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On the July 4, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week, Jorge Ramos -- a prominent news anchor for Univision, the Spanish-language television network -- said that "President Barack Obama has deported more people in his first year in office than George W. Bush in his last year in office."
With immigration policy a hot political topic these days, we thought Ramos' statement was worth checking. When we contacted Ramos, he said the information had come from the White House. The White House, in turn, referred us to the Department of Homeland Security. A DHS spokesman provided us with the deportation statistics updated through June 7, 2010, though not all the numbers have been officially released yet. In fiscal year 2008 (which ran from Oct. 1, 2007, through Sept. 30, 2008), there were 369,221 deportations. During fiiscal year 2009 (which ran from Oct. 1, 2008, through Sept. 30, 2009) there were 387,790 deportations. That's an increase of 18,569 from one year to the next, a jump of about 5 percent. So, using these numbers, Ramos is correct. It's worth mentioning a few caveats however. • The fiscal years do not square precisely with presidential years. Fiscal year 2008 was entirely under Bush, while fiscal year 2009 consisted of four months under Bush and eight under Obama. So using the raw fiscal-year figures doesn't quite prove the Bush-Obama comparison. • It's not clear that Obama policies deserve credit (or blame, depending on your perspective) for any increase in deportations, as Ramos implies. Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokesman for the Migration Policy Institute, said that "deportation numbers have been on a steadily upward trajectory" since 2002, due to a number of policy changes initially undertaken during the Bush administration. Indeed, between 2002 and 2008, deportations rose by 117 percent. • DHS also provided totals for part of fiscal year 2010 -- the portion from Oct. 1, 2009, through June 7, 2010. That number was 227,163. If you prorate that amount to a full 12 months, you get a full-year total of 330,419 -- which is less than each of the two previous years. However, immigration experts said that deportations are not spaced equally throughout the year, meaning that prorating is not necessarily valid. In our view, these caveats add a bit of uncertainty to Ramos' otherwise clear comparison. So we rate his statement Mostly True.
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In the wake of a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, critics of offshore drilling are calling on lawmakers to rethink domestic energy policy.But Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, says the industry has a good record. Oil production -- a major industry in her home state -- should not be shut down because of one accident, she argued in a May 4, 2010, interview on CNN."In the last 10 years we've only had 7,000 barrels of oil spilled in the Gulf... not counting hurricanes," she told host John King. "This well is spewing that amount every day and a half. So relatively speaking to the other wells that have been drilled, this is spilling a huge amount of oil."We're not going to rule on Landrieu's underlying point, that oil drilling is safe, which is a matter of opinion. But we can explore whether she is correct about the magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon accident compared with others in the past decade. Landrieu's office pointed us to a document prepared for them by Minerals Management Service, the arm of the Department of Interior that oversees oil production. According to the report, a total of 31,122 barrels of crude oil, diesel, lube oil and gasoline were spilled in the Gulf between 2000 and 2009. That includes 24,069 barrels spilled during Hurricanes Lili, Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike. The difference between those two numbers is 7,053 -- roughly the amount cited by Landrieu. So, Landrieu is correct that except for the hurricane numbers, about 7,000 barrels of oil were spilled in the Gulf in the past decade.
Federal authorities have said it's difficult to estimate the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf. Initially, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that about 1,000 barrels of oil were leaking each day into the Gulf as a result of the accident. But NOAA then increased that estimate to about 5,000 barrels a day (which is about 210,000 gallons). But scientists say it could be far more than 5,000.
So Landrieu is close with the 7,000 figure, but there's considerable uncertainty about the actual amount spewing from the leak. We find her claim Mostly True.
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In an open letter distributed June 12 to delegates to the Republican Party of Texas convention, former party vice chairman David Barton of Aledo depicts Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a San Antonio Republican, as part of a Democrat-friendly cabal that needs to be shaped up or shipped out.
Barton’s letter excoriates instances of Republican House members pitching in to help Democrats win re-election. An excerpt: “Straus Republican lieutenant Jim Keffer did mail pieces for Democrat Mark Strama to help him defeat his Republican opponent.”
Keffer hails from Eastland, some 160 miles northwest of Austin, whose legislative delegation includes Strama. Did a rural Republican really back the re-election of an urban colleague from the other party?
When we asked for elaboration, Barton shared copies of what he said were two political leaflets from a Strama re-election campaign.
One of the documents includes pro-Strama quotations from former State Comptroller John Sharp, a Democrat; the Democrat-leaning Austin Chronicle; a resident of Strama’s district and Keffer, who’s quoted saying: “Mark Strama serves his district, not any one political party.”
In the other document, Sharp and Keffer are also featured. Keffer is quoted saying Strama “worked with Republicans to cut property taxes and keep our public schools open. We don't always agree on every issue, but we agree on the need to put the interests of Texas ahead of partisan politics.”
Responding to our query, Keffer confirmed he’d given Strama a hand, saying: “Whether you’ve got an R or a D behind your name doesn’t mean you are most qualified.”
Finally, we contacted Strama, who told us by e-mail that Keffer, who had authored school funding legislaton that Strama co-sponsored, “didn’t ‘do’ mail pieces in the sense of paying for them,” but agreed to be quoted in a mailer “funded by my campaign about my bipartisan approach to the school finance bill.”
Though Strama paid for the campaign materials, Keffer willingly helped out his Democratic colleague. Barton’s statement checks out as Mostly True.
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The race for the Democratic nomination for Georgia’s next secretary of state has turned downright ugly.A June 27 debate on Georgia Public Broadcasting between the five Democratic candidates seeking the party’s nomination turned into little more than a prime-time mudslinging. The debate was sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club. State Sen. Gail Buckner (D-Jonesboro) quickly found herself on the defensive when she was accused of not filing a personal financial disclosure report as required by the state Ethics Commission. Challenger Gary Horlacher alleged Buckner had not filed within the seven days required after she qualified to run for statewide office. Buckner, a 18-year veteran of the state Legislature, shot back that she had. Buckner was in the state House of Representatives 16 years and has served two in the state Senate. “I have filed every disclosure that has ever been required,” she said. So who’s right?Horlacher, a metro Atlanta attorney, said Buckner was required to file a personal financial disclosure report within seven days after she qualified to run for secretary of state. But the only disclosure she filed was back in January, before she qualified to run for statewide office. She qualified to run for secretary of state in April.The state Ethics Commission Web site has this to say about the required filing:“A Personal Financial Disclosure Statement covering the period of the preceding calendar year shall be filed no later than the fifteenth day following the date of qualifying as a candidate. Candidates for statewide office file not later than seven days after qualifying for office. Only one Personal Financial Disclosure Statement is required per calendar year.”That seems clear-cut. But not so much in this case, according to Stacey Kalberman, executive secretary for the Ethics Commission. Kalberman said Buckner filed a “statewide form” earlier this year that effectively covers her subsequent decision to run for secretary of state. That fulfills the Ethics Commission’s requirements, Kalberman said.“She filed a statewide form in January, so she’s good,” Kalberman said. A check of the Ethics Commission’s Web site shows Buckner electronically filed the form on Jan. 8 at 8:04 p.m. It lists everything from Buckner’s salary, to the value of her home and vehicles. Horlacher said he still thinks Buckner has violated the letter and intent of the filing requirement. And he vowed not to drop the issue.“I am down to deciding whether to formally request an advisory opinion from the [Ethics] Commission,” he said. “I think the state might be better off just to get clarification on this so it is not repeated.” But as of now, Buckner appears to have done what is required of her. We give her a rating of True on this one.
