about Mitchell's career statistics -- he struck out only 119 times in 3,984 at bats -- but did not mention that Mitchell was at the end of his career, with some baseball experts saying he'd lost a step. Mitchell's plate appearance against Larsen was the second-to-last of his career, and he batted just .204 (11-for-54) during the 1956 regular season and went hitless in four at-bats in the World Series. "This was not Dale Mitchell in his prime," said Gabriel Schechter, a research associate at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. "I think it would be fair to say that his reflexes had slowed down, making it tougher for him to react to borderline pitches." We should also note that Will was not quite correct about this game being Pinelli's last. The perfect game was indeed Pinelli's last game behind home plate, but he finished out the rest of the World Series as a field umpire. Now for the big question: Was Larsen's final pitch really "a foot and a half" high and outside? First, we'll relate the case for Will. Lew Paper -- a Washington attorney who wrote the book "Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen" -- told PolitiFact that "every Yankee on the field who could see the last pitch to Mitchell, other than Larsen and (catcher Yogi) Berra, said that it was clearly outside the strike zone." In his book, Paper relates that Hall of Fame outfielder Mickey Mantle later said that he had "a clear view from center field, and if I was under oath, I'd have to say that the pitch looked like it was outside." From third base, Andy Carey thought the pitch was "high," while Yankees shortstop Gil McDougald said, "It wasn't even close. It was high." Because these comments are consistent, and because they go against their teammate Larsen's interest, they carry some weight. In addition, Duke Snider, the Dodgers Hall of Fame outfielder, told Paper that in a conversation he had with Babe Pinelli years after the perfect game, the umpire said he'd wanted to go out with a perfect game and that any pitch close to the strike zone would be called a strike. If Snider reported Pinelli's quote accurately, then it's certainly possible to believe that the umpire may have bent the strike zone in this unusual situation. But none of this proves that Pinelli's call was as flagrantly out of the strike zone as Will suggests Indeed, most experts we interviewed agreed that the pitch was borderline. While most said it was likely outside the strike zone, we didn't find much support for the idea that Larsen's pitch was a foot and a half outside of it. Most said Pinelli's was a defensible judgment call -- which, if true, would reduce its value as a point of comparison for the Galarraga incident. Referring to the widely seen video clip of the final pitch, Steven Goldman, a contributing editor with Baseball Prospectus, describes the ball as "tailing away" from Mitchell -- enough that Berra had to "lean pretty far outside" to catch it. He said that Will's description was "broadly accurate" but also "a bit hyperbolic." We watched that video over and over, and couldn't quite discern a ball on the screen. It was like watching mimes pretend to play baseball, but we're not the experts. "If it was not a strike, it was very close," said Doak Ewing, president of Rare Sportsfilms, which sells a DVD of the perfect game. "It wasn't a foot and a half out of the strike zone." The strongest defense of Pinelli's decision to call strike three came from Schechter of the Hall of Fame. "My view is that the pitch seemed a little high by today's standards, but not necessarily by 1956 standards, because the strike zone was technically larger back then," Schechter said. "It also might've been outside, but lots of pitches that look outside aren't. I think the operative baseball maxim is that 'it was too close to take,' especially in a situation like that where a pitcher might get the benefit of the doubt." (For baseball novices, "taking" a pitch means not swinging because the batter expects the umpire to call it a ball.) Schechter agreed with Goldman and Ewing that "the pitch might have been out of the strike zone as we know it today, but not by a foot and a half." He added that anyone looking at the pitch today from the filmed version has to be careful about how they judge it. "The camera angle we see is from above and to the first-base side, making it tougher to judge where the ball really was." We asked Alan M. Nathan -- an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) who has written widely about the physics of baseball -- what he thought of the camera angle and its value in judging Pinelli's call. "Like many others, I have seen that video many times," Nathan said. "The camera angle on the Larsen video is far from being ideal." Because the view is off-center, he said, it's subject to what physicists call parallax -- a difference in the apparent position of an object when viewed along two different lines of sight. "There is a lot of parallax, making it difficult to know with any accuracy about whether the pitch was really outside." Nathan added that, judging by the film, "the pitch looks outside. I can't easily tell that it is high, and I don't see how the others can tell that it is high. But I agree that it was too close a pitch to take with two strikes. Note that Mitchell himself started to swing at the pitch, but appeared to hold up in time." Larry Gerlach, the founder and former chairman of the umpires committee of the Society for American Baseball Research, agrees. "Perfect game, last inning, two outs, two strikes: the batter damn well swing at anything close," said Gerlach, a history professor at the University of Utah. "That is a cardinal tenet of umpiring — and batting. Pinelli made a great call, and Mitchell, by leaving the bat on his shoulder, did not do his job. You simply do not 'take' a pitch in that situation." So let's recap. There's ample evidence -- including the players' eyewitness testimony -- that the pitch was not a down-the-middle, obvious strike. In all likelihood, it was somewhat out of the strike zone. But we found wide agreement among our experts that Will is exaggerating when he says that Larsen's pitch was a foot and a half outside the strike zone. And if it wasn't a flagrantly bad call like Joyce's earlier this month, then the example's value for Will is reduced. As umpire, we rate Will's statement Half True. | null | George Will | null | null | null | 2010-06-11T20:07:48 | 2010-06-06 | ['Don_Larsen', 'World_Series'] |
snes-02370 | Hip-hop and pop star Nelly was arrested on drug charges while on tour. | outdated | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nelly-arrested/ | null | Entertainment | null | Dan Evon | null | Was Nelly Arrested on Drug Charges in April 2017? | 23 May 2017 | null | ['None'] |
thet-00030 | Claim wealth inequality in Scotland has increased | true | https://theferret.scot/wealth-inequality-scotland-oxfam/ | null | Fact check | null | null | null | Claim wealth inequality in Scotland has increased is True | January 29, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-01362 | This (Ebola) is not as bad as SARS was in 2003. | mostly false | /punditfact/statements/2014/oct/19/tavis-smiley/tavis-smiley-says-ebola-outbreak-not-bad-sars-outb/ | In an attempt to tamp down panic, some have compared the current Ebola outbreak to past epidemics -- particularly the SARS outbreak of 2003. On ABC’s This Week Oct. 19, talk show host Tavis Smiley said that those who think President Barack Obama’s response to Ebola is too soft are blowing the situation out of proportion. For context, they should remember the outbreak of SARS -- sudden acute respiratory syndrome -- 10 years ago. Talking to Republican strategist Mary Matalin, Smiley said, "This is not as bad as SARS was in 2003, and everybody wants to pile on, Mary, like you did on all the things Obama has done wrong. I've been a critic on certain issues, but this is not the president's fault." Is Smiley right that SARS in 2003 was worse than today’s Ebola crisis? Well, it depends on the context. We talked to experts and found that looking at the Ebola and SARS outbreaks in their points of origin -- West Africa and Hong Kong, respectively -- Ebola has been more destructive. SARS, on the other hand, had a wider global reach than Ebola. "It depends on what’s your gauge for ‘worse,’ " said Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. Several experts told us that the potential for the Ebola outbreak to grow -- and the humanitarian toll on West Africa -- makes it more worrisome. A note: Either way, Ebola does not pose a significant threat to the United States, though it may be damaging to other countries. The effects To start off, here’s some World Health Organization data comparing the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the current Ebola outbreak as of Oct. 17. SARS -- 2003 Ebola -- 2014 Number of countries affected 25+ 7 Number of cases (global) 8,096 9,216 Health worker cases (global) 1,706 423 Number of deaths (global) 774 4,555 Mortality rate 9.6 percent 50 percent Number of cases (U.S.) 27 3 Cases contracted in U.S. 0 2 Number of deaths (U.S.) 0 1 Proven treatments None None So by the numbers, Ebola is significantly more deadly. Also, there already are more cases worldwide. That said, SARS is much more communicable than Ebola, meaning it is easier to catch. It can spread through a sneeze, cough, sharing a beverage or speaking up close with someone who has the disease. It is also possible that SARS travels through the air. Ebola, on the other hand, is not airborne. Experts say it only possible to get Ebola by coming into direct contact with the body fluids of someone who is sick. In sum, SARS spread to many more countries than Ebola has so far. However, there have been more cases of Ebola, and the death toll is much higher. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention anticipates that the number of cases in West Africa could reach the hundreds of thousands by January. "Both are substantial public health outbreaks" said Dr. David Weber, an expert in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. "(It’s) not really useful to try to determine which is worse." From the perspective of a United States citizen considering the two diseases’ impact here, Smiley’s statement might have more weight, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. Many more cases of SARS made it to the United States than Ebola cases so far. (though there were no SARS deaths). It’s also important to remember that the largest focal point of the SARS outbreak (other than Hong Kong) was Toronto -- which brought the disease a little more close to home, Schaffner said. There were 251 SARS cases and 43 deaths in Canada. Even if the number of Ebola cases in the United States is low -- and lower than the number of SARS cases -- Smiley is incorrect because of the overall humanitarian impact of Ebola when compared to that of SARS, said Dr. Howard Markel, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. "In terms of U.S. (Ebola) cases, it is still minimal," Markel said. "If you're in West Africa, it's a nightmare and very serious, and far more deadly already than SARS was." Our ruling Smiley said Ebola "is not as bad as SARS was in 2003." Both diseases are serious and have harmed communities. SARS spread to more countries and is easier to transmit than Ebola. But Ebola has had more cases and higher death toll, and those numbers continue to rise. SARS may have had more of a presence in the United States, but Ebola is poised to be a larger humanitarian crisis globally. We rate Smiley’s claim Mostly False. | null | Tavis Smiley | null | null | null | 2014-10-19T17:58:17 | 2014-10-19 | ['None'] |
goop-02277 | Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie “At War Again,” | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/jennifer-aniston-war-angelina-jolie-ron-meyer/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie NOT “At War Again,” Despite Reports | 2:00 pm, October 30, 2017 | null | ['Jennifer_Aniston', 'Angelina_Jolie'] |
tron-01465 | Doug Jones Received 5,327 Votes in Town with 1,867 Registered Voters | unproven! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/doug-jones-received-5256-votes-in-town-with-1867-registered-voters/ | null | government | null | null | ['senate', 'states', 'voter fraud'] | Doug Jones Received 5,327 Votes in Town with 1,867 Registered Voters | Dec 15, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06884 | When I served as City Commissioner, we made great strides …we successfully fought for, and won, adding women and people of color to the Fire Bureau. | true | /oregon/statements/2011/jul/29/charlie-hales/when-charlie-hales-was-portland-city-council-it-di/ | PolitiFact Oregon is leery of statements from politicians touting their accomplishments as they run for office. So we were on our guard when we came across this boast in Charlie Hales’ letter to Portland on his website: "I’m good at solving problems and getting things done. When I served as City Commissioner, we … successfully fought for, and won, adding women and people of color to the Fire Bureau." Hales has a reputation for championing streetcars and high-density living, but diversifying a bureau? We wanted to know what happened at the Portland Fire Bureau, and the nature of Hales’ role in the fight to add more women and people of color to a traditionally white male profession. Hales was elected in 1992 and given oversight of the Fire Bureau as part of his portfolio. On Sept, 7, 1994, the Portland City Council approved a new firefighter trainee program, specifically to boost the number of women and people of color at the fire bureau. Hales, making the pitch, explained that the goal of the program was to recruit potential firefighters and train them to take the firefighter exam. The Oregonian reported at the time that of 712 sworn firefighters, line supervisors and battalion chiefs, there were three women firefighters, 10 African Americans, 11 Hispanics, three Native Americans and two Asians. That means 3.6 percent were members of ethnic minority groups and 0.42 percent were women. Commissioners unanimously approved the ordinance, which included $158,000 for six months. Hales had help from Fire Chief Robert Wall, whom he hired from California specifically to shake up the bureau; Randy Leonard, union president at the time; and William Kendrix, then president of the Portland Black Firefighters’ Association. Kendrix, who retired in 2004, said his organization brought the trainee idea forward, and that "Commissioner Hales, Randy Leonard and Chief Wall understood that if you wanted to change the numbers, then you had to reach out and provide some community support." Hales said in an interview that he did not seek out the Fire Bureau, but once he inherited it, he made diversity a priority. "These are issues on which I led," he said, adding that "others on the council were colleagues and supporters." Leonard, the former union president, is now a sitting commissioner who supported current Mayor Sam Adams for re-election until Adams announced he would not run. Leonard told PolitiFact Oregon he brought forward the plan that would eventually become the trainee program. He recalled that all four commissioners and Mayor Vera Katz asked hard questions about cost. And Hales? "I would say he certainly wasn’t opposed," Leonard said. "I would not say he led the effort, I would not say he spearheaded the effort, but I would say he was supportive of the effort." We also called Gretchen Kafoury, who served on the council in 1994 with Katz and Hales. She doesn’t recall all the facts, or all the maneuvering, but she said: "Charlie certainly did work to diversify employment in the Fire Bureau. I’m totally confident in that statement." The heart of the claim is whether the Fire Bureau hired more women and minorities. Here are the numbers: 1993 2002 2005 NOW ** African American 10 27 26 25 Asian American 2 23 25 38 Latino 11 25 28 32 Native American 3 13 15 23 Women, all 3 36 40 50 Total, sworn 712 670 669 698 **In addition, seven firefighters are biracial/multiracial. Hales oversaw the Fire Bureau in 1994 when the City Council approved a trainee program to diversify its ranks. Hales hired a new chief specifically to diversify the bureau. And the numbers started going up. iIn spite of Leonard’s equivocation, we think it’s fair to say that as a member of City Council, Hales "successfully fought for, and won, adding women and people of color to the Fire Bureau." We rate the claim as True. Comment on this item. | null | Charlie Hales | null | null | null | 2011-07-29T06:00:00 | 2011-05-31 | ['None'] |
bove-00097 | Fact Vs Fiction: Cadbury Chocolates Contaminated With HIV? | none | https://www.boomlive.in/fact-vs-fiction-cadbury-chocolates-contaminated-hiv/ | null | null | null | null | null | Fact Vs Fiction: Cadbury Chocolates Contaminated With HIV? | Mar 10 2018 1:09 pm | null | ['None'] |
pose-00149 | End the abuse of the supplemental budgets, where much of the money has been lost, by creating system of oversight for war funds as stringent as in the regular budget. | promise kept | https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/161/end-the-abuse-of-supplemental-budgets-for-war/ | null | obameter | Barack Obama | null | null | End the abuse of supplemental budgets for war | 2010-01-07T13:26:50 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-10239 | Obama voted "to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield." | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2008/sep/02/joe-lieberman/if-obama-voted-against-funding-the-troops-so-did-l/ | Joe Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut, alleged in his speech at the Republican National Convention that Sen. Barack Obama had voted to cut off funding for men and women in uniform. Lieberman issued the attack almost as an aside as he praised Sen. John McCain's approach to the war in Iraq. "When others were silent about the war in Iraq, John McCain had the guts and the judgment to sound the alarm about the mistakes we were making in Iraq," Lieberman said. "When others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, which would've been a disaster for the U.S.A. — when colleagues like Barack Obama were voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield — John McCain had the courage to stand against the tide of public opinion, advocate the surge, support the surge and because of that, today, America's troops are coming home — thousands of them — and they're coming home in honor!" Republicans have made similar charges in the past, such as when McCain himself said on Aug. 11, 2008, that Obama "tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge." We evaluated that claim here . To support the charge, the McCain campaign has cited Obama's vote of May 24, 2007, against an appropriations bill that included funding for the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (and passed, 80-14). So was that a vote "to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield"? Not primarily. Obama was fighting at the time for a requirement that President Bush begin to bring the troops home from Iraq. The bill in question did not include such a requirement, and that is why Obama voted against it. Obama said at the time that he wanted to fund the troops, he just didn't want to fund the particular military strategy that the bill would enable. "We must fund our troops," Obama said at the time. "But we owe them something more. We owe them a clear, prudent plan to relieve them of the burden of policing someone else's civil war." Clearly Obama wanted to provide funding for the troops — just not the president's military strategy. If, by voting against funding for a strategy he opposed, Obama voted to "cut off funding for the troops," then so did almost every Republican in the Senate — and Lieberman himself — when they voted against a $124-billion appropriations bill on April 26, 2007, that would have funded operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but also required Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. (McCain missed the vote on that bill, which passed 51-46 and was subsequently vetoed by Bush.) In a very narrow sense, yes, those votes were against military funding — a portion of which goes to equip and pay the troops. So there is a grain of truth to Lieberman's attack. But because it is so misleading — treating a strategic disagreement as a stand against men and women in uniform — we find it Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False. | null | Joe Lieberman | null | null | null | 2008-09-02T00:00:00 | 2008-09-02 | ['United_States', 'Barack_Obama'] |
pomt-15018 | 90% of Americans want national background checks that close loopholes. | true | /texas/statements/2015/oct/05/jeremy-bird/jeremy-bird-says-90-percent-americans-want-mandato/ | An adviser to a group focused on turning Texas Democratic-blue suggested after the fatal shootings in Oregon that there’s a huge consensus nationally in favor of mandating a background check before any gun purchase. Jeremy Bird, a Chicago-based senior adviser to Battleground Texas, said in an Oct. 2, 2015, tweet: "90% of Americans want national background checks that close loopholes. 9-0. Won't solve whole problem but is a start." He posted that comment the day after a man opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., killing nine. According to news accounts, authorities subsequently collected 14 guns owned by the man, who killed himself at the scene. Hours before Bird tweeted, ATF Assistant Special Agent in Charge Celinez Nunez said at a news conference that all of the weapons were purchased legally, seven of them by the shooter or his family members in the last three years. And was Bird right about sweeping support for universal background checks? A previous ‘True’ Bird’s claim rang a bell. In April 2013, we found True a claim by Lee Leffingwell, then Austin’s mayor, that 90 percent of Americans and 74 percent of National Rifle Association members supported background checks of gun purchasers. Polls taken in 2012 and 2013 supported both figures, though one taken closest to Leffingwell’s comment indicated support among all Americans possibly slipping a bit below 90 percent. Currently, background checks are required in sales by federally licensed gun dealers but not for gun sales by private sellers. But President Barack Obama and others have called for requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales. In 2013, the National Rifle Association suggested that an expansion would fail to rope in criminals. A January 2013 Pew Research Center poll found 85 percent of all respondents in favor of making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks, with comparable support from Republicans, Democrats and independents, Pew said. The margin of error for the entire sample was 2.9 percentage points. Several 2015 polls By email to our inquiry about Bird’s statement, Pew spokesman Brian Mahl pointed out a center survey of 2,002 adults taken from July 14-20, 2015, that found (again) 85 percent of respondents in favor of making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks. Pew said in its August 2015 results summary: "While there is broad support for several specific gun policy proposals – and opinion on these measures has not changed significantly since 2013 – the public continues to be more evenly divided in fundamental attitudes about whether it is more important to control gun ownership or to protect the right of Americans to own guns. Currently, 50% say it is more important to control gun ownership, while 47% say it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns." Our own web search turned up a survey of 1,326 adults, intended to be a representative national sample, taken Jan. 2-16, 2015 by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Some 84 percent of respondents favored requiring background checks for all gun sales, compared to 89 percent in a similar survey taken two years before, a "slight erosion," the authors wrote. We noted before a January 2013 CBS/New York Times poll indicating 92 percent of all the respondents at that time favoring background checks for all potential gun buyers. The poll had an overall margin of error of three percentage points. A more recent CBS News poll, taken of 1,047 registered voters July 29-Aug. 2, 2015, showed 88 percent of respondents favoring background checks for all gun purchases including, CBS News said, "large majorities of Republicans (81 percent), Democrats (93 percent), and independents (89 percent)." Quinnipiac University polls National voter surveys by Quinnipiac University continue to show widespread support for universal background checks. We noted in our Leffingwell check that a national Quinnipiac University survey of 772 registered voters, taken Jan. 30 through Feb. 4, 2013, found 92 percent supporting background checks for all gun buyers. That survey had a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points. A subsequent Quinnipiac University survey, taken of 1,944 registered voters from Feb. 27, 2013 through March 4, 2013, found 88 percent in favor of background checks for all gun buyers. The poll had a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points. By email, Battleground Texas replied to our inquiry by pointing out a news story in The Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, stating that a June 2014 Quinnipiac University poll found 92 percent of surveyed voters in favor of universal background checks for gun purchases. The survey reached 1,446 registered voters from June 24-30, 2014 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. More recently, a Quinnipiac University survey of 1,574 registered voters, taken Sept. 17-21, 2015, found 93 percent of respondents in favor of requiring background checks for all gun buyers. Similarly, 93 percent of respondents with a legally acquired gun in the household indicated support for such checks. The poll had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points. Quinnipiac University Survey (Sept. 17-21, 2015) SOURCE: Press release, "Don't Shut Down Government, U.S. Voters Say 3-1, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Voters Oppose Admitting Syrian Refugees," Quinnipiac University Poll, Sept. 28, 2015 Texas poll shows less support there And in Texas? A February 2013 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll of 1,200 Texas voters found 78 percent of respondents somewhat or strongly supporting criminal and mental health background checks for all U.S. gun purchases, including at gun shows and for private sales. Those results had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. A June 2013 follow-up survey found 74 percent of the 1,200 respondents somewhat or strongly supporting such background checks. Our ruling Bird said: "90% of Americans want national background checks that close loopholes." Polls continue to show a strong tilt in favor of background checks prior to all gun purchases; the latest available poll before Bird spoke found 93 percent of adults in favor. Then again, the popularity of this idea may bear watching. Other 2015 polls found as few as 84 percent of respondents backing the universal checks. We rate the 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 | Jeremy Bird | null | null | null | 2015-10-05T17:38:31 | 2015-10-02 | ['United_States'] |
para-00059 | Labor website is "a snapshot of the cuts we know Tony Abbott plans to make should he be elected". | mostly false | http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/aug/23/penny-wong/cuts-costs-and-con-jobs-another-day-election-2013/index.html | null | ['Campaign ads', 'Cost of living', 'Economy', 'Education', 'Employment', 'Health', 'Industrial relations'] | Penny Wong | Peter Martin, Peter Fray | null | Cuts, costs and con-jobs: another day in election 2013 | Friday, August 23, 2013 at 12:54 p.m. | null | ['Tony_Abbott'] |
goop-02729 | Simon Cowell, Ryan Seacrest Fighting For ‘American Idol’ Return, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/simon-cowell-ryan-seacrest-american-idol-return-fight/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Simon Cowell, Ryan Seacrest NOT Fighting For ‘American Idol’ Return, Despite Report | 4:48 pm, June 20, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
afck-00110 | “… we have seen students who have obtained the national senior certificate increasing from 45% to 56%” | unproven | https://africacheck.org/reports/sas-secret-ballot-debate-6-anc-achievements-scrutinised/ | null | null | null | null | null | SA’s secret-ballot debate: 6 ANC achievements scrutinised | 2017-08-17 08:52 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-09898 | Across the country, $174 billion of the Recovery Act have been committed in its first 130 days. | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/15/joe-biden/vice-president-biden-correct-174-billion-stimulus-/ | To counter Republican criticism that the stimulus money is not being spent fast enough, Vice President Joe Biden has been traveling the country to boast about the recovery plan's success stories. In conjunction with a July 9, 2009, trip to Ohio, Biden's office put out a news release with this talking point: "Across the country, $174 billion of the Recovery Act have been committed in its first 130 days." The White House says it is getting the numbers from its own Web site, Recovery.gov. We counted 130 days after Obama signed the bill on Feb. 17, which took us to June 27. On that day, the government had committed $157.8 billion, slightly less than the $174 billion cited by Biden. Those numbers are culled from weekly reports submitted by all federal agencies. The total stimulus cost will ultimately be roughly $787 billion, with about $499 billion for new spending. (The other $288 billion is for tax relief.) So that means that about 35 percent of the spending ($174.9 billion of $499 billion) has been allocated so far. That might sound like a lot, but Republican critics complain the money is just trickling out. For example, Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, complained last week that only 6.8 percent of the stimulus package has been spent. The numbers can be confusing, making you wonder whether Kyl is right about the 6.8 percent or Biden is right about the 35 percent. So we investigated and found that, like so many things in the federal budgeting process, it all comes down to semantics. John Porcari, deputy secretary of the Department of Transportation, wrote how this confusion is playing out in miniature at his agency, after getting what he considered some bad press in a USA Today story that maintained that only $132 million of the total $27.5 billion earmarked for road construction funding has been spent. Indeed, there's a big difference between how much money the government has already spent — that figure is about $60 billion, according to the White House — and how much the government has obligated or committed to a project. "Whenever a state obligates or dedicates their Recovery dollars to a project that means it is green-lighted," Porcari wrote on Recovery.gov. "States can start advertising the project and soliciting bids and once a bid is awarded contractors can buy supplies, bring workers on board and start breaking ground. It could be weeks before the reimbursement process starts so those outlays are in no way an indicator of how much money is getting to states, how much work is being done or how many people are working. The $16 billion obligated to thousands of highway projects is the true measure of how much highway money is reaching states." Using his definition, about $16 billion has been obligated to road construction projects, far more than what's actually been spent. So for practical purposes, money "committed" is the same as "obligated" and "allocated." It's money that will be spent on a particular project. It's fair to use those broader terms, according to Jim Horney, a budget expert at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, because the guarantee of the money can sometimes be enough to keep an agency or a company from laying off a worker. "It's not just when the check has been written that we see an impact," he said. Take Virginia, for example. Earlier in the year, lawmakers were planning to lay off teachers to save cash. But when the stimulus passed, the state knew it would be getting some financial relief, so officials changed their budget to keep those teachers employed. The money isn't in the state treasury at that moment, but it still has a ripple effect on the economy, Horney said. "If [teachers] knew they would be laid off, they would have started saving money, stopped buying clothes, preparing for hard times ahead," he said. Knowing they would have a job in the coming school year, teachers were less likely to adopt austerity measures. Horney had this caveat: Impact on the economy depends on how quickly the money is actually spent or reimbursed. If it takes five years for the government to pay a state back for a project, then the state may take some cost-cutting measures in the meantime. Conservatives, though, say the true measurement of economic impact is money actually spent, said Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "The economic theory behind the stimulus suggests only actual outlays can create jobs and drive money through the economy," he said. So back to Biden. He said that $174 billion had been committed at the 130-day mark. Federal records show he was a little off. The administration's Recovery.gov site shows that $157.8 billion had been committed. So we give Biden a Mostly True. | null | Joe Biden | null | null | null | 2009-07-15T17:05:02 | 2009-07-09 | ['None'] |
snes-02910 | The federal holiday observed in the United States on the third Monday of February is officially designated as "Presidents' Day." | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/presidents-day/ | null | Holidays | null | David Mikkelson | null | What Is Presidents Day? | 17 February 2003 | null | ['United_States'] |