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Florida Democrats last week attacked Attorney General Bill McCollum in a press release, saying he didn't do enough to curb mortgage fraud. His "flippant response to homeowners in trouble," according to the Democrats, was, "You can’t do everything."
We wondered if the Republican gubernatorial candidate was indeed so "flip," especially at a time when mortgage flipping fraud was so pervasive in Florida. The state has ranked first nationwide in mortgage fraud every year since 2006.
Indeed, we found the Democrats quoted him correctly.
On July 25, 2009, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune ran a front-page article in which reporter Jeremy Wallace noted that McCollum had acknowledged that his agency hadn’t done enough to stop more than 10,000 cases of potentially illegal real estate deals uncovered by the West Florida newspaper (the Democrats' campaign literature cites the Herald-Tribune article but gives an incorrect date of July 25, 2007). In the story, McCollum cited a lack of resources and his agency’s limited jurisdiction over criminal mortgage fraud for his inability to do more.
The newspaper noted that McCollum had formed a task force in 2007 to investigate mortgage fraud cases, but that other consumer issues took priority. And so when a Sarasota reporter asked McCollum in an interview in Venice why he hadn’t done more on mortgage fraud prior, McCollum replied: "It’s not the only thing we do. You can’t do everything." It's worth noting that McCollum gave his response to the Herald-Tribune – and, not as the Democrats say, to "homeowners in trouble."
Still, the Democrats were right about his words and quoted him accurately. We find their statement True.
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Painting his November opponent as an out-of-touch millionaire, Democrat Ted Ankrum invoked U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul’s wealth in remarks to the Democrats with Disabilities caucus at the Texas Democratic State Convention in Corpus Christi.
The Austin lawyer "is the sixth-richest person in Congress," Ankrum said Friday.
We scurried to check.
When we followed up with Ankrum, he immediately said he should have described McCaul as the sixth-richest member of the House — not all of Congress.
How would Ankrum know? Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, annually examines financial disclosure filings by members of Congress and ranks the 50 richest members by calculating their minimum net worths. On the disclosure filings, members don’t reveal exactly what they’re worth. Instead, they indicate assets and liabilities within broad categories such as $1 to $1,000, up to more than $50 million. Roll Call estimates each member’s net worth by calculating the lowest possible total assets and subtracting the lowest possible liabilities.
According to Roll Call’s latest assessment, based on members’ 2008 submissions, McCaul was then the 11th-richest member of Congress, and the sixth-richest House member. McCaul’s estimated net worth that year: $38.08 million.
The sixth-richest member that year, according to Roll Call’s research, was Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado, with an estimated net worth of $71 million.
"McCaul’s assets grew by at least $14 million in 2008," Roll Call said, "a jump of nearly 60 percent from his reported minimum value the year before. McCaul holds the largest percentage increase in wealth among any member."
Roll Call also reported that many lawmakers on its top-50 list had suffered steep financial losses, reporting a combined loss of more than $275 million from their combined estimated net worths in 2007.
Roll Call said McCaul’s boost in wealth reflected a significant jump in some of his wife’s investments, which were valued at a minimum of $25 million. McCaul’s father-in-law is Lowry Mays, the founder of media giant Clear Channel Communications.
We checked in with McCaul’s campaign, whose spokesman Mike Rosen, didn’t quibble with the ranking.
Overall, 28 Democrats and 22 Republicans made the publication’s top-50 list. The most flush member of Congress that year was Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., with an estimated net worth of $167.55 million. Other Texans in the money: U.S. Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Irving, ranked 25th with an estimated net worth of $11.89 million, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, came in 35th at $7.14 million and Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock, landed 46th at $5.91 million.
Summing up (ahem): Ankrum misspoke because McCaul, by the latest ranking, is the the sixth-richest member of the House, not Congress.
Still, the punch line is about the same; McCaul was better off than most colleagues. We rate Ankrum’s statement Mostly True.
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William "Bill" Lynch, one of the four Democrats running for Patrick Kennedy’s 1st District seat in the U.S. Congress, has been trying to rally support by repeatedly railing against Blue Cross, the health insurer whose double-digit rate increase requests have been widely condemned.The fact that Blue Cross is seeking the increase after building a towering headquarters near Providence Place mall, combined with rumors that the company spent lavishly on furnishings, has made it a tempting target.So Lynch has called on the health-insurance commissioner to deny the request, and his campaign issued a news release in May that included this statement:"Last month Lynch criticized the construction of Blue Cross’s new $90 million headquarters, which was outfitted with $25 million in decor."That would buy some pretty cushy cubicles. We wanted to know if the $25-million figure was true.When we contacted the Lynch campaign, spokesman Bill Fischer said the number also includes furnishings, such as desks and office equipment, and the sources were a Providence Business News story, which he could not locate, and an Oct. 5, 2009, Providence Journal story.We checked the Journal story but there was no reference to $25 million being spent on anything.When we asked Fischer about that, he cited this sentence in the story:"But Blue Cross president and chief executive officer James E. Purcell is proud of his $90-million ($125 million when you include furnishings and ‘soft’ costs such as fees and engineering) building and insists it is actually saving money for the health insurer."Fischer said the campaign arrived at the $25-million figure by taking the $35 million difference between $125 million and $90 million, then subtracting $10 million to be on the safe side. He said the Lynch campaign has repeatedly sought more reliable information from Blue Cross and the state Department of Business Regulation, which uses data from the health-insurance giant to rule on premium increases. But both, he said, have refused to disclose that data."It’s the best information we could ascertain from the limited information Blue Cross will provide on this matter," said Fischer.No it’s not. It’s a number pulled out of thin air.Fischer added that Lynch has publicly repeated the $25-million claim in several venues, in news releases and on the radio. "Not once did Blue Cross refute it," he said.They don’t have to. It’s up to a candidate to know what he or she is talking about. Repeatedly presenting rough guesstimates as hard facts does not make them true."We stand by our number," Fischer said.And we stand by our rating: Pants on Fire.