pomt-00490 | Says Leah Vukmir said: "I’m not endorsing Donald Trump." | false | /wisconsin/statements/2018/aug/08/kevin-nicholson/kevin-nicholsons-attack-leah-vukmir-over-support-d/ | On one level, the Republican primary campaign for the U.S. Senate in Wisconsin has been a contest over which candidate can appear more pro-President Donald Trump. On that score, Kevin Nicholson hit his primary revival, Leah Vukmir, in an online video that was posted Aug. 1, 2018. The winner of their Aug. 14, 2018 primary will face Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Nicholson’s 30-second ad shows clips of Vukmir criticizing Trump, including saying Trump is offensive to different groups of people. It starts -- and ends -- with Vukmir saying: "I’m not endorsing Donald Trump." That leaves the impression that Vukmir never endorsed Trump for president. But she she eventually did -- prominently. And she backs Trump today. All of our fact checks in the Wisconsin U.S. Senate race. Chronology The clips of Vukmir criticizing Trump are from March 2016, prior to Wisconsin’s primary election in April 2016. Trump lost that contest by 13 points to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. But, of course, Trump went on to win the GOP nomination before defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November 2016 general election. OK, now let’s track Vukmir. Before the Wisconsin primary, Vukmir first supported Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who briefly ran for the GOP nomination before dropping out in September 2015. Then she backed U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who ended his run in March 2016. Vukmir said she ultimately voted for Cruz in the Wisconsin primary. (For his part, Nicholson wasn’t an original Trump supporter, either. He supported Rubio initially, but said he voted for Trump in the primary.) Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter: @PolitiFactWisc. What’s important here, though, is that during the general election campaign Vukmir not only endorsed Trump, she was part of a women for Trump group and appeared in a radio ad supporting his candidacy against Clinton. That’s completely left out of Nicholson’s ad. What’s more, since it is running in the days prior to the election, it makes it seem as if this is Vukmir’s current position. It’s not. (Note: We’ve rated as False a claim by Vukmir that "I have always been there with" Donald Trump.) Our rating Nicholson says that Vukmir said: "I’m not endorsing Donald Trump." But that was before Trump became the GOP nominee for president in 2016. After he won the nomination, Vukmir endorsed Trump and prominently supported him, as she does today. We rate Nicholson’s claim False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Kevin Nicholson | null | null | null | 2018-08-08T13:07:19 | 2018-08-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-15002 | In the states that allow open carry, violent crime was 23 percent lower. | half-true | /florida/statements/2015/oct/09/matt-gaetz/violent-crime-lower-states-open-carry/ | Florida is one of only a handful of states left in the country that doesn’t allow any open carry of firearms, and some state legislators want to change that. State Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, is sponsoring a bill that would allow those with a conceal carry license to openly carry their firearms. On Oct. 6, 2015, a House panel voted in favor of the bill, which will now advance to other committees in anticipation of a January legislative session. In a press conference before the hearing, Gaetz tried to allay fears that public safety would suffer by comparing crime rates in states without open carry with those that allow it. "It is important to note that in the states that allow open carry, violent crime was 23 percent lower, the murder rate was 5 percent lower, the aggravated assault rate was 23 percent lower and robbery rates were 36 percent lower." We decided to fact-check his claim that violent crime was 23 percent lower in open carry states. The statistic suggests that open carry laws make states safer, or at the very least don’t make them more dangerous. But the reality is much more complex, according to experts and research. Comparing states on violent crime rate Gaetz used Uniform Crime Reporting figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice to create his statistics. The data come 2012. He divided the states into two groups — the eight states that did not allow open carry at the time, which included Florida, Texas, California, South Carolina, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, Arkansas — and the 42 states that did allow open carry. Gaetz then compared the total number of violent crimes (defined by federal officials as murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault) with the total population in the eight states without open carry in 2012. We checked his math and found the same result: Those states had a combined violent crime rate of about 434 per 100,000 people. The remaining 42 states had a violent crime rate of about 352 per 100,000. That means states with open carry laws did have a 23 percent lower violent crime rate that year. Not all open carry states are the same, however, and laws vary from state to state. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence lists states that prohibit the open carry of handguns in public places, states that allow open carrying without a permit, and states that require some form of license to open carry. They currently list five states that prohibit the open carrying of handguns in public places. But that’s not the only issue with these statistics. We asked several experts about Gaetz’s methodology. Many of them said the single law was too narrow to draw meaningful conclusions about its impact. In essence, his number -- for one year -- is right, but so what? Gaetz framed the use of the stats as "evidence that this bill does not create a less safe environment." John Pierce, co-founder of gun rights group OpenCarry.org, agreed with that point. But he said the data doesn't necessarily reflect a correlation between allowing open carry and fewer instances of violent crime. He noted that Texas and Florida are both populous states with huge numbers of concealed carry permit holders so focusing just on open carry laws will give a skewed picture about the effect of legally-armed citizens on crime rates. Tomislav Kovandzic, a University of Texas professor who teaches classes on research methods and gun control, was more blunt. "The problem with this approach is that it implicitly assumes that both groups of states were identical/similar before the laws in the treatment states (in this case, open carry states) were enacted," Kovandzic told PolitiFact via email. "This is rarely, if ever, the case. As a result, the comparison merely reflects group differences that existed before the treatment states enacted the laws." A sound look at the issue would require controlling for factors like specific crimes, population characteristics or other details, not Gaetz’s static group comparison. "Even if he averaged multiple years together to make his open carry versus non-open carry comparison, it wouldn’t change the futility of the approach," he said. What does more detailed research have to say? Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck said that plenty of research has found rates of carry permit holding "have no net effect on crime rates, including violent crime rates, one way or the other." However, Kleck said that the research he has seen doesn’t differentiate between open carry and concealed carrying. Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, pointed us to a 2010 study that looked at whether right-to-carry laws affected crime rates. The conclusion: they didn’t. "The best available evidence suggests that right to carry concealed laws are associated with increases in aggravated assaults with guns, but have no measurable effect on population rates of murder and robbery," Webster said. Our ruling Gaetz said, "In the states that allow open carry, violent crime was 23 percent lower." This is a fact that experts say is largely meaningless and shouldn’t weigh into any serious policy discussion. There may be less crime in those states, but there’s no way the single data point Gaetz gave can provide clues as to the effects of open carry laws. Gaetz’s statement is a one-year snapshot that is misleading. We rate it Half True. | null | Matt Gaetz | null | null | null | 2015-10-09T15:00:00 | 2015-10-06 | ['None'] |
snes-00183 | President Donald Trump bore the cost of his then-adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman's April 2017 wedding. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-omarosa-wedding/ | null | Politics | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did President Trump Pay for Omarosa Manigault Newman’s Wedding? | 23 August 2018 | null | ['Omarosa_Manigault', 'Donald_Trump'] |
pomt-09804 | A new bill "was written into the new health care reform initiative ensuring that Congress will be 100 percent exempt." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/11/chain-email/64000-question-e-mail-says-congress-exempt-health-/ | A chain e-mail claims that Congress has exempted itself from health care reform. The e-mail appears to have been created shortly after President Barack Obama appeared in a forum on health care with Charlie Gibson of ABC News, an event that took place on June 24, 2009. It has the subject line, "The $64,000 Question." (For you young whippersnappers, The $64,000 Question was a popular game show that aired in the 1950s and revived in the 1970s as The $128,000 Question .) Here's the text of the e-mail: "Finally ... The $64,000 question was asked ... Yesterday on ABC TV (better known as the all Barack Channel) during the 'Network Special on Health Care' ... Obama was asked: "'Mr. President, will you and your family give up your current health care program and join the new "universal health care program" that the rest of us will be on????' ... (Bet you already know the answer) ... There was a stoney silence as Obama ignored the question and chose not to answer it!!! "In addition, a number of senators were asked the same question, and their response was ... 'We will think about it.' And they did. It was announced today on the news that the 'Kennedy Health Care Bill' was written into the new health care reform initiative ensuring that Congress will be 100 percent exempt! "So, this great new health care plan that is good for you and I ... is not good enough for Obama, his family or Congress...?? We (the American public) need to stop this proposed debacle ASAP!!!! ... This is totally wrong!!!!! "Personally, I can only accept a universal health care overhaul that extends to everyone ... Not just us lowly citizens ... While the Washington 'elite' keep right with their gold-plated health care coverage. If you agree please pass this on ... " A reader sent us the e-mail and asked if it was true. To start with, the e-mail seems to assume — though it doesn't say so explicitly — that the health care reform plan sends everyone into a new public plan. This is not the case. The Democratic health care legislation under consideration in Congress leaves in place employer-provided health insurance for the vast majority of Americans. But people who work for small businesses, are self-employed or currently uninsured would be eligible for a separate system known as the health care exchange. It would offer a variety of plans, including a government-run plan that is known as the public option. Much of the controversy about health care reform has surrounded the public option. Critics say it could create a large bureaucracy and would not provide coverage as good as private insurers, while supporters say it would stimulate competition for people in the exchange. People who receive health insurance coverage from large employers would not be eligible for the public option. Members of Congress are offered insurance through their employer, which in this case is the federal government. They can purchase it through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan, which is offered to all federal employees. (We've written about this plan previously.) Under the plan, federal workers — and members of Congress — can choose from a variety of insurance plans just as people would in the new health care exchange. There's nothing in the health care bills that exempts Congress from the same requirements as regular citizens. However, some Republicans have attempted to pass amendments that would require members of Congress to drop their current coverage and force them to enroll in the public option. Republicans have said it would prove to the American people that the public option is a good thing. But Democrats have largely voted against these amendments, as we've reported previously . But the chain e-mail doesn't address this. Instead, it says members of Congress have somehow exempted themselves from reform, which is not correct. Under the bill, the lawmakers would continue to receive the same insurance they get now, just as most Americans would. Members of Congress are treated like any other citizens under the terms of the bill. We rate the chain e-mail's statement False. | null | Chain email | null | null | null | 2009-09-11T15:20:31 | 2009-08-24 | ['United_States_Congress'] |
para-00152 | Eighty-seven per cent of "illegal" boat people destroy their papers before coming to Australia. | false | http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jun/11/pauline-hanson/do-87-cent-boat-people-destroy-their-papers/index.html | null | ['Asylum Seekers'] | Pauline Hanson | Flynn Murphy, Peter Fray | null | Do 87 per cent of boat people destroy their papers? | Tuesday, June 11, 2013 at 3:31 p.m. | null | ['Australia'] |
goop-01990 | Kim Kardashian, Kanye West Marriage Pushed “To The Limit” In 2017, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/kim-kardashian-kanye-west-marriage-pushed-limit-2017/ | null | null | null | Michael Lewittes | null | Kim Kardashian, Kanye West Marriage NOT Pushed “To The Limit” In 2017, Despite Report | 2:00 am, December 21, 2017 | null | ['Kim_Kardashian'] |
pomt-03905 | Of the 18 stadiums built from 2004 to 2013, 47 percent of the total cost came from public sources. | mostly true | /georgia/statements/2013/mar/01/duriya-farooqui/atlanta-official-seeks-touchdown-stadium-claim/ | To build or to renovate? That is the question Atlanta leaders are grappling with as the Atlanta Falcons have discussed plans with city and state officials to build a $1 billion retractable-roof stadium downtown and demolish the 20-year-old Georgia Dome. The key to any deal is the City Council’s approval of a commitment by Atlanta to finance about 20 percent of the total cost using bonds backed by a hotel-motel tax. That’s a bargain when you compare it with other recent stadium deals across the country, some city officials say. "Of the 18 stadiums built from 2004 to 2013, 47 percent of the total cost came from public sources," Atlanta Chief Operating Officer Duriya Farooqui said at the first public hearing on the proposed deal. Her boss, Mayor Kasim Reed, is a vocal proponent of a new stadium. The claim was included in a slide presentation Reed’s staff prepared on stadium construction costs for the hearing in the City Council’s chambers. The Feb. 13 meeting drew so much interest that additional spectators watched the proceedings on television from another room. PolitiFact Georgia wanted to know whether the claim was accurate, or is the public investment in professional sports facilities far less than the mayor’s staff is letting on? Reed’s spokeswoman, Sonji Jacobs, referred us to a report on the sports news website Deadspin.com that had the information the mayor’s staff used in its presentation. Deadspin was the site that broke the Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax story. "[P]rivate funding (53 percent) has actually surpassed public funding for the first time in decades," Deadspin wrote. The percentage of public funding for sports facilities has decreased in recent decades, as taxpayers have become less tolerant of their money going to stadiums or arenas with teams owned by enormously wealthy owners. Lawmakers have tried to become more creative in public financing of the construction of sports facilities, using lodging taxes on out-of-towners, a ticket tax, public parking revenue, taxes from car rentals and other sources. There are also the more traditional methods of funding these multimillion-dollar projects, such as collecting the money from sales taxes. In the past decade, eight of the 18 facilities were built for Major League Baseball franchises, four for pro football, four for National Basketball Association teams and two for National Hockey League teams. The cost of the stadiums range from as low as the $250 million to build the FedEx Forum in Memphis, Tenn., home of the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, to $1.6 billion for MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The NFL’s New York Giants and Jets share use of MetLife Stadium, the site of next year’s Super Bowl. By our own count, these 18 sports facilities cost a combined $11.7 billion to build. The public contribution toward these projects totaled about $5.6 billion, 48 percent of the total cost. We wanted to look at the public investment in sports facilities that cost $1 billion or more to build since that is the projected cost of the proposed stadium in Atlanta. There were four venues in that category: MetLife Stadium; Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas; the Barclays Center in New York City; and Yankee Stadium, also in New York City. The public investment in those facilities was about 18 percent. Again, the current discussion in Atlanta is a 20 percent public investment in a new football stadium downtown. Jacobs, the mayor’s spokeswoman, noted that most of the billion-dollar sports venues were built in the New York City area, where land and construction costs are typically higher. She also noted that MetLife Stadium is shared by two teams, and she believes that skews any comparison of the billion-dollar venues. Four of the five teams that play in the billion-dollar venues have a higher net worth than the Falcons, who ranked 28th among the NFL’s 32 teams, according to Forbes. Here’s the most recent Forbes breakdown: Dallas Cowboys: $1.85 billion. New York Yankees: $1.85 billion. New York Giants: $1.3 billion. New York Jets: $1.23 billion. Atlanta Falcons: $814 million. Brooklyn Nets: $530 million. The Falcons are owned by Arthur Blank (who has a reported net worth of $1.5 billion and whom Forbes lists at the 329th-richest American). Blank sits on the board of directors of Cox Enterprises, which owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But the owners of the teams in the billion-dollar venues are super rich. For example, Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov is reportedly worth $13.2 billion. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has a net worth of $2.7 billion, Forbes reports. Jets owner Woody Johnson is part of a family that is worth about $13 billion. On the other end of the cost spectrum, the least expensive projects had a higher percentage of public funding. For example, the FedEx Forum was built through an authority created by the city of Memphis and Shelby County. The authority included a $1.15-per-ticket surcharge to help pay construction costs, according to newspaper accounts. Since Farooqui’s claim included smaller and, typically less-costly arenas, we also decided to break down the public investment in facilities solely used by baseball and football teams, since Atlanta is considering a football stadium. Our examination shows the public investment in those 12 facilities was 44 percent. That’s pretty close to the claim. Jacobs said the best comparison is between the Falcons’ proposal and other multiuse stadiums. There were three retractable-roof stadiums built in the past decade. The public investment in them were 27 percent (Arlington), 68 percent (Phoenix) and 86 percent (Indianapolis). Our conclusion: Farooqui said in her presentation that 47 percent of the cost of 18 pro sports facilities built in the past decade came from public sources. Our examination of the claim showed the estimate is on target, even if you remove arenas. The public investment, though, in other billion-dollar stadiums is much less than 47 percent. We believe this context is necessary to fully understand Farooqui’s statement. We rate Farooqui’s claim as Mostly True. | null | Duriya Farooqui | null | null | null | 2013-03-01T06:00:00 | 2013-02-13 | ['None'] |
snes-01418 | Did Mexico Seize 800 Pounds of U.S. Government Cocaine? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mexico-seizes-us-cocaine/ | null | Junk News | null | David Mikkelson | null | Did Mexico Seize 800 Pounds of U.S. Government Cocaine? | 20 November 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-15208 | Says Marco Rubio’s "proposed college affordability overhaul would specifically benefit for-profit colleges." | mostly false | /florida/statements/2015/aug/12/american-bridge-21st-century/pac-accuses-rubio-favoring-profit-colleges-educati/ | A liberal political action committee is attacking Sen. Marco Rubio’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s colleges and universities, saying his plan unfairly benefits for-profit schools. After Rubio went on Fox & Friends on Aug. 10, 2015, to lambaste Hillary Clinton’s call to make post-secondary education more affordable, American Bridge 21st Century went after Rubio’s own plan. "Perhaps in his eagerness to criticize, Marco neglected to mention his long-time advocacy for and support of for-profit colleges," the PAC wrote on its website. "And Marco neglected to mention that his own proposed college affordability overhaul would specifically benefit for-profit colleges — institutions with a reputation for willfully misleading students, targeting veterans, in particular." Rubio has spent a lot of campaign time talking about getting a proper education, but we haven’t learned many details of his strategy. Will for-profit colleges "specifically benefit" from his ideas to make education more affordable? We decided to take a crash course on his plan and find out. Rubio’s plan not specific Rubio took aim at current education practices in a July 7 speech in Chicago. Among his goals would be to change how schools are accredited, saying the current system favored traditional colleges. "Our higher education system today is controlled by what amounts to a cartel of existing colleges and universities, which use their power over the accreditation process to block innovative, low-cost competitors from entering the marketplace," Rubio said in his speech. "Within my first 100 days, I will bust this cartel by establishing a new accreditation process that welcomes low-cost, innovative providers." Accreditation is a system designed to evaluate whether a school or institution meets quality guidelines, and is generally performed by one of several regional boards. These boards are private groups that must be approved by the federal government, and are comprised of members from already qualified schools. It’s important to keep in mind that a school must be accredited in order to qualify for federal financial aid like student loans and Pell grants. Sources told us that makes accreditation very attractive to for-profit schools, which are owned by private companies looking to make money. Experts we interviewed did agree that unless you’re a traditional college, getting accredited can be difficult and lock out schools that could teach skills for less than a degree-granting university. Massive open online courses, boot camps and for-profit colleges often aren’t accredited. It’s not clear what the "innovative providers" Rubio mentioned in his speech truly are. Other than broad talking points, Rubio has yet to provide specifics about what he means, and his spokesman did not clarify what schools or programs would benefit from changes in the accreditation process. But that means American Bridge can’t say with certainty, either. "Admittedly, we are slightly reading between the lines because Rubio did not utter the words ‘for-profit’ and he has yet to release a white-paper on this specific proposal," American Bridge spokesman Ben Ray told PolitiFact. But "code words" in Rubio’s speech like catering to "market forces" and "competition" show that he means for-profit colleges, Ray added. Media outlets and critics like American Bridge have pointed out that Rubio has a history of advocating for the privately run schools. American Bridge argues that for-profit schools have a history of overpromising results to recruit students, especially in Florida. In 2014 Rubio defended Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit company that late declared bankruptcy and closed more than 100 campuses after a federal investigation into its lending practices to students. The U.S. Department of Education fined the company $29.7 million for misleading students at Florida locations by lying about job placement rates. Rubio had asked the agency to continue providing federal aid to Corinthian while the company was being investigated. The company donated more than $27,000 to Rubio over the last five years. Kevin Carey, education policy program director of the New America Foundation public policy institute, agreed that the schools usually have to conform "to join the club" and get accredited. But American Bridge is reaching to say Rubio’s plan aims to benefit those private companies when he mentions "innovative providers." "I think it could mean many things, probably including online or technology-enabled education, but not exclusively for-profit colleges," Carey said. He noted that Corinthian Colleges already was an accredited institution, so while Rubio may have supported the company, the example doesn’t necessarily apply to a potentially revamped accreditation process the way American Bridge suggests. Our ruling American Bridge 21st Century said Rubio’s "proposed college affordability overhaul would specifically benefit for-profit colleges." Rubio has suggested revamping the accreditation process to allow "innovative providers" to become accredited. Exactly which schools or programs he means and why they need to be accredited is up for debate, because Rubio hasn’t given any details. That makes it extremely difficult for American Bridge to say the change is specifically to help for-profit colleges, despite Rubio's past affinity for the businesses. Many for-profit schools already are accredited, although experts say others may potentially benefit from Rubio’s plan. Rubio's plan is not specific in benefiting for-profit colleges, so we rate American Bridge’s statement Mostly False. | null | American Bridge 21st Century | null | null | null | 2015-08-12T16:19:23 | 2015-08-10 | ['None'] |
goop-02020 | Teresa Giudice Having “Secret Hookups” With Defense Attorney, | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/teresa-giudice-hookups-defense-attorney/ | null | null | null | Shari Weiss | null | Teresa Giudice NOT Having “Secret Hookups” With Defense Attorney, Despite Report | 2:35 pm, December 16, 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-12921 | The vast majority of people that got insurance under President Obama's Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, got it through Medicaid. | half-true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/15/rand-paul/medicaid-expansion-drove-health-insurance-coverage/ | President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and the key issue facing Republicans is how do they get rid of the sweeping health care law without creating chaos for an estimated 20 million people who gained insurance under the program. That includes many people who gained health care through more generous rules for Medicaid, a longstanding federal program for the very poor. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said dealing with people who got Medicaid is "the big question." "The vast majority of people that got insurance under President Obama's Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, got it through Medicaid," Paul said Jan. 15, 2017, on CNN’s State of the Union. Paul proposed that if any state wants to retain expanded Medicaid, it should be prepared to raise taxes to do so. Paul’s federal plan emphasizes reducing insurance regulations to lower prices and promoting health savings accounts. Our focus is on his statement that the vast majority of the newly insured under Obamacare came through the Medicaid program. We were curious if that was accurate. More people became eligible for health insurance through Medicaid after passage of the Affordable Care Act. The law expanded eligibility for the poor, though states could choose not to participate in the expansion. We reached out to Paul’s office for his source and did not hear back, but the U.S. Health and Human Services Department issued a report in March 2016 that at first glance gives some support to his claim. It said that Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) added 14.5 million people by the end of 2015. (That’s the most recent data available.) Take that number at face value and about three-quarters of the newly insured came through the two closely linked programs. But the analysts we reached told us that a fair number of those new people were eligible for coverage under old rules that predated the Affordable Care Act. How many? The Kaiser Family Foundation broke it down into about 10.7 million newly eligible and about 3.4 million who were eligible before but hadn’t enrolled. Joan Alker, a research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, told us that most of that 3.4 million are children. She said Medicaid analysts explain this through the "welcome mat effect." "There was a lot of outreach and publicity, and people started coming in," Alker said. "The parents might qualify for expanded Medicaid, but their kids were already eligible under Medicaid or CHIP. And the same could happen for parents who signed up through the marketplace." The marketplace was the way to sign up -- often through a government website -- for individual private insurance under the Affordable Care Act. It turns out, the impact of Obamacare on Medicaid is more complicated than simply more generous eligibility rules for adults. Benjamin Sommers at the Harvard School of Public Health said research he and his colleagues did showed that about half of the Medicaid increases came through eligibility changes and about a half through drawing in those who were eligible before. For Sommers, both effects are part of the Affordable Care Act. In that sense, he thinks Paul has a point. "The majority of the national coverage gains are Medicaid, but not the vast majority," Sommers told us. In an op-ed, Sommers wrote that eligibility rules and the welcome mat effect are so intertwined, if parents lose their eligibility, very often coverage for their kids lapses as well, even though the children still qualify. "If parents are disenrolled after an ACA repeal, many children will return to being uninsured," he wrote. A couple of other factors make it difficult to say precisely why Medicaid grew under Obamacare. Health care analyst, John Holahan at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based academic center, noted that the Medicaid enrollment data is shaky. "If all 50 states send in their numbers, 40 of them might do a good job and for 10, the data might be garbage. You try to impute and make estimates to account for the flawed and missing information," he said. And Laura Wherry, assistant professor of medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine, said any model depends on some guesswork as to what would have happened if the Affordable Care Act hadn’t happened at all. Our ruling Paul said the vast majority of people that got insurance under Obamacare got it through Medicaid. About 20 million people gained coverage and about 14.5 million of those were under Medicaid or CHIP. But a sizeable fraction of that 14.5 million were eligible before the Affordable Care Act took effect. One estimate said about a quarter of them were previously eligible. Another estimate put it as high as half. There is some guess work behind all the reports. Medicaid might account for slightly more than half of those who gained coverage. Most people wouldn’t say that amounts to the vast majority, but it is likely still the majority. We rate this claim Half True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/470eb7b7-396b-4755-8df9-5c4e39f789b7 | null | Rand Paul | null | null | null | 2017-01-15T18:01:55 | 2017-01-15 | ['Barack_Obama', 'Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act'] |
pomt-02996 | Since Mr. Foster's been mayor, we have less small businesses in the city of St. Petersburg. | false | /florida/statements/2013/oct/17/rick-kriseman/st-petersburg-mayoral-candidate-rick-kriseman-says/ | With less than three weeks until the St. Petersburg mayoral election, the Oct. 15 Tampa Bay Times/Bay News 9 forum, like the 20-some-odd debates before it, centered on the city’s progress since Mayor Bill Foster took office. Foster asked if the city is better off now than it was four years ago. Challenger Rick Kriseman, former city council member and state legislator, took every opportunity to point out ways he felt Foster’s leadership has been lacking, especially when it comes to economic development. Among his claims, Kriseman said: "Since Mr. Foster's been mayor, we have less small businesses in the city of St. Petersburg." We wanted to dig into St. Petersburg small business statistics to find out if Kriseman was right. (We examined other claims by Kriseman here and by Foster here.) Kriseman’s campaign manager, Cesar Fernandez, referred us to the City of St. Petersburg Business Tax Division. The office collects taxes from each business in the city. When sifting through the data with city officials, we learned there are a number of different ways to define "small business." University of South Florida St. Petersburg economics professor Suzanne Dieringer said the number of small businesses would vary based on how it's measured. Even when experts agree to define a small business by number of employees, there’s no consensus among experts about which number to use. "I think if you ask six economists what’s the size of a small business you’d get six different answers," said City Council Chairman Karl Nurse. The U.S. Small Business Administration says any business with fewer than 500 employees fits the bill. By the SBA definition, over 90 percent of businesses in the city would be considered small. Nurse said it’s not necessarily the number of small businesses that’s important to assess economic growth, but rather the total revenue the city pulls in from business taxes. The city taxes businesses differently depending on the type. Many businesses are taxed by number of employees. Businesses with more than 30 employees must pay an additional fee for each employee, starting with No. 31. But there are other means of taxing as well. For example, warehouses are taxed by their square footage and piano instructors by the number of students they have. Tammy Jerome, the city’s director of billing and collections, said there’s no clear-cut way to define what makes a small business by things like square footage or amount of inventory, so it’d be difficult to get an accurate count of the small businesses in town. Because different businesses are taxed in different ways, calculating the number of small businesses by looking at each business that files taxes and indicates employing fewer than 500 people would leave out small businesses that pay taxes to the city based on other metrics. Since most businesses in St. Petersburg employ fewer than 500 people, we can use the total number of businesses and the total amount of tax money they pull in for the city to get an imperfect picture of how the climate for small businesses has changed during Foster’s term. Here’s how much revenue the city has generated from this policy by year, according to Jerome. We’ll start with 2009 because Fernandez said Kriseman was referring to the number of small businesses before Foster took office in 2010, but the wording of Kriseman's forum statement would lead viewers to believe he meant 2010, not 2009. The 2013 numbers we're using aren't yet final. 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Revenues $2,596,245 $2,405,903 $2,407,083 $2,409,290 $2,446,970 Businesses 15,768 15,498 15,103 15,923 15,520 While the revenue’s clearly gone up since 2010, the number of businesses has taken a bumpier path. The city’s unfinalized number of 15,520, is higher than the 2010 number, but not by much. Experts can’t say for sure if the number of small businesses specifically increased or decreased. Since 2010, the revenue the city’s earned from business taxes has gone up, which contradicts the point Kriseman tried to make about the economic state of the city. If he had clearly used 2009 in his talking point, he would've been more on target. Our ruling Kriseman criticized his mayoral race opponent, saying there are fewer small businesses in St. Petersburg than there were when Mayor Foster took office. But the available data leads us to believe that the number of businesses, and the city’s revenue from those businesses, have actually increased. There are lots of different ways to define what constitutes a small business, but experts told us most city businesses could be considered small. Based on the available data, we rate Kriseman's claim False. | null | Rick Kriseman | null | null | null | 2013-10-17T16:59:46 | 2013-10-15 | ['None'] |
pomt-12877 | Says Rex "Tillerson won't divest from Exxon." | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/27/charles-schumer/chuck-schumer-wrongly-tweets-tillerson-wont-divest/ | Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he won’t vote to confirm Rex Tillerson as secretary of state — in part because Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, won’t divest from his former employer. "Tillerson won't divest from #Exxon, won't recuse himself, doesn't display values of American foreign policy--I'm voting no," Schumer tweeted Jan. 27, 2017. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com That’s incorrect. Tillerson divested from Exxon, where he worked for 40 years, in early January. An hour later, Schumer tweeted: "Rex Tillerson won’t lift a finger on climate change, won’t rule out a Muslim ban, won’t divest from Exxon, won’t recuse himself. He doesn’t display values of American foreign policy." To Schumer’s credit, spokesman Matt House acknowledged the mistake and said his staff would correct the tweets. House said the tweets were supposed to just say Tillerson wouldn’t commit to recusing himself from issues that involve Exxon. But that’s also wrong, as we’ll explain. We still wanted to put Schumer’s claim that "Tillerson won’t divest from Exxon" on the Truth-O-Meter and set the record straight. Tillerson has agreed to sell his more than 600,000 shares in Exxon, and Exxon drew up an additional agreement with federal ethics regulators. Tillerson retired from Exxon on Dec. 31 and is entitled to 2 million Exxon shares paid out over 10 years — a package worth more than $170 million as of Jan. 27. However, under the ethics agreement, Exxon will pay out those shares in cash, and they will be put in an independently managed trust that will not be allowed to invest in Exxon. If Tillerson violates the agreement, he will forfeit the trust, and the money will go to a charity not chosen by Exxon or Tillerson. Tillerson is also giving up $4.1 million in bonuses, as well as retiree benefits. In order to comply with ethics requirements, Tillerson is ultimately forgoing about $7 million in compensation he would otherwise receive, according to Exxon. Walter Shaub, director of the Office on Government Ethics, gave Tillerson’s divestment plan a glowing review, calling it a "clean break from Exxon." "I’m especially proud of the ethics agreement we developed for the intended nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson," Shaub said in remarks delivered at the Brookings Institution on Jan. 11. "Mr. Tillerson is making a clean break from Exxon. He’s also forfeiting bonus payments worth millions. As a result of OGE’s work, he’s now free of financial conflicts of interest. His ethics agreement serves as a sterling model for what we’d like to see with other nominees. He clearly recognizes that public service sometimes comes at a cost." In contrast, Shaub criticized President Donald Trump’s plan for severing ties with his businesses because it is not a complete divestiture. In his Brookings remarks, Shaub said he "was glad in November when the president-elect tweeted that he wanted to, as he put it, ‘in no way have a conflict of interest’ with his businesses. Unfortunately, his current plan cannot achieve that goal. It’s easy to see that the current plan does not achieve anything like the clean break Rex Tillerson is making from Exxon." Regarding Schumer’s claim that Tillerson hasn’t committed to recusing himself from any decisions involving Exxon, federal law requires that Tillerson, if confirmed, stay out of any such decisions for one year. That could pose problems given Exxon’s extensive international business interests. In his Jan. 11 confirmation hearing, senators asked Tillerson if he would agree to continue recusing himself after that year is up. "I will honor, obviously, the statutory recusal period and then after that, any matter that might involve ExxonMobil or has the appearance that it could lead to some type of conflict, I will seek the guidance of the Ethics Council," Tillerson said. "A review by them, and if it is the view that it would be proper for me to recuse, I'll honor that." Our ruling Schumer said, "Tillerson won't divest from Exxon." But that’s not even close to the truth. Tillerson retired from Exxon on Dec. 31 and laid out a plan for full divestment in the following week. The director of the Office of Government Ethics called it a "clean break from Exxon." We rate Schumer’s claim Pants on Fire. | null | Charles Schumer | null | null | null | 2017-01-27T16:11:11 | 2017-01-27 | ['None'] |
pomt-02550 | Wisconsin is "not a high tax and fee state." When you look at "all the money state and local governments bring in" from residents, "we're more in the middle." | half-true | /wisconsin/statements/2014/feb/05/mary-burke/mary-burke-says-wisconsin-not-high-tax-and-fee-sta/ | Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Mary Burke has walked a tightrope on the issue of taxes early in her bid to knock off Gov. Scott Walker in November 2014. The Madison Democrat has supported what she calls fiscally responsible and targeted tax relief while criticizing Republican Walker’s plan to send at least half of a projected $1 billion budget surplus back to taxpayers. The former Trek Bicycle executive has said Wisconsin’s tax rates should be competitive with other states, but adds that businesses consider other factors first when considering expansion or relocation. Speaking Jan. 19, 2014 to the East Side Progressives group in Madison, Burke outlined her view of where Wisconsin ranks vs. other states on collecting revenue from citizens. "If you look at, overall, all the money that state and local governments bring in from the people of Wisconsin, we're more in the middle," Burke said, according to a story posted on Madison’s WKOW.com site. "In terms of a state, we're not a high tax and fee state." Let’s start by noting that if Burke had limited her remarks to taxes -- not taxes and fees -- she would have flown in the face of Wisconsin’s No. 10 ranking among states for total tax burden as a share of personal income. Indeed, property-tax and income-tax collections here run more than 25 percent above the national average. Instead, she chose a broader measure of government revenue collection. And as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has reported, the picture changes when fees become part of the mix. Was Burke right that the bigger picture shows we are "more in the middle" than "high"? When we asked for backup, her campaign cited a report by the Tax Foundation ranking Wisconsin 23rd in per-capita "state and local revenue." That ranking reflects U.S. Census Bureau-reported figures derived from state governments, local municipalities, school districts and other taxing authorities. They are the grist for state-by-state rankings computed by research groups nationwide. But there is a major problem with Burke’s reliance on this particular ranking, aside from the fact that newer data is available. The "state and local revenue" category reflects federal aid received by these governmental units, not just "taxes and fees." Two respected fiscal research groups in Wisconsin confirmed that for us. We consulted the Wisconsin Budget Project affiliated with the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, and the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. Let’s look at how these two groups tally up a more accurate look at "taxes and fees" and where Wisconsin ranks. Their findings vary slightly from each other due to methodological differences, but are in general agreement: Rankings based on population Wisconsin was ranked 19th and 18th by the groups on taxes plus fees on a per-capita basis. The Wisconsin figure of $6,346 per person is just slightly above the national average, the Budget Project calculated. That’s higher than the U.S. mark by about 1 percent or less -- $34 to $70 per person, based on the two groups’ research. Those are the two strongest points in favor of Burke’s claim. Rankings relative to personal income Wisconsin was ranked 14th by one organization and 16th by another on tax and fee collections relative to the state’s personal income. Using this measure, Wisconsin’s take is between 4.8 percent and 6 percent higher than the national average. Wisconsin collects taxes and fees equivalent to 15.2 percent of the state’s total personal income, the Taxpayers Alliance says. South Dakota is lowest, at 10.8 percent, while Alaska leads at 27.7 percent. Which approach is better? Researchers use both measures, we found. Many say the income-based measure introduces a valuable "ability to pay" perspective, notes the Federal Funds Information for States. Jon Peacock, director of the Budget Project, said his group uses both in part because Wisconsin’s personal income per-person trails the U.S. average. So using the income approach naturally yields higher rankings for Wisconsin than those based on population, he noted. On another research point, Dale Knapp, research director at the Taxpayers Alliance, said "it’s useful to talk national average but rank gives a better sense of where we fit." Rankings have dropped There’s no debate that Wisconsin’s ranking on tax-and-fee collections has dropped from near the top 10 over the last decade. In the year 2000, it was 13th based on the burden on personal income, and 11th based on the population measure. On fees alone, Wisconsin ranked 30th in the latest data despite local governments relying more heavily on them to make up for a near freeze in property tax revenue they can collect, the Taxpayers Alliance noted. In the big picture, Wisconsin traditionally relies more on taxes than do other states, and leans less on federal aid and user fees, license revenue and other charges. It’s important to note that these rankings cover only through mid-2011, and therefore don’t include tax cuts approved by Walker and legislative Republicans in the last two state budgets. What she said But the question at hand is Burke’s specific claim on taxes plus fees. Burke said Wisconsin’ ranking was closer to the middle, no longer "high." There’s certainly fodder for Burke in the finding that Wisconsin is within $34 of the national average by one measure. But how do we characterize a range of rankings from 14th to 19th? Are those out of the "high" zone? The Tax Foundation has described as "mid-ranked" states that came in below 15 or above 35 in a study of state and local tax collections as a share of income. It did so because so many states in that group are bunched closely together in terms of tax burdens, while states in the high and low groups are not. So, depending on which type of ranking you prefer, Wisconsin is either in that middle tier or at the lower edge of the "high" rankers. Our rating Burke said Wisconsin is "not a high tax and fee state," adding that, "When "you look, overall, at all the money that state and local governments bring in," Wisconsin’s ranking is "more in the middle." Burke’s careful wording signals she meant the combination of taxes and fees raised by the state and local governments in Wisconsin, not taxes alone. Her campaign cites a statistic that is too broad to apply to an analysis of Wisconsin’s "taxes and fees" burden. By one widely used measure, Wisconsin is very close to middle of the pack -- just a shade over the national average with a ranking as low as 19th. By the other, we remain significantly above the national average, with a ranking around 15th. This meets the definition of partially accurate. Half True. | null | Mary Burke | null | null | null | 2014-02-05T05:00:00 | 2014-01-19 | ['None'] |
snes-00680 | A Kentucky business owner found out he had been paying the electric bills of an Ohio River bridge, in addition to his own, for five months. | true | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pay-bridge-electrical-bill/ | null | Business | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Did a Man Discover He Was Paying a Bridge’s Electric Bill? | 1 May 2018 | null | ['Ohio_River', 'Kentucky'] |