By the way, we asked Blue Cross how much it spent on furnishings and received this response from Kimberly R. Reingold, director of media relations and external affairs:"The cost characterization of our decor, including workstations, office furniture, tables, seating and files, is inaccurate. The actual cost was modestly in excess of $7 million."Reingold said "modestly in excess of $7 million" means less than $7.5 million and was based on "invoices received from multiple vendors."We asked Blue Cross for documentation to back up that number. The company declined to provide it.
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U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Sarasota, joined an overwhelming majority of Congress on April 27, 2010, in voting to prevent an automatic cost-of-living pay raise for members of Congress.The measure, which passed the House 402-15 and the Senate on a unanimous voice vote, marks the third consecutive year Congress will go without a pay increase.Before the vote, Buchanan recorded a web video discussing 2009 legislation that would have prohibited members of Congress from receiving a raise unless they balance the federal budget. Buchanan's so-called "No Balanced Budget, No Raise Act" never received a committee hearing.Buchanan said he ran for Congress to preach fiscal responsibility."In the last 50 years, we've only balanced the budget five times," Buchanan said.We wanted to see if Buchanan's recollection of history is correct.The White House Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office both track yearly federal revenues and expenditures. Technically, a budget is considered balanced when federal expenses equal federal revenues -- meaning there is no deficit or surplus. Generally speaking, however, most people consider a budget balanced when revenues meet or exceed expenditures.The federal budget is so huge -- now about $3.7 trillion -- that balancing it with revenues is almost impossible. It hasn't happened in at least the last 110 years, according to the OMB.However, in the past 50 years, from 1960-2010, the federal government took in more money than it spent five times -- in 1969, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001.Four of the surplus years came together from 1998-2001, President Bill Clinton's last three years in office, and President George W. Bush's first year in office. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the four surpluses totaled more than $559 billion.The fifth surplus -- $3.2 billion -- came in 1969, when Richard Nixon was president.The last surplus before that was in 1960, 51 budget years ago, and outside the window of Buchanan's statement.While a federal surplus is rare in modern history, that's not always been the case. A 1998 study of budget surpluses and deficits conducted for the House Joint Economic Committee found that federal surpluses outnumbered deficits 108 to 100, "with surpluses dominating in a large majority of the years prior to 1930."Urging increased fiscal restraint in Washington, Buchanan lamented in a web video that the federal budget has only been balanced five times in the last 50 years. While the use of the word balance isn't 100 percent right, Buchanan is correct that the federal government has been able to cover its yearly expenses just five times since 1961 -- in 1969 and from 1998-2001. We rate his statement True.
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Mark Zaccaria, one of three Republicans hoping to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. James Langevin in the 2nd District, issued a news release June 3 reacting to a Providence Journal story that concluded with this paragraph: "People are tired of partisan politics in Washington and they are tired of the bickering," Langevin said. "People know that I'm not [partisan]. They know that I try to find commonsense solutions to problems."Zaccaria's news release said:"Mr. Langevin is right that people are tired of partisan politics," Zaccaria said. "But I find it laughable that he would describe himself as 'non-partisan.' Langevin has been the most reliable vote for Speaker Pelosi, voting the party line about 98 percent of the time. If he doesn't see that as being partisan, then he is delusional. Rhode Island cannot afford to allow Mr. Langevin and Speaker Pelosi to continue to put people out of work and drive businesses out of this country while catering to their special interests."We were interested in two elements: Has Langevin voted the party line as often as Zaccaria says, and has he been "the most reliable vote for Speaker Pelosi?" We deal with the Pelosi claim in a separate item.We called Zaccaria’s campaign manager, Parker Lacoste, who told us that the actual percentage is even higher -- 99.2 percent -- and he referred us to a WashingtonPost.com web page of votes during the current Congress, which also shows whether Langevin’s votes conformed to the Democratic party line.The site reported that "James Langevin has voted with a majority of his Democratic colleagues 99.2% of the time during the current Congress. This percentage does not include votes in which Langevin did not vote."That's well above the 92.2 percent rate among all Democrats, which seems to bear out Zaccaria's point that Langevin, at least by his voting record, can't claim to be non-partisan.If anything, Zaccaria's original statement understates Langevin's Democratness. We rate it as True.
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Republican Mark Zaccaria, a candidate for Congress in the 2nd District, has challenged Democratic U.S. Rep. James Langevin’s claim, made in a Providence Journal story, that he is non-partisan. Zaccaria says that Langevin votes with his party “about 98 percent of the time” and “has been the most reliable vote” for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.We rated the 98 percent claim as True in a separate item. But we were also interested in the Pelosi claim. Here’s the full context from Zaccaria's news release:"Mr. Langevin is right that people are tired of partisan politics," Zaccaria said. "But I find it laughable that he would describe himself as 'non-partisan.' Langevin has been the most reliable vote for Speaker Pelosi, voting the party line about 98 percent of the time. If he doesn't see that as being partisan, then he is delusional. Rhode Island cannot afford to allow Mr. Langevin and Speaker Pelosi to continue to put people out of work and drive businesses out of this country while catering to their special interests."Most reliable?We went to the same source cited by Zaccaria’s campaign manager, Parker Lacoste -- a page on WashingtonPost.com that looks at the voting record of individual members of Congress. The same paragraph that says Langevin “voted with a majority of his Democratic colleagues 99.2% of the time during the current Congress” also invites people to see “a full list of party voters.”That’s where we discovered that there were eight Democrats with higher ratings, including Rep. Hilda Solis of California, who voted the party line 100 percent of the time.Langevin may be a very reliable vote for Pelosi, but it was VERY easy to discover that eight other representatives were more reliable.So we can reliably tell you that Zaccaria's "most reliable" claim is False.