snes-01511 | Did Trump-Supporting Sandra Bullock Urge Hillary Clinton to Leave the United States? | false | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sandra-bullock-trump-clinton/ | null | Junk News | null | Dan MacGuill | null | Did Trump-Supporting Sandra Bullock Urge Hillary Clinton to Leave the United States? | 27 October 2017 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-02358 | Women "are still paid 82 cents for every dollar a man earns in Texas." | mostly true | /texas/statements/2014/mar/20/wendy-davis/wendy-davis-drawing-outdated-survey-slightly-overs/ | Texas women are paid less than men, Wendy Davis stresses. In a March 10, 2014, tweet, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee pointed out that her Republican opponent, Attorney General Greg Abbott, passed up a chance to say whether he would have vetoed a Davis-sponsored measure related to ensuring equal pay for Texas women that didn’t make it into law. Davis, a Fort Worth state senator, wrote: "While @GregAbbott_TX dodges questions on the Texas Equal Pay Act, women are still paid 82 cents for every dollar a man earns in Texas." We’ll leave it to Abbott and Davis to debate the 2013 measure vetoed by Gov. Rick Perry. But we wondered: Are Texas women still paid 82 cents for every dollar earned by a man? We found that pay gaps persist, though comparisons can be dicey. Comparing women and men doing 'same' job In August 2013, we rated as Mostly False a related Davis claim: "Texas women make an average of $8,355 less per year than men doing the very same job." That’s not necessarily correct for individuals doing the same job. In 2010, $8,355 was the general gap between median salaries of full-time working Texas men and women, according to federal estimates, and the 2012 gap was nearly $500 less than that. Significantly, the research cited by Davis did not drill down to salaries for men and women doing the same jobs. In contrast, 2013 survey results indicated a $2,000 gap between the median pay for Texas men and women with comparable professional experiences holding the same or similar jobs. Annual U.S. Census Bureau surveys But Davis’ recent "82 cents" claim wasn’t specific to people doing the same jobs. Responding to our request for back-up information, Davis spokeswoman Rebecca Acuña pointed us to an April 2013 "fact sheet" from the National Partnership for Women & Families, an advocacy group for workplace fairness and other issues. The sheet opens: "In Texas, on average, a woman who holds a full-time job is paid $35,301 per year while a man who holds a full-time job is paid $43,160 per year. This means that women in Texas are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to men, amounting to a yearly gap of $7,859 between men and women who work full time in the state." That statement is footnoted to the one-year American Community Survey undertaken in 2011 by the U.S Census Bureau and a bureau chart indicating median earnings in the past 12 months by sex by work experience for residents 16 and older. These aligned with the partnership’s fact sheet. Latest available estimate Kliner pointed out, too, that comparable results based on the 2012 ACS were posted online by the bureau in September 2013. The 2012 estimates indicate that median earnings for Texas men who worked full time year-round in the past 12 months were $44,802; for Texas women meeting these criteria, median earnings were $35,453 — or 79 cents for every dollar earned by men who worked full time. Because Davis said women "still" earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, we calculated the comparable figure for previous years, according to the bureau’s surveys. We found the comparable figure to be 80 cents in 2006, 2009 and 2010, 79 cents in 2007 and 78 cents in 2008. Separately, we downloaded a bureau chart showing slightly different estimated median earnings for full-time male and female civilian workers in Texas based on the bureau’s 2012 survey. The resulting chart indicated a median wage for full-time working men of--$45,166 for men, $35,518 for women. By this metric, we calculated, civilian full-time female workers in Texas earned an estimated 79 cents for each dollar earned by full-time male workers. In 2011, a bureau chart suggests, the comparable figure was 81 cents. Kliner told us the partnership relies on bureau estimates not limited to civilian workers because it believes that delivers a more complete view of the workforce. "It is also the chart that has been used historically, so it allows for comparisons over time," she wrote. Upshot: The latest available estimate is that Texas women working full time earned 79 cents for every dollar earned by such men in 2012. That was a penny better than in one of the previous six years, the same or a penny less than the result in four of the years and three cents less than the 82 cents estimated for 2011 and relied upon by Davis. Experts note caveats Experts we queried agreed with our math while offering caveats. By email, Lloyd Potter, the state demographer, pointed out that any focus on earnings for full-time workers leaves out part-time workers. Women, he wrote, are more likely to be employed part-time. Still, Potter said, "if we just looked at part-time workers, again, you’d probably find women earn less." In our 2013 fact check, we noted there’s a range of how many hours full-time workers log, and men are more likely than women to be on the job for 41 hours or more per week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because more men work overtime, that should translate into higher earnings for them -- because they are paid more, or because their longer hours lead to more job success -- and contribute to the wage gap. Though more nuanced analysis shows that job differences explain much of the pay gap, experts agree that much of it still cannot be accounted for. That’s where sexism comes in, some say. "Finally," Potter said, "the differential quoted probably is not adjusted for educational attainment or work experience." It is not. "If it were, we’d probably find the differential would shrink (toward equality) as women tend to have less work experience than men though educational attainment is fairly comparable among adults across sex." Austin economist Stuart Greenfield similarly said by email: "In the aggregate, Sen. Davis’ statement is absolutely, positively correct," though he said that "when one controls for work experience, education, and other factors, the earnings’ differential is reduced." National comparisons Greenfield also pointed out a Dec. 2, 2013, Bureau of Labor Statistics press release summarizing median-pay changes among full-time workers over the years: "In Texas, the ratio of women’s to men’s earnings trended upward from 1997 to 2004. It then fluctuated from 2005 to 2009 before climbing to a series high of 85.6 percent in 2010. However, in the last two years the Texas women’s to men’s earnings ratio has declined 6.0 percentage points to its lowest level since 2001." According to the 2012 survey results, Texas women fared better compared to men in their state than women in 24 states. Arizona placed first; women working full time earned 87 cents for every dollar earned by men.(For more than a decade, the graph indicates, Texas women fared better than their male counterparts in the state compared to women versus men in the nation as a whole, though conditions dipped in Texas compared to the nation in 2011 and 2012. We asked Cheryl Abbot, a regional economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to speak to why this was so. See her reply here.) Jennifer Lee, a researcher for the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities, which focuses on programs serving low-income Texans, said of the 79-cent pay difference estimate suggested by the 2012 survey: "This is how the ‘wage gap’ is usually calculated. If you expand who you’re looking at to include all employed individuals (whether or not they work full-time or year-round), women earn 71 cents for every dollar that a man earns," Lee said by email. Lee reminded us of a February 2007 paper by Cornell University labor economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, "The Gender Pay Gap: Have Women Gone Far Enough?" The paper states that 53 percent of the gender wage gap stems from variation in job, industry and union status between the genders. According to the paper, major reasons for such wage gaps include: Occupational and industry category (49% of the reason) – Lee said that many women are concentrated in particular occupations. Occupations that are heavily female, such as health care support or personal care and service occupations, tend to pay low wages, she said. For example, home health aides in Texas, who are largely female, earn on average $17,430 per year, Lee said, while women also represent 63% of workers earning minimum-wage or less in Texas. When you break down earnings data by occupation, she said, this gap persists in almost all occupations. Labor Force Experience (10.5%) – A portion of the gap is explained by factors related to work experience, such as interruptions in work for child care, Lee said. Unexplained (41%) – Lee said a large portion of the gap is unexplained by women’s choices. This could be because of conscious or unconscious biases (research shows this is particularly acute against mothers), Lee wrote, while other research shows that different attitudes around wage negotiations may contribute to the gender wage gap. Lee added: "A lot of people see occupational choices and time off from work as women’s choices. And while this is true, I think it’s important to realize that the choices we make are heavily influenced by the environment in which we make choices, the choices that are available, and how those choices are presented. So while it’s true that more women work in low-wage jobs, there may be reasons why women don’t choose to work in some higher-wage occupations. Similarly, mothers may choose to take time off work to care for young children, but perhaps they wouldn’t if child care were more available or affordable." Our ruling Davis said that Texas women are still paid 82 cents for every dollar a man earns in the state. Her figure, based on a 2011 federal survey, reflects median earnings for adults who worked full time in the past 12 months, leaving out part-time workers. It’s also outdated in that according to the latest available survey, taken in 2012, Texas women earned 79 cents for every dollar earned by men (again working full time in the past 12 months), less than what Davis said. We rate this claim as Mostly True. MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check. | null | Wendy Davis | null | null | null | 2014-03-20T09:38:15 | 2014-03-10 | ['Texas'] |
afck-00383 | “While the broad unemployment rate in South Africa is a staggering 34%, the Western Cape has a broad unemployment rate of 22%.” | correct | https://africacheck.org/reports/is-the-das-western-cape-story-a-good-story-to-tell-we-examine-the-claims/ | null | null | null | null | null | Is the DA’s Western Cape Story a ‘good story to tell’? We examine the claims | 2014-03-28 05:02 | null | ['South_Africa'] |
snes-03735 | Votes intended for Hillary Clinton are being allocated to Donald Trump on touchscreen voting machines. | unproven | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/machine-voting-pens-switching-votes/ | null | Uncategorized | null | Kim LaCapria | null | Machine Voting Pens Switching Votes from Clinton to Trump? | 22 October 2016 | null | ['Donald_Trump', 'Hillary_Rodham_Clinton'] |
pomt-14229 | Ten times, no Republican candidate for president had enough delegates to claim the nomination before the party’s convention, and seven of those times "somebody who was not the leader of delegates was selected as the nominee of the party." | mostly true | /wisconsin/statements/2016/apr/15/john-kasich/7-times-delegate-leader-wasnt-one-who-got-gop-nomi/ | Seeking an endorsement to boost his presidential campaign, Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich met with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel a week before Wisconsin’s primary. (He won the endorsement, but won no delegates in the April 5, 2016 primary.) A few minutes into the March 29, 2016 interview, Kasich was asked how he can win the GOP nomination given that he so badly trails Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in delegates. Kasich replied by predicting that none of the remaining Republican hopefuls will have amassed the necessary 1,237 delegates in order to claim the nomination ahead of the party’s July 2016 convention in Cleveland. Then he made a claim that, if true, could make his plan -- to get delegates at the convention to throw their support to him -- appear more plausible. Republicans have had 10 conventions in which no candidate had won a majority of delegates, Kasich said, and "only three out of 10 times was the front runner selected. Did you know? You didn’t know that. I know you don’t know that." "So, seven times, somebody who was not the leader of delegates was selected as the nominee of the party." So, the claim we’re checking is that 10 times, no Republican candidate for president had enough delegates to claim the nomination before the party’s convention, and seven of those times someone who was not the leader in delegates was chosen at the convention as the nominee. Kasich is essentially correct on the numbers. But his statement is somewhat misleading in that the scenario he describes hasn’t occurred in more than 60 years, and the nominating process has changed considerably since then. Kasich’s evidence To back Kasich’s claim, his campaign cited a March 2016 article in The Federalist about "brokered" Republican conventions. Sometimes the term "contested" or "open" is also used. Despite Trump’s considerable lead, it’s an open question whether he will reach the threshold of 1,237 delegates prior to the gathering in Cleveland. As Kasich indicated, the article said seven out of the 10 Republican conventions in which no candidate had a majority of delegates, the person who won the nomination was not the delegate leader. The most recent brokered Republican convention was in 1952. Ohio Sen. Robert Taft entered the convention as the delegate leader, with 35 percent of the delegates, followed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower,with 26.3 percent. The article says the delegates gave the nomination to Eisenhower, who in turn won the presidential election, because he was deemed more electable. A March 2016 article in The Week about brokered conventions also cited the seven of 10 figures. Political scientist Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told us that Kasich’s seven-of-10 claim is on target. But there is an important caveat, according to Burden, who said: "Before the 1970s, candidates often did not run in many primaries and caucuses to win delegates. And contested conventions were quite common. In the ‘modern’ nominating era, contested conventions are uncommon, with 1976 (Gerald Ford defeated Ronald Reagan) being the only close case. Before reforms pushed states to use open processes for selecting delegates, entering the convention with more delegates than an opponent was less meaningful than it is in the contemporary era." Other experts agreed. David Karol, government and politics professor at the University of Maryland, emphasized that the phenomenon Kasich cites "is in the distant past, when the process and our political culture were quite different." Karol, who co-authored one book and co-edited another about presidential nominations, added: "Most delegates were chosen by state party organizations and there was far less public input than there is today. But our political culture was quite different then and it wasn't considered an outrageous coup when the convention (chose someone other than the delegate leader). There wasn't a strong expectation that the nominee would run in and dominate the primaries." (A final note: Some experts say the count could be six of nine times in which a contested GOP convention resulted in the nomination of a candidate who wasn’t the delegate leader. But Northeastern University political science professor Willam Mayer, who has written books on presidential nominations, told us that Kasich’s definition of a contested convention is defensible.) Our rating Kasich said that 10 times, no Republican candidate for president had enough delegates to claim the nomination before the party’s convention, and seven of those times "somebody who was not the leader of delegates was selected as the nominee of the party." He’s correct on the numbers. But his implication that history is on his side is misleading in that it’s been more than 60 years since the GOP chose a nominee who wasn’t the delegate leader going into the convention; moreover, the process of choosing a nominee has changed considerably in the intervening years. For a statement that is accurate but needs clarification, our rating is Mostly True. | null | John Kasich | null | null | null | 2016-04-15T05:00:00 | 2016-03-29 | ['Republican_Party_(United_States)'] |
tron-03290 | Pray for 3-year-old Lauren Renee Pingel in Amarillo, Texas | truth! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/laurenpingel/ | null | prayers | null | null | null | Pray for 3-year-old Lauren Renee Pingel in Amarillo, Texas | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['Amarillo,_Texas', 'Texas'] |
tron-02388 | Why No Salute By Obama At Medal Of Honor Ceremony? | commentary! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/obama-medal-of-honor/ | null | military | null | null | null | Why No Salute By Obama At Medal Of Honor Ceremony? | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-13720 | Donald Trump "called the military that I served in a disaster." | mostly true | /truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/27/john-hutson/rear-adm-john-hutson-says-donald-trump-called-mili/ | On the third night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, retired Rear Adm. John Hutson joined a series of speakers who sought to attack Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on his foreign-policy bona fides. At one point in his speech, Hutson said Trump "called the military that I served in a disaster." It’s a barb that Clinton and her surrogates have used frequently against Trump. But how accurate is it? The remark comes from the Republican primary debate sponsored by the Fox Business Network on Jan. 14, 2016. Moderator Maria Bartiromo said, "Mr. Trump, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in her response to the State of the Union address appeared to choose sides within the party, saying Republicans should resist ‘the siren call of the angriest voices.’ She confirmed she was referring to you, among others. Was she out of line? And, how would a President Trump unite the party?" After saying he felt no ill will towards Haley, Trump said, "But she did say there was anger. And I could say, oh, I'm not angry. (But) I'm very angry because our country is being run horribly and I will gladly accept the mantle of anger. Our military is a disaster. Our health care is a horror show. Obamacare, we're going to repeal it and replace it. We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people. And yes, I am angry. And I won't be angry when we fix it, but until we fix it, I'm very, very angry." On other occasions, Trump has specifically assailed President Barack Obama’s record -- and, by extension, that of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton -- on military spending, saying the armed forces had been cut too far. For instance, during a visit to Washington in April, Trump said, "Our active-duty armed forces have shrunk from 2 million in 1991 to about 1.3 million today. The Navy has shrunk from over 500 ships to 272 ships during this same period of time. The Air Force is about one-third smaller than 1991. Pilots flying B-52s in combat missions today. These planes are older than virtually everybody in this room." (We’ve looked at similar claims here.) However, in the debate exchange with Bartiromo, Trump didn’t specify that he was talking about the military’s budget. Our ruling Trump "called the military that I served in a disaster." Trump did say that, almost verbatim. But it’s worth noting that Hutson has described Trump’s words as a personal affront to the institution he devoted his career to, drawing the most unflattering interpretation for a statement that is far less specific. Hutson’s statement is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/7dec5c38-b6e0-4150-bf4f-5ab4ee8fec97 | null | John Hutson | null | null | null | 2016-07-27T21:25:16 | 2016-07-27 | ['None'] |
pomt-08755 | The government is trying to now close the Lincoln Memorial for any kind of large gatherings. | pants on fire! | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/27/glenn-beck/glenn-back-claims-government-is-trying-to-close-Li/ | While hyping his upcoming "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Glenn Beck ominously warned during his June 28, 2010, radio program this may be the last chance to attend a large rally at the historic Lincoln Memorial. "The government is trying to now close the Lincoln Memorial for any kind of large gatherings," Beck said. "This may be the last large gathering ever to assemble at the Lincoln Memorial. Historic, historic." The comment came in the context of Beck challenging critics -- "enemies have come out from the woodwork" -- who criticized Beck's decision to hold the rally on Aug. 28, the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, which King delivered from the same steps on which Beck plans to speak. "They (critics) have gone on to say that this is a slap in the face of Abraham Lincoln," Beck said. "Okay. So, I don't have a right -- I don't have a right to speak my mind and this -- I told you, the reason why 8-28 is -- one reason why it's historic is because it may be the last time anyone is allowed to hold a rally at 8-28, and they will -- they will couch that in, it's too sacred of a spot." In an Aug. 25, 2010, story, Los Angeles Times reporter Kathleen Hennessey quoted a National Park Service spokesman calling Beck's claim baseless and wrong. We contacted Beck's publicist for clarification of, and backup for, Beck's claim about government efforts to close the Lincoln Memorial for any kind of large gatherings, but got no response. So we, too, contacted the National Park Service and got this unequivocal statement via e-mail: "There is absolutely no attempt by the government to restrict gatherings at the Lincoln Memorial or at any of our sites," said Margie Ortiz, a National Park Service spokeswoman. "There is zero basis for his claim." The National Park Service issues about 3,000 permits a year for Lafayette Park, the White House sidewalks, as well as other park sites in the Capital area, including the Lincoln Memorial. About 60 percent of them are for "First Amendment Activity," Ortiz said. Major rehabilitation work on the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and grounds will begin next month, and could continue for two years, but National Park Service officials said that work will not prevent the use of the facilities for gatherings, though the size of a gathering would be considered when weighing applications during the construction period. So far, though, that has not been an issue. "The Lincoln Memorial stands as a symbol of freedom," Ortiz said. "The Memorial is an American icon that attracts millions of visitors a year who seek inspiration and hope. Why would the National Park Service close the Lincoln for any kind of large gathering? Wouldn't this be contradictory to everything the Memorial stands for?" Those wishing to hold an event at the Lincoln Memorial need to obtain a permit, and there are some rules, regulations and fees spelled out on the permit website. Some national events -- such as the Lighting of the National Christmas Tree in the northern half of the Ellipse -- carry priority status, but otherwise, applications for demonstrations and special events are done "in order of receipt ... on a first-come, first-serve basis," Ortiz said. "We remain content neutral to whatever 'message' the permit applicant brings with them." To review, Beck warned "the government is trying to now close the Lincoln Memorial for any kind of large gatherings" and that his rally "may be the last large gathering ever to assemble at the Lincoln Memorial." It is possible that gatherings as large as Beck's event may be limited during renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and grounds -- though no applications have been denied to date. But Beck suggests the government is trying to silence political speech by blocking future rallies, and there's absolutely no evidence of that. We rule Beck's statement Pants on Fire. | null | Glenn Beck | null | null | null | 2010-08-27T17:46:53 | 2010-06-28 | ['None'] |
pomt-06995 | Former Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall left the school district "significantly better than she found it." | pants on fire! | /georgia/statements/2011/jul/11/shirley-franklin/ex-mayor-franklin-says-former-aps-school-chief-imp/ | As Beverly Hall’s beleaguered term as Atlanta Public Schools superintendent came to a close, former Mayor Shirley Franklin waxed elegiac. Franklin’s June 23 post on Blogging While Blue cast Hall’s tenure as one of collaboration and accomplishment. Hall reached out to the entire community, she said, and APS experienced "notable successes." "She leaves the school district significantly better than she found it," Franklin concluded. Wait a second. What about that cheating scandal? The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has written for years about allegations of widespread cheating at APS. Late Tuesday, the state released the results of a yearlong investigation that confirmed these reports, and then some. The test score success that rocketed Hall to national acclaim was the result of widespread cheating that may have gone on for a decade, the report said. The investigation implicated 178 educators, including 38 principals, and more than 80 confessed. Investigators confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 schools they examined, they said. District leaders knew or should have known about it, the report said. The scandal made national news. Time magazine called it "likely the largest cheating scandal in U.S. history to date." The Christian Science Monitor called it "America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal." APS even became a punch line on Thursday’s "Tonight Show." Jay Leno said it’s so hot he’s been sweating like an Atlanta student trying to take a test on his own. We contacted Franklin, who started her term in 2002, three years after Hall took office. She said she could not respond to our questions by deadline because she no longer has staff to assist her. "When my schedule is tight, I can't direct staff to handle one or the other of the requests," Franklin said. APS did not respond to our calls and emails. Undeterred, we switched on our Truth-O-Meter. Franklin’s post listed five reasons why schools are better off after Hall: The districtwide graduation rate increased by about 30 points. Graduates earned a record $129 million in college scholarships in 2010, up from $9 million in 2000. Philanthropic groups invested $160 million in APS. $1 billion was spent constructing and renovating schools. APS built 17 new schools and renovated more than 60 others. First, we looked at the district graduation rate. Georgia Department of Education figures show it jumped from 39 percent in the 2001-2002 school year to 66.3 percent in 2009-2010. But this dramatic increase, like the district’s skyrocketing test scores, may be fiction, according to the findings of an AJC investigation published Aug. 15. The surge took place between 2003 and 2005. During those same years, the district removed thousands of students from its rolls -- about 30 percent of all pupils in grades nine through 12, the article said. That means the district no longer included them in the graduation rate. Many were recorded as "transfers" to other systems, at times without proof they hadn’t dropped out. One consultant estimated more than one-third of those who left were not documented. District officials denied they tried to get rid of low-performing students to boost their numbers, but their credibility is questionable. One of those officials gave investigators false information during the state’s cheating investigation, Tuesday’s report alleged. Now we turn to Franklin’s claim about new infrastructure. APS reports construction projects to the state Department of Education, but not its costs, so we cannot confirm her spending figure. Records do show that since 1999, the year Hall took office, the state Department of Education approved plans to build 15 new schools and update 61. This is very close to Franklin’s count. As for Franklin’s scholarship and donation figures, the school district is not required to report them to the state, so we cannot confirm them independently. We do know that in light of the cheating scandal, there is reason to question whether APS won its donations fairly. APS received $125,000 in scholarships in 2002 as a finalist for the Broad Prize for Urban Education because of overall improvements, including test scores, according to an AJC article. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated money because it thought APS was on "the leading edge" in "effective teaching," a foundation spokesman told the AJC in 2010. A spokesman told the AJC that it will continue to support APS. How do we rule? The data Franklin uses to demonstrate Hall left APS "significantly better than she found it" is flawed. At least two of the statistics Franklin mentions are clouded by APS’ integrity crisis, and two are unconfirmed. That leaves school construction as the only clear-cut accomplishment of the Hall administration, and this does not outweigh the trouble the district now faces. The district has to re-educate students who received high scores they did not earn. It must replace the 178 implicated educators. Key administrators may face criminal charges, and court battles could drag on for years. A district culture that Hall shaped over 12 years needs to be gutted and rebuilt. Confirmation of massive, widespread, coordinated school cheating is more than a bombshell. It’s the H-bomb of revelations. After Hall’s term, the district’s academic reputation, culture and integrity are in ruins. How can it possibly be better off? We rate Franklin’s claim Pants on Fire. | null | Shirley Franklin | null | null | null | 2011-07-11T06:00:00 | 2011-06-23 | ['None'] |
tron-00780 | Letterman’s Top Ten List Takes Aim at Democrats | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/letterman-10-democrat/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Letterman’s Top Ten List Takes Aim at Democrats | Mar 17, 2015 | null | ['None'] |
faan-00037 | “Our allies have … been clear that Canada should leave our CF-18s in the fight” against Islamic State | factscan score: misleading | http://factscan.ca/rona-ambrose-our-allies-have-been-clear/ | The Kurdish government has been critical of Canada’s decision to withdraw its fighter jets. But other major allies in the fight have been agreeable (if vague) about the change, and at least one ally, the United States, has approved. | null | Rona Ambrose | null | null | null | 2016-02-25 | uary 27, 2016 | ['Canada'] |
goop-00070 | Ben Affleck Getting Flirty With Co-Star Janina Gavankar? | 0 | https://www.gossipcop.com/ben-affleck-janina-gavankar-flirty-torrance-movie-set/ | null | null | null | Andrew Shuster | null | Ben Affleck Getting Flirty With Co-Star Janina Gavankar? | 12:59 pm, October 29, 2018 | null | ['None'] |
pomt-00271 | Says Republicans "just passed" the Veterans Choice program after 44 years of trying. "They've been trying to pass that one for many, many decades." | false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2018/oct/02/donald-trump/donald-trump-gop-finally-passed-veterans-choice-af/ | President Donald Trump has been barnstorming for Republicans in the midterms. On Oct. 1 he landed in Johnson City, Tenn., to help U.S. Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn, covering familiar ground about the improving economy. He touted securing $716 billion for the military, and he gave Republicans credit for giving veterans a new health care option. "We just passed Choice," Trump said. "That was 44 years, they’ve been trying to pass Choice. So that if you have to wait for nine days, 30 days, 21 days, months, you don’t do that anymore. If the line is big, and you’re unhappy, you go to a private doctor, they take care of you and we pay the bill." Trump repeated the point, saying, "They’ve been trying to pass that one for many, many decades. They couldn’t do it. We got it passed. We’re good at passing things, right?" Trump is wrong that Choice wasn’t passed until he came into office. Congress passed a new version of a Choice program in June 2018 — but the program itself has been around since 2014. After the scandal of long waits and the efforts of administrators at some facilities to cover that up, Congress and the Obama administration passed the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014. For veterans who couldn’t be given appointments quickly enough, or who lived more than 40 miles from a Veterans Health Administration hospital, the government would pay for private care. In four years, Washington spent $12 billion on the program. The bill signed by Trump, the VA Mission Act, is a major effort to fold a variety of community care programs at the VA into one integrated whole. That change won’t take place for at least a year. Until then, the law provides $5.2 billion to continue the Choice program in its present form. We reached out to the Trump administration but did not hear back. Our ruling Trump said that he and his fellow Republican "passed Choice," something that others had been trying to do for 44 years. He described the program as one that allowed veterans to get private care at government expense. The program to do exactly that has been around for four years. And it’s always been referred to as Choice. We rate this claim False. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2018-10-02T15:02:31 | 2018-10-01 | ['None'] |
pomt-08999 | On whether BP's $20 billion fund to compensate oil spill victims is "a slush fund." | full flop | /truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jul/13/sharron-angle/sharron-angle-flip-flops-bp-oil-spill-slush-fund/ | Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Nevada, was a guest on a radio show recently when a caller expressed surprise that the government could pressure oil company BP to create a "slush fund" to pay claims. Angle agreed. "No, government shouldn"t be doing that to a private company, and I think you named it clearly. It"s a slush fund," she said during the appearance on the Alan Stock News Show on KNXT radio in Las Vegas on July 7, 2010. As you may recall, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, used similar language last month. Apologizing to BP for what he called a "shakedown," he also referred to the $20 billlion as a slush fund. But other Republicans, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, promptly distanced themselves from his remarks. "I have said from the beginning that BP ought to be held responsible for every dime of this tragedy. And they ought to be held accountable to stop the leak and get it cleaned up as soon as possible," said Boehner. "BP agreed to fund the cost of this cleanup, and I'm glad they're being held accountable." Barton then apologized for his apology, saying that he believed BP should be held accountable for the accident. Angle's comments came a month later, but it didn"t take long for her to distance herself from her own remarks. By the close of business the next day, Angle"s campaign issued a statement entilted "Setting the record straight about BP and the Obama Administration." "Having had some time to think about it, the caller and I shouldn"t have used the term ‘slush fund"; that was incorrect," said the "Statement from Sharron Angle." "My position is that the creation of this fund to compensate victims was an important first step -- BP caused this disaster and they should pay for it. But there are multiple parties at fault here and there should be a thorough investigation. We need to look into the actions (or inactions) of the Administration and why the regulatory agency in charge of oversight was asleep at the wheel while BP was cutting corners. Every party involved should be held fully accountable." We"ve seen some artful flips, but rarely are they executed so fully -- and quickly. Our rating: Full Flop! | null | Sharron Angle | null | null | null | 2010-07-13T17:31:36 | 2010-07-07 | ['None'] |