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During a May 4 forum that included six gubernatorial candidates, independent Lincoln Chafee was asked by Vanessa Volz, of R.I. National Organization for Women, about the high rate of teen sexual activity, the social and economic costs of teen pregnancy, and whether he would support a bill requiring age-appropriate and medically accurate sex education in Rhode Island's public schools.He said he would."I travel around the state visiting senior centers and I was visiting a Central Falls senior center and the Central Falls social agency was in the same building and office. And the social agent that was there said, 'You wouldn't believe the teen pregnancy in Central Falls. It's 53 percent.' Fifty-three percent of teens in Central Falls are getting pregnant," Chafee said.Later in his response, he made it clear he wasn't including males in that statistic:"We talk about the high dropout rate in Central Falls. Well it's obvious. Fifty-three percent of the young women are getting pregnant and have to take care of a child at home."But still. Fifty-three percent?So we contacted Chafee's campaign manager, J.R. Pagliarini, who conceded that the statistic, which Chafee has used on more than one occasion, is inaccurate."The senator visited Central Falls late last year and was told by a social worker working for the city that the teen pregnancy rate was over 50 percent. That individual misread page 4 of the attached November 2 press release from Kids Count that stated that 'the teen birth rate among girls ages 15-17 in Central Falls was 59.2 births per 1,000 teen girls, about three times the state rate of 19.1 per 1,000 teen girls ages 15-17.' "Those numbers translate to 5.92 percent for Central Falls girls 15 to 17 and 1.91 percent statewide.That's about one ninth the rate cited by Chafee during the candidate forum and other appearances.Since then, the Central Falls numbers have gotten worse. The 2010 Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook reported that the teen birth rate for Central Falls had risen to 6.13 percent while the Rhode Island average had declined to 1.89 percent. When you include 18- and 19-year-olds into the mix, the birth rate is 3.07 percent statewide and 9.55 in Central Falls.And that doesn't include women who were pregnant but never delivered because of abortion or miscarriage.Clearly, Central Falls has a disturbingly high teenage pregnancy rate, but it’s not nearly as high as Chafee has portrayed it. When it comes to getting his numbers right, Chafee fails the pregnancy test. We rate his claim as False.
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Lawton "Bud" Chiles III, son of the late Gov. Lawton Chiles, announced his independent run for governor on June 3, 2010, by saying he'd be a voice for those who traditionally have been cut out of the democratic process."I'm here to speak for 1 million Floridians who today are out of work, for almost 1 million children who have no health insurance in this state and for millions of Florida citizens like me, who believe that Florida can and must do better by its families and by its communities," Chiles said.Chiles, previously a registered Democrat, said he opted out of a Democratic primary with Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink after he spoke on the phone with Sink and she told him she plans to raise $30 million in the race. Sink denies using that figure.In this item, we wanted to check Chiles' claim that almost 1 million Florida children are without health insurance.The number is particularly surprising, given that the state operates a program called Florida KidCare, which provides free or heavily subsidized health insurance for many uninsured children under 19. To qualify for Florida KidCare you must be a U.S. citizen or an eligible non-U.S. Citizen (read the eligibility information here). The Florida Department of Health says that 1.8 million children are currently enrolled in the program.To begin to assess Chiles' figure we turned to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a group that analyzes health care policy.In October 2009, they produced a report called "The Uninsured, a Primer," which details the number of people insured and uninsured by race, gender, age and state.The report is based on Census information and averages 2007 and 2008 calculations to provide state-level data. Kaiser says the data comes with a margin of error between 5 and 7.9 percentage points.According to Kaiser, 18.3 percent of Florida's 4.3 million children under 19 are without health insurance, or about 787,000 children. Only Texas has a higher percentage of children uninsured, Kaiser found.Families USA, a national consumer health care group, said in an October 2008 study that 797,000 children in Florida were without health care (18.8 percent of all children). The study, like Kaiser's, relied on Census data and counted children under 19.Families USA found that over 60 percent of Florida’s uninsured children come from low-income families who likely are eligible for Florida KidCare.A third group, The Commonwealth Fund, found in a 2009 study that 18 percent of children 0-17 in Florida were without health insurance -- the highest percentage of children uninsured in the country. The Commonwealth Fund study did not attach a raw number like the Families USA and Kaiser surveys, but 18 percent is in the same range as the findings of the other two studies.In his announcement as a candidate for governor, Chiles said that almost 1 million children in Florida don't have health insurance. The most reliable and recent studies put the number at close to 800,000. Chiles uses the word "almost," which gives him some leeway. We rate his statement True.
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When you're a candidate for governor from a party out of power, you look for the ruling party's weak spots.So when Democrat Thurbert Baker recently made his kickoff speech for his run for governor, he mentioned a litany of problems in the state, including Georgia's low educational ranking."Now, we may be No. 1 in bank failures, but our school test scores are right at the bottom," Baker said. "This isn't the fault of our teachers or our students. It's the fault of our leaders who talk a good game about education but do nothing. In fact, they do worse than nothing. Whenever the politicians go looking for money to fund their pet projects, guess where they get it? They cut education!"In his speech, the outgoing attorney general gave us plenty of red meat to chew on. We decided to take a look into his claim about school test scores. Is Georgia "right at the bottom"?Baker campaign official Edward Chapman was happy to tell us where his boss came up with that statement: an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article last year reporting how Georgia's students fared on the SAT."Georgia finished ahead of only South Carolina, Hawaii, Maine and the District of Columbia," the Aug. 30, 2009, article reported. (That may not be something to boast about, but Georgia's students ranked last in the nation in 2004, so they've improved.)So, with the caveat that educators often warn against state comparisons because of wide variations in the types of students who take the tests, yes, the SAT alone indicates Georgia is close to the bottom. But we decided to look at scores on another college admission test -- the ACT. (There's a caveat with this one, too, because a smaller percentage of Georgia students take it than in many other states.)Georgia fared better here. It ranked ahead of 10 states and the District of Columbia in the average ACT composite score. Another element of the ACT measures the percentage of students who passed its benchmark scores in English, math, reading and science. On this one, Georgia finished 38th, ahead of 13 others states, and just below students in the District of Columbia.Baker campaign officials still contend their candidate's statement is true because more Georgia students take the SAT as opposed to the ACT. "We have always been at or very near the bottom among the states," Chapman said.So overall, Georgia's test scores on the two main college entrance exams paint different pictures. On the SAT, the state ranked 47th. But on the ACT, the state was 38th or 40th. So it's not, as Baker said, "right at the bottom." We find his claim Half True.
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During a June 6, 2010, appearance on ABC's This Week, Sen. John Kerry -- who is sponsoring a comprehensive energy bill -- discussed the nation's energy future against the backdrop of the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.During an interview with host Jake Tapper, Kerry said, "Here's what's important -- not to be throwing the blame around, but to put America on the course to true energy independence and self-reliance and to begin to wean ourselves from our addiction to oil. ... The United States is losing a major economic transformational moment. Until we begin to do something -- you know, since 9/11, we now actually import more oil than we did before 9/11. It's insulting to common sense."We decided to check whether Kerry was correct about whether the United States imports more oil today than it did before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.The answer is complicated, because there are at least three possible ways to measure it.• The number of barrels of crude oil imported. The U.S. imported 3.32 billion barrels of crude oil in 2000 and 3.40 billion barrels in 2001. Both figures were higher than the number imported in 2009 -- 3.31 billion barrels. By this measure, Kerry is incorrect, although just slightly.