pomt-05924 | Students today "take more years to get through" college. | mostly false | /truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/30/newt-gingrich/newt-gingrich-says-students-today-take-more-years-/ | Newt Gingrich says too many college students are slackers. During a campaign event in Stuart, Fla., on Jan. 28, 2012, Newt Gingrich said college students are taking too long to graduate. "Students take fewer classes per semester. They take more years to get through. Why? Because they have free money," Gingrich said. "I would tell students: ‘Get through as quick as you can. Borrow as little as you can. Have a part-time job.’ But that’s very different from the culture that has grown up in the last 20 years." We wondered whether the statistics showed that students are indeed taking longer to graduate than they did in the past. So we looked into it. We turned to figures on post-secondary education compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of Education. As it turns out, the trend for four-year colleges is exactly the opposite. Percent of bachelor’s degree-seeking students completing bachelor's degrees within four years after start, at all four-year institutions Students starting college in ... Percent graduating in four years 1996 33.7 1997 34.1 1998 34.5 1999 35.3 2000 36.1 2001 36.2 2002 39.3 So the percentage of students completing degrees within four years has actually risen incrementally in recent years. Between the graduating classes of 2000 and 2006, the percentage of students graduating in four years increased by one-sixth. So where four-year colleges are concerned, Gingrich’s comment is off the mark. But Gingrich has a point in regard to two-year institutions. Percent completing certificates or associate's degrees within 150 percent of normal time, all two-year institutions Students starting college in ... Percent who graduated in three years 1999 29.3 2000 30.5 2001 30.0 2002 29.3 2003 29.1 2004 27.8 2005 27.5 So for two-year institutions, the rate did fall slightly, though by less than what the rate for four-year institutions rose. Christopher Swanson, the vice president for research and development at Editorial Projects in Education, the publisher of Education Week, said that in general, education experts haven’t been worried so much that the trendlines for college completion are going in the wrong direction. "The main narrative you hear about (concerns) the low completion rates in general," he said. On that score, he said, "there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to write home about." Swanson did take issue with the general tenor of Gingrich’s comments -- that you should borrow as little as you can and instead get a job if you want to increase the likelihood that you’ll finish college on time. "That seems to fly in the face of what I think is a pretty well-established finding from the research that working during college or post-secondary education tends to be detrimental in terms of completion (that is, that you’re less likely to complete) and time to completion (that it takes longer)," Swanson said. "There may be any number of issues and problems with excessive student borrowing, but being able to borrow for college does allow students the opportunity to focus more exclusively on their school work than would probably have been the case otherwise. If you follow the don’t borrow/get a job argument and play that out a bit, that sounds a lot like what happens as a matter of course in community colleges. And the completion rates there are extremely low, on the order of one-third completing within an extended timeline." Our ruling Gingrich said that students today "take more years to get through" college. While graduation rates are lower than experts would like them to be, it's not true that students are taking longer to graduate from four-year institutions. The percentage graduating on time at four-year colleges has actually risen consistently in recent years. The only exception to this pattern is at two-year colleges, where the percentage of students graduating within three years has fallen slightly. On balance, we rate the statement Mostly False. https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/670cf7ee-39a3-41a7-9d3a-e6c3459864a0 | null | Newt Gingrich | null | null | null | 2012-01-30T16:49:30 | 2012-01-28 | ['None'] |
pomt-01532 | Much more than 50 percent of parents out there are spankers. | mostly true | /punditfact/statements/2014/sep/17/donald-trump/trump-more-half-parents-spank-their-kids/ | The furor over Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson and his admission that he struck his 4-year-old son with a wooden switch has put parenting and corporal punishment in the spotlight. Peterson has said he grew up treated the same way by his parents. The Vikings pulled Peterson from the team’s active roster while his case moves through the courts. During a Sept. 17 broadcast on ESPN’s Mike and Mike, billionaire Donald Trump waded into the debate. While saying that he was never a "spanker," which is less severe than Peterson’s offense, Trump said there’s no simple response because many parents physically discipline their kids and they turn out "good." "It's a pretty tough thing because I saw something last night that much more than 50 percent of people out there and parents out there are spankers," Trump said. We thought it would be worthwhile to check if spanking is as common as Trump said. In large measure, the data says it is. A 2013 study by Columbia University researchers found that 57 percent of mothers and 40 percent of fathers engaged in spanking when children were age three, and 52 percent of mothers and 33 percent of fathers engaged in spanking at age five. Disadvantaged families represented a large share of the survey group but the results are consistent with other studies. A 1999 article in Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review reported that 72 percent of parents of children between the ages of two and four said they sometimes spanked their kids. A 2002 poll commissioned by ABC News asked a random sample of adults if they had ever spanked their children. Over half of them said they had. That ABC survey showed an interesting regional difference. In the South, 62 percent of parents said they spank their children. For the rest of the country, the fraction dropped to 41 percent. We should note that pediatricians as a group strongly discourage spanking. They cite evidence that ties it to behavioral problems and lower school performance. The spanking label covers a lot of ground. Some parents hit harder and more often than others. To talk simply of spanking masks important differences in how parents treat their children. Our ruling Speaking about the Peterson case, Trump said that much more than 50 percent of parents are spankers. In this fact-check, we’re not judging whether spanking is akin to what Peterson did, we’re simply verifying Trump’s statistic. He’s close. We found two polls that put the fraction a bit over half, rather than "much more." But that aside, Trump is largely correct within a broad definition of spanking. We rate the claim Mostly True. | null | Donald Trump | null | null | null | 2014-09-17T16:34:18 | 2014-09-17 | ['None'] |
para-00067 | The truth about the Pacific Solution is that 70%, thereabouts, of those people sent by Mr Howard to Nauru and elsewhere as part of the Pacific Solution, used it as a wait station and within a couple of years were in Australia anyway. | false | http://pandora.nla.gov.au//pan/140601/20131209-1141/www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/aug/13/kevin-rudd/how-many-asylum-seekers-ended-austr/index.html | null | ['Asylum Seekers'] | Kevin Rudd | Ellie Harvey, Peter Fray | null | How many asylum seekers ended up in Australia via the Pacific Solution? | Tuesday, August 13, 2013 at 6:37 p.m. | null | ['Australia', 'Nauru', 'John_Howard', 'Pacific_Solution'] |
tron-00640 | Daughter of Marilyn Monroe, JFK Comes Forward | fiction! | https://www.truthorfiction.com/daughter-of-marilyn-monroe-jfk-comes-forward/ | null | celebrities | null | null | null | Daughter of Marilyn Monroe, JFK Comes Forward | Feb 24, 2016 | null | ['Marilyn_Monroe'] |
snes-00050 | A photograph shows a mining lift crammed full of “Irish slaves in America.” | miscaptioned | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/irish-slaves-us-photo/ | null | Fauxtography | null | Alex Kasprak | null | Does This Photograph Show Irish Slaves in the United States? | 22 September 2018 | null | ['United_States', 'Republic_of_Ireland'] |
thet-00017 | Since Police Scotland was established 5 years ago with specialist homicide unit, there have been total of 301 murders in Scotland & every single one of them has been solved | half true | https://theferret.scot/murders-2013-solved-police-scotland/ | null | Crime and justice Fact check | Paul Wheelhouse MSP | null | null | Claim that all murders in Scotland since 2013 have been solved is Half True | April 13, 2018 | null | ['Scotland'] |
bove-00040 | CNBCTV18 Tweets Incorrect Assam Demographic Data, Deletes Later | none | https://www.boomlive.in/cnbctv18-tweets-incorrect-assam-demographic-data-deletes-later/ | null | null | null | null | null | CNBCTV18 Tweets Incorrect Assam Demographic Data, Deletes Later | Jul 31 2018 8:47 pm | null | ['None'] |
pomt-06089 | Says Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker eliminated "cancer screenings for uninsured women" and offered "no alternatives." | pants on fire! | /wisconsin/statements/2012/jan/06/gwen-moore/wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-ended-planned-parenthoo/ | Twice on Dec. 27, 2011, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., accused Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker of eliminating a cancer-screening program for low-income women. "Scott Walker cuts cancer screenings for uninsured women, offers no alternatives," read Moore’s first statement on Twitter, the online messaging site that has some 200 million account holders. "Walker kills women’s cancer screening program for political gain," her second tweet claimed. In the messages, Moore cited two website articles about the state Well Woman program. Among other things, it provides tests for cancer for low-income women who don’t have insurance that covers such screenings. The articles refer to Walker canceling a state contract with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, which provides services related to the cancer screenings in four counties -- Winnebago, Fond du Lac, Outagamie and Sheboygan -- between Milwaukee and Green Bay. In the vast majority of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, a county health department serves as the local coordinator for the screenings. But since the program was started in 1995, Planned Parenthood has had what now is a $130,000-per-year state contract to serve as coordinator in the four counties. In that role, Planned Parenthood uses two employees to help women sign up for and receive the cancer screenings. In 2010, 715 women in the four counties were served, according to the state Department of Health Services. So did Walker kill a cancer-screening program for poor women? In a word: No. 1. The contract in question was for helping women sign up for and get the screenings, not the screenings themselves. The screenings are separate. Some are done by Planned Parenthood, but they also are done by other health care providers. 2.Walker’s administration did end Planned Parenthood’s contract -- but neither the assistance Planned Parenthood provided, nor the screenings themselves, ever ended. Indeed, the change put the four counties on par with how the program is handled in most of the rest of the state. When we asked Moore spokeswoman Nicole Williams if she had additional evidence to back Moore’s charges against Walker, she provided a news release from Planned Parenthood. But that release made clear both the assistance and the screenings would continue. So let’s see how Moore, who counts Planned Parenthood as an ally, got it all wrong. Walker moves to end contract Walker and Planned Parenthood are political foes. Planned Parenthood’s services -- unrelated to the Well Woman program -- include abortion, which Walker opposes. And two weeks before losing its contract, the organization announced its support of the campaign to recall Walker from office in 2012. Walker earlier in 2011 moved to cut Planned Parenthood’s public funding for family planning services. Controversy over the contract surfaced in December 2011. Dec. 1, 2011: The state health department, according to Planned Parenthood, notifies Planned Parenthood by phone that its contract would end effective Jan. 1, 2012. So, it’s clear the Walker administration abruptly ended the longtime contract -- but that didn’t mean an end to the cancer screenings or the assistance that Planned Parenthood was providing in the four counties. Dec. 23, 2011: The state health department announces that Winnebago County would take over the screening assistance in the four counties and that there would be a transition.(The news release did not mention that the assistance would be transitioned from Planned Parenthood.) So, the state made it clear the cancer screening-related services would continue. The change to Winnebago County puts the four counties in the same position as nearly all other counties in that a local health department, rather than a private agency such as Planned Parenthood, will serve as the local coordinator. But again, that’s not ending the screenings, which was Moore’s claim. Dec. 27, 2011: On the day Moore issued her tweets, Planned Parenthood announces it had agreed to continue providing assistance for the screenings for 60 days past the end of its contract. So, Planned Parenthood itself made it clear that neither the screenings nor the assistance in getting the screenings would end. How Moore went wrong Moore used as her tweets, almost word for word, the headlines from the two website articles she linked to in the tweets. Both articles incorrectly reported that Walker had ended entirely the screenings in question. Moore’s spokeswoman said Moore’s tweets were merely relating what the articles said. But neither article was from a straight news source. And Moore is responsible for stating bad information, even if it came from another source. That’s the approach PolitiFact has consistently taken, with Democrats and Republicans alike. A Dec. 17, 2011, Forbes.com article Moore cited was written by a contributor who took the stance that Walker was playing politics with the contract. And a Dec. 20 article she linked to was written by the left-leaning Huffington Post political website. As for why Planned Parenthood’s contract was canceled, Walker explained his decision, in a news article his spokesman provided to us, by saying: "There are many clinics that are not as controversial as Planned Parenthood, and our goal was to make sure low-income women had access to those sorts of screenings from other providers around the state that don't carry the controversy you get with Planned Parenthood." Doug Gieryn, director of the Winnebago County Health Department, told us that local health officials were happy with Planned Parenthood’s work and upset that the state ended its contract. But as for Moore’s claim that Walker eliminated the cancer screenings, Gieryn said: "That’s inaccurate." And by quite a lot. Our conclusion Moore said Walker eliminated "cancer screenings for uninsured women" in four Wisconsin counties and offered "no alternatives." But all Walker eliminated was a contract with Planned Parenthood for assisting women in getting the screenings. And the screenings never ended -- nor did the assistance Planned Parenthood provided. Moore’s claim was false and ridiculous -- our definition of Pants on Fire. (Editor's note: In the original version of this story, published Jan. 6, 2012, we stated Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin does not provide the actual cancer screenings. Planned Parenthood does offer the screenings separately from the contract that was canceled, which involved helping women sign up for the screenings. ) | null | Gwen Moore | null | null | null | 2012-01-06T09:00:00 | 2011-12-27 | ['Scott_Walker_(politician)'] |
bove-00184 | This Is A Cartoon, Not The Fly-Past For Marshal Of The IAF Arjan Singh | none | https://www.boomlive.in/this-is-a-cartoon-not-the-fly-past-for-marshal-of-the-iaf-arjan-singh/ | null | null | null | null | null | This Is A Cartoon, Not The Fly-Past For Marshal Of The IAF Arjan Singh | Sep 20 2017 2:32 pm, Last Updated: Sep 20 2017 9:32 pm | null | ['None'] |
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