• Imported crude oil compared to domestic production. We wondered whether imported crude oil was still increasing as a percentage of all oil in the U.S., even as it dropped in absolute amounts. In fact, that's exactly what happened.In 2000, oil imports accounted for 61 percent of the total of imports and domestic production, and in 2001, imports accounted for 62 percent. In 2009, the percentage of imports was 63 percent -- slightly higher than it was in either of those years. The underlying cause was that domestic oil production declined between the start of the decade and the end.By this measure, Kerry is correct, though once again, the difference is modest.• Imported crude oil plus imported unfinished oils. William Brown, who analyzes energy data for the federal government's Energy Information Administration, told PolitiFact that in recent years, there's been a rise in imports of unfinished oils, which are partially refined, taking the place of pure crude oil imports. So he sent us data that combined those two sets of imports.In 2000, the combination of crude oil and unfinished oils accounted for 9.54 million barrels per day, and in 2001, they accounted for 9.71 million barrels per day. In 2009, that figure was 9.86 million barrels per day.Adding in unfinished oils to the previous measure of crude oil turns an incorrect statement into a correct one.Bottom line: There are three ways to analyze the question, and with two of them, Kerry is right that imports have grown. Using the other statistic, he's wrong -- imports have declined. So we rate Kerry's statement Mostly True.
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During the June 6, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week, Markos Moulitsas, who publishes the liberal blog Daily Kos, joined a roundtable discussion that touched on Israel's decision earlier this month to send commandos to board a flotilla carrying aid and activists in defiance of an Israeli blockade of Gaza. The commandos clashed with some of those on board, and the raid ended with nine people dead.
Moulitsas said, "I mean, the fact is whether Israel had the right to do what it did or not, they handled it so poorly that they basically alienated much of the world. They alienated an important Arab ally in Turkey, and they put the United States in a really difficult position."
Shortly after the show ended, Moulitsas sent this Twitter message: "I got one for PolitiFact -- I slipped and called Turkey an 'Arab' country. I knew it as I said it. I meant 'Muslim.'"
His Twitter correction was right: Turkey is not an Arab country.
"Arabs and Turks are distinct peoples, separated by language, ethnicity, and geography. Although Turkey is adjacent to the Middle East, it is not generally considered part of that region," said Amy Hawthorne, executive director of the Hollings Center for International Dialogue. The Hollings Center operates in both Washington, D.C., and Turkey, and Hawthorne is a trained specialist in Middle East and Arab affairs.
In Turkey, the predominant language is Turkish, while in Arab countries, the main language is Arabic. The Arab League has 22 members, and Turkey is not among them. And between 70 percent and 75 percent of Turkey's population is ethnically Turkish, with 18 percent Kurdish and the remainder smaller minorities (including a modest number of Arabs).
The one thing that Turkey has in common with the Arab world is religion: An estimated 99.8 percent of the Turkish population is Muslim.
"I knew I was wrong as I was saying it," Moulitsas told PolitiFact in an e-mail. "But everything moves so fast that everything had moved on before I could say, 'Boy that was dumb -- I meant 'predominantly Muslim country.'"
Moulitsas has graciously copped to his error (and even invited us to ding him), but the Truth-O-Meter doesn't cut any slack for confessions. So we rate his statement False.
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A TV ad for the Roy Barnes gubernatorial campaign harks back to a rosier time in Georgia history -- the last recession.The ad, called "Chalkboard," says that the number of jobs in this state rose from 1999 through 2003 while Barnes was governor, even though his term included a recession that ended nationally in November 2001. Georgia struggled to add jobs until 2003. The commercial puts it this way:"Roy Barnes will make Georgia work. Again. When he was governor, Georgia created 235,000 jobs. We can do it again. And more." Georgia created jobs? Despite the recession? Barnes' statement implies that his actions led to the creation of these jobs, an assertion that is impossible to prove. Many factors encourage job creation, and many of those are outside any governor's purview. What we can do is establish whether he left Georgia's economy as healthy as he portrayed it to be. Here goes: The Barnes campaign credits the data to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which collaborates with state governments to publish monthly figures on the country's economic health. Those figures show that while employment ticked up and down during Barnes' tenure, when it was all said and done Georgia was left with more than 238,000 additional jobs. In December 1998, the number of people employed was 3,925,076. By December 2002, it was 4,163,184. Generally, economists think an increase in employment is good. Yet a closer look shows that despite the growth, jobs grew tougher to get under the Barnes administration. Those same BLS figures show Georgia's unemployment rate rose a full percentage point from 3.9 percent to 4.9 percent. The number of unemployed Georgians grew by more than 52,000. We interviewed two experts who said job growth and unemployment can take place at the same time because during a recession job-seekers often give up and the labor force shrinks.As the economy picks up, the number of available jobs grows. So does the labor force. People who gave up looking for work decide to give it another shot. But until there are enough jobs to absorb the expanding labor force, unemployment grows, too. So during the end of Barnes' watch, things weren't great for job-seekers. But overall, economic data show the state's economy did grow. Georgia's overall gross domestic product grew from about $224 billion to $267 billion. Georgia's annual personal income -- the income received by all the residents of the state -- increased during Barnes' time as well. Barnes' statement was correct but gave the impression that employment conditions were stronger than they were. We therefore rate Barnes' claim as Half True.
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U.S. Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) and 9th Congressional District candidate Tom Graves seemed to be on the same page regarding their support for the FairTax, particularly since they spoke in favor of the idea at an event in Missouri in June 2009.Not exactly.Graves has been telling supporters and voters about his efforts to work with Linder on the FairTax."I’ve traveled the country advocating for the FairTax, along with Herman Cain, Neal Boortz and John Linder," Graves, a former state representative, said at an April 23 candidate debate at the Georgia Mountains Center in Gainesville.Linder, who represents Georgia's 7th Congressional District and is retiring at the end of this term, says that's an exaggeration. The congressman took the unusual step of accusing Graves, a fellow Republican, of lying about his efforts to push the idea. Linder even said he "didn't know who [Graves] was or why he was there.""Tom Graves is telling you that he has traveled the nation with John Linder to sell the FairTax. That simply is not true," Linder said in a 30-second robocall on May 27 for Graves’ opponent, Lee Hawkins.The congressman added: "If a candidate is willing to lie to you to get elected, what will you expect from him after he is elected?"The Graves campaign said it is surprised by Linder’s remarks and baffled by Linder's seeming unfamiliarity with the candidate."It’s kind of bizarre for the congressman to say he didn’t know what he [Graves] was doing there," said Graves campaign spokesman Tim Baker, who added the two men traveled together to the event.We decided to check out how involved Graves has been with Linder to sell the FairTax.First, what is the FairTax? It would abolish all federal personal and corporate income taxes and other taxes, and replace them with a federal retail sales tax, according to the Web site FairTax.org. It essentially is a consumption tax -- the more you buy, the more tax you pay.The FairTax is an important cause to Linder. He’s been advocating the idea for more than a decade and co-wrote a book with Boortz explaining its benefits. Jennifer Drogus, Linder's communications director, said her boss appreciates Graves' support for the FairTax. But Linder felt like Graves exaggerated his role in the effort.We asked Graves campaign officials whether they thought their candidate was exaggerating things a bit by saying he "traveled the country" in support of the idea."The record speaks for itself," said Baker, the campaign manager. "If you look at the fact, he was there."When asked whether they made other trips to talk about the FairTax, the Graves campaign focused on that Missouri trip as proof that their candidate is correct. Yes, they made a trip halfway across the country. But we think one trip to Missouri does not equate to "traveled the country."We find Tom Graves’ claim is 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.
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Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee shook up the political world in January when he called for a sales tax increase as part of his formal announcement of his candidacy for governor. Specifically, he proposed a two-tiered sales tax in which exempt items, including food, clothing and over-the-counter drugs, would be taxed at 1 percent to help close the gap between state revenue and state spending. He outlines the plan on his website: "Currently all exempt items total $8,936,785,714 in untaxed revenue. If we were to tax these items at 1% the state would receive an additional $89,376,857. This money plus reforming the mandates on cities and towns and continuing to cut government spending could help us be the master of our economic destiny in this state."Such specificity begs to be verified, so we decided to see whether Chafee’s numbers add up. Would Chafee’s plan raise what he promises? The most authoritative source of information on how much the state collects from the assorted taxes and fees it levies is the state Department of Revenue.In addition to monitoring what the state takes in, the department is also required to prepare a report every even-numbered year on how much revenue the state has relinquished by granting various tax exemptions.If the actual amount lost from particular exemptions can’t be determined precisely, the department, comes up with estimates, with varying degrees of reliability.The most recent report is for 2008, based on 2007 statistics. (Paul L. Dion, chief of the department’s office of revenue analysis, said the 2010 report is in its final stages.)The report said state law, in 2007, carved out 72 sales-tax exemptions. There are the well-known ones, such as food and clothing, and others such as coffins, aircraft parts, mobile homes and newspapers. Dion said more exemptions have been added since the last report; the 2010 report will have around 83. The best estimate is that those 72 exemptions cost the state $625,575,000 in lost revenue, assuming the transactions were taxed at 7 percent. And $625,575,000 is 7 percent of $8,936,785,714, the exact number the Chafee campaign cites on its website. And if you taxed that at 1 percent, it would raise $89,376,857. Dion said the Chafee campaign’s calculations are correct. But because many of the report’s figures are based on extrapolations, not hard data, real-world results may vary, Dion said. For example, the estimated $125-million cost for exempting food -- items “sold for ingestion or chewing by humans for their taste or nutritional value” -- is derived by updating a 1999 sales-tax model, not actual sales receipts."Those are huge numbers," Dion said. "You’ve got to use caution."Chafee’s sales-tax math is accurate. But it’s based on numbers that even the people who compiled them say are less than reliable. For that reason, we rate Chafee’s projection Mostly True.
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In his June 15, 2010, Oval Office address on the Gulf oil spill, President Barack Obama defended his decision to temporarily halt new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy.
"Already, I’ve issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling," Obama said. "I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue."
On May 27, Obama did announce a 6-month moratorium on exploratory drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But if you think that means there's no more oil production going on in the Gulf, you'd be mistaken.
Wells that are currently producing oil will continue to produce. There are 72 active platforms in water depths of 500 feet or greater (the definition of deepwater) in the Gulf of Mexico that will be allowed to continue to operate.
At issue here is the term "oil drilling." Many people use the term broadly to refer to the entire process of extracting oil from the ground, not just drilling the holes looking for oil. But once a well starts producing oil, it's not being "drilled" anymore.
According to the moratorium notice, the U.S. Minerals Management Service will not consider drilling permits for deepwater wells for six months. In addition, operators that are currently drilling any well "must proceed at the next safe opportunity to secure the well and take all necessary steps to cease operations and temporarily abandon or close the well until they receive further guidance from the Regional Supervisor for Field Operations." There are 33 drilling operations in water deeper than 500 feet that fit that bill, which means that they needed to get to a safe place and then stop drilling. For the record, Deepwater Horizon was among the wells in the exploratory drilling phase.
When the Department of the Interior issued the moratorium directive on May 30, Secretary Ken Salazar published a statement saying, "Deepwater production from the Gulf of Mexico will continue subject to close oversight and safety requirements, but deepwater drilling operations must safely come to a halt. With the BP oil spill still growing in the Gulf, and investigations and reviews still underway, a six-month pause in drilling is needed, appropriate, and prudent."
We think a lot of people probably assumed Obama's statement meant that all oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico were put on a six-month hiatus. That's not the case. The moratorium relates to exploratory oil drilling, not to existing, oil-producing deepwater platforms, which will continue to produce. So Obama's words were technically accurate, though due to the common use of the phrase oil drilling to refer to all oil operations, we think it may have confused some people. And so we rule his statement Half True.
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The mind-bogglingly long Wimbledon tennis match between John Isner of the United States and Nicolas Mahut of France finally ended on June 24, 2010, after 11 hours and 5 minutes. Isner prevailed 70-68 in the fifth set.Leave it to Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla. -- who represents a Sarasota-area district not far from Isner's Tampa home -- to turn this sports oddity into a political point.Not long after Isner finally won, Buchanan tweeted, "Think Wimbledon tickets are expensive? Our National Debt has gone up by $1,729,000,000 during the Isner v. Mahut match."We couldn't resist checking his math.We first decided that what Buchanan meant by "during the Isner v. Mahut match" was the time between the first serve on June 22, 2010, and the final point on June 24, 2010. That was roughly 48 hours, or two days.One way to look at it is to use the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the president's budget, which was released in March. This predicts a $1.368 trillion deficit for 2010. If you divide this by 365 days, you get an incremental, daily addition to the debt of $3.748 billion. Over two days, the total is $7.496 billion. That's more than four times of Buchanan's estimate.Another way is to turn to the historical tables for federal debt published by the Office of Management and Budget. These tables list the federal debt as it stands every year on Dec. 31. We took the debt estimate for the end of 2010 ($13.787 trillion) and subtracted the debt as it stood at the end of 2009 ($11.876 trillion) to determine the amount of debt increase over the course of 2010 ($1.911 trillion).Dividing by 365, you get a daily debt increase of $5.234 billion, or $10.470 billion over two days. That's about six times more than what Buchanan had said.Why so different? We contacted Buchanan's office and an aide clarified that what they'd actually meant in the tweet was how much the debt had risen during the 11-hour, 5-minute match itself. (The match was suspended for darkness twice and there were delays on the third day to give extra rest time.)So, using our first method, the 11-hour debt increase works out to $1.718 billion, while using the second, it's about $2.4 billion. Of these two, the first is spot-on.Since the size of the federal debt is a moving target, and since economists periodically re-evaluate its size, we'll grant Buchanan leeway here. While we think the wording of his tweet suggests the full, 48-hour period, his 11-hour number strikes us as a reasonable estimate. So we rate his statement True.
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Less than two years after losing the 2008 presidential election, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is embroiled in a tough Republican primary against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.
In one recent TV ad, McCain attacks Hayworth for claiming to be an outsider.
The ad shows a limousine driving by a fancy building and then an unflattering black-and-white clip of Hayworth sharing the screen with an airborne corporate jet and floating paper money. "J.D. Hayworth says he's an outsider, but after he was voted out of Congress he became a registered lobbyist," the narrator intones. "Hayworth was paid thousands by a Florida corporation to lobby the very committee he used to serve on."
We decided to check to see if this description is accurate.
First, the add is correct that Hayworth was voted out of office. He lost in the landslide of 2006 to his Democratic challenger, Harry Mitchell.
Now for the lobbying claim. By law, all registered lobbyists must periodically file disclosure forms with the U.S. House and Senate, and we were able to locate two filed by Hayworth. In February 2008, Hayworth filed a form serving notice that he would be a paid lobbyist for the Wealth Transfer Group, based in Altamonte Springs, Fla. A separate but related form filed two months later disclosed that Hayworth was paid $10,000 by his client.The forms also say that Hayworth's subject areas for lobbying would be tax and copyright issues. The tax issue falls squarely within the jurisdiction of the House Ways and Means Committee, which used to count Hayworth among its members.Based on contemporary news accounts, it's likely that the Wealth Transfer Group hired Hayworth to lobby against possible restrictions on patenting "tax reduction strategies." These are approaches to limiting one's tax liability that are so unique that they have been granted patents by the federal government. The Wealth Transfer Group owns -- and has defended in court -- a patent on a technique for limiting the tax liability on certain kinds of stock options. The company's website says that the company only works on estates exceeding $10 million.In 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants "wrote leaders of several congressional committees urging them to limit tax-strategy patents. These patents 'undermine the integrity, fairness and administration' of the tax system and are 'contrary to sound public policy,' the institute said."The forms cited here were the only two related to Hayworth included in the congressional disclosure-form database, which is considered definitive. So the Wealth Transfer Group gig appears to have been his only lobbying job after leaving Congress. And in the grand scheme of Washington lobbying, having one client for a couple months that paid $10,000 is pretty small peanuts.Still, these forms show enough information to make McCain's ad accurate. Hayworth was indeed a registered lobbyist, he worked for a Florida company, and he said he would be lobbying on tax issues, which meant targeting his old colleagues on the Ways and Means Committee. We rate McCain's ad True.
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Sen. Blanche Lincoln's narrow victory in the Arkansas Democratic primary was a big topic on ABC's This Week on Sunday, June 13, 2010. Organized labor poured $10 million into the campaign of her opponent, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, while Bill Clinton, who served as Arkansas governor before becoming president, came out in strong support for Lincoln. This Week host Jake Tapper began the conversation by showing a clip of White House spokesman Robert Gibbs criticizing the unions for not using that money to help in the general election. Tapper asked Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, "Is the White House risking alienating labor with that kind of talk?" Brazile responded that the White House should be careful about alienating labor because unions provide key grass-roots support. Brazile said that "Blanche Lincoln ran a great campaign. She ran against Washington. Labor, the money did make her the outsider. She was able to reconnect with her base, and she pulled her base out. She still has trouble in the general election, but she ran a very smart, strategic campaign." Brazile added, "And Bill Clinton helped her. He is popular. Ninety percent of the people in the state still love him. And he was able to pull out the stops to get her elected." We were curious about the claim that 90 percent of the people in Arkansas still love Bill Clinton. That number seemed high, so we e-mailed Brazile to ask her source. She replied that she was referring to the "base of the Democratic party" and not ALL people. It was a Democratic run-off and I did not set it up right (in the comment on the show) because we had so many races to cover." Brazile said she was sorry about not providing the context and that she thought it was clear she was talking about Democratic primary voters. But we watched the clip and thought many people might think she meant Clinton was popular with 90 percent of all people in Arkansas. His nationwide numbers are significantly lower. In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll dated from October 2009, 64 percent of those polled said that they had a favorable opinion of Clinton. We would expect him to be more popular in his home state, but we doubt his popularity would be 26 points higher. Brazile acknowledged that would be highly unlikely "in this highly charged partisan environment." But for Democratic primary voters, Brazile is on solid ground. She sent us a poll from Lake Research Partners of likely Democratic primary voters in Arkansas that found 86 percent had a favorable approval rating of Clinton. So Brazile was very close with her number, but she left out an important detail -- that it applied only to Democratic primary voters. Still, it was made in the context of a discussion about the Democratic primary. So we find her claim Half True.
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Attorney General Bill McCollum, who is running as a Republican gubernatorial candidate, recently launched his first statewide TV campaign ad with a helping hand from former Gov. Jeb Bush.During the 30-second commercial, Bush speaks about McCollum's accomplishments:
"Tough times require proven leadership."Bill McCollum is a principled conservative with a record of doing what is right for Florida."Bill’s recovered nearly $200 million in Medicaid fraud."He’s leading the charge to stop President Obama’s health care takeover."And, he has a plan to create 500,000 new jobs, reform government and cut wasteful spending."Support my friend Bill McCollum, the kind of solid leader Florida needs."
We decided to focus on this claim: "Bill's recovered nearly $200 million in Medicaid fraud."
Increasingly Medicaid accounts for a huge chunk of the state budget, with Florida spending roughly $19 billion for the program that serves 2.7 million people, or 14 percent of Florida's population. And fraud is a big problem. Annually, some $3.2 billion in Medicaid fraud is bilked from the state and federal governments.
To check whether McCollum has made a dent in curbing that fraud, we asked McCollum campaign spokesman Kristy Campbell for documentation. She gave us a March 9 press release from the Attorney General's office. "I am proud of the record-breaking recoveries my Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has made over the last three years, including $198 million last year," McCollum says in the release.Next, the Attorney General's office provided us with a list of recoveries from the Medicaid Control Unit for 2009. The list of 153 cases includes settlements that reach into the millions, like $32 million to be paid by pharmeceutical giant Eli Lilly, and smaller sums like $50,000 to be paid by Hialeah physician Ausberto B. Hidalgo.
Adding up the itemized list, the sum is actually $203 million. So Bush is almost on the money.We should note that the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has been around since way before McCollum became attorney general. The unit started under the auditor general's office, but in July 1994 it was moved under the Attorney General's Office as a way to police the state's burgeoning Medicaid program. And McCollum has come under attack from state officials in both the Republican and Democratic parties for not doing enough.As for Bush's claim that McCollum "recovered nearly $200 million in Medicaid Fraud," we rate it True.
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When gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine sought to demonstrate that Georgia's schools need help in a Web site campaign video, he made a striking claim. He said Georgia's students were doing worse than Alabama's. "As a parent of four children, three of them in school, I’m very concerned about our schools," he said. "We have SAT school scores lower than that of Alabama, yet a dropout rate that’s higher. We need to make some serious changes in how we address education.”Georgians think they should beat Alabama any day. In everything. Graduation rates, SAT scores. (Not that we do. Consider, for instance, the Bulldogs' football record against the Crimson Tide.)For the sake of state pride, we will verify Oxendine's claims. An earlier PolitiFact Georgia item rated Oxendine's statement on SAT scores as Half True. This item deals with his statement about dropouts.Calculating dropout rates is tricky. This measure tends to undercount students who don't finish school, said Chris Swanson, vice president for research and development with Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit group that publishes the education news and policy magazine Education Week. Instead, experts tend to rely on another measure: the graduation rate. This is the percentage of students who receive their diplomas on time. Graduation rates are more widely available and consistent, he said.Making a fair comparison between states is even more difficult. Few groups publish graduation rates that are comparable between states. Swanson's group does. So does the National Center for Education Statistics, which collects and publishes data for the U.S. Department of Education. Oxendine's statement avoids both of these pitfalls. Although he used the word "dropout," Oxendine's claim is actually based upon graduation rates, according to his campaign manager. His data come from the National Center for Education Statistics. For the past 13 years, average secondary-school graduation rates have been lower in Georgia than Alabama. In the 2006-2007 school year, the most recent time period available, Georgia graduated 64.1 percent. Alabama graduated 67.1. Figures from Editorial Projects in Education also show that Georgia lags behind Alabama. Its 2009 report states that the rate of Georgia students finishing high school with a regular diploma is 55.9 percent. Alabama's is at 61.4 percent.Indeed, Alabama beats Georgia. We rate Oxendine's statement as True.
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In a gubernatorial campaign largely centered on jobs and the job performance of the candidates, Democrat Tom Barrett has injected abortion into the debate, using a stark TV ad to take aim at his opponent, Republican Scott Walker.
A couple identified as Lana and Mike appear on the screen. Mike says their teenage daughter was brutally raped. "You can’t imagine what she went through," he says. "That’s why politicians like Scott Walker make me so mad."
The screen goes black. Then as Mike continues, the words he says also appear on the screen:
"Scott Walker wants to make abortion illegal, even in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother."
Mike concludes: "Who is Scott Walker to play God with our family?" and -- repeating a common theme from Barrett and the Democratic side -- says he feels Walker is "too extreme for Wisconsin."
As voters weigh their choices in the Nov. 2, 2010, election, there is no dispute that Barrett is pro-choice and Walker is pro-life. But Barrett’s claim, which may be new to many viewers of the ad, is that Walker wants to outlaw abortion under any circumstances.
It is worth noting that many voters who consider themselves pro-life support make an exception for abortion being available in cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother. A May 2009 Gallup poll, however, found that 23 percent of Americans -- up from 17 percent a year earlier -- said abortion should be illegal under all circumstances.
For his part, Walker has said repeatedly he opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. He declares himself "100 percent pro-life." And to Pro-Life Wisconsin, an organization that opposes abortion without exception, Walker pledged to seek a complete abortion ban.
We asked Jill Bader, Walker’s campaign spokeswoman, about Barrett’s ad and she said it accurately states Walker’s position.
(We would note that as a member of the state Assembly, Walker backed an effort to bar government employees from performing abortions and a bill outlawing "partial-birth abortion"; both measures included an exception for when the life of the mother is at stake.)
This is one item we can assess quickly.
In the race for governor, Democrat Tom Barrett said his opponent, Republican Scott Walker, "wants to make abortion illegal, even in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother." Walker acknowledges that is his position. We rate Barrett’s claim True.
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As the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to threaten the coastline, Savannah's Eric Johnson, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, remains steadfast in his support for offshore drilling. He dedicated a blog post to his position on his campaign Web page. "Predictably, liberal activists call the Gulf disaster a warning of things to come if we expand drilling, but this incident is an unfortunate exception to the rule. The last major oil spill from a drilling accident in America happened over 40 years ago in 1969. In fact, oil spills from tankers are far more common than the very rare leaks from rigs or pipelines."An earlier PolitiFact item ruled that Johnson's claim that the last major oil spill from a drilling accident in America took place in 1969 was False. This one deals with whether oil spills from tankers are far more common than "very rare leaks" from rigs or pipelines. We looked at a 2009 report produced by the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, that catalogs oil spills. Indeed, the number of spills from tankers in U.S. waters is nearly two-and-a-half times higher than those of offshore oil pipelines and oil platforms combined. Tankers also dump more than three times more oil. Two scientists who study the ocean and environment also confirmed that tankers are responsible for more spills. Here's how the numbers from the American Petroleum Institute break down: U.S. offshore pipelines, 1969 to 2007: 506 spills, 182,355 barrels p24 U.S. platforms, 1969 to 2007: 1,035 spills, 277,033 barrels p24 Oil tankers in U.S. waters: 3,774 spills, 1962 through 2007; 1,596,638 barrels p31U.S. Coast Guard figures on spills differ from API data but back up the overall point that tanker spills are far worse polluters than offshore oil pipelines or platforms. But are leaks from rigs or pipelines "very rare"? The petroleum industry's own figures indicate the U.S. has averaged more than 13 pipeline spills and 27 platform spills a year. They're certainly less common than tanker spills, as Johnson stated. But platform and pipeline spills still take place roughly 40 times annually. That's a little more than three times per month. That's not rare at all. That's chronic. We rule this claim Half True.
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The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has focused attention on the nation's energy portfolio. In an appearance on the June 20, 2010, edition of NBC's Meet the Press, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said, "We only have 2 percent of the oil reserves in the world, and we consume 25 percent of the world's oil on a daily basis. That is nonsustainable."We won't pass judgment on whether it's sustainable or not, since that's a matter of opinion. But we did think it would be worth checking Markey's facts, especially since this comparison has become something of a Democratic talking point. President Barack Obama said something similar in his Oval Office address to the nation on June 15, 2010. The president's phrasing differed slightly, saying that the United States consumes "more than 20 percent" of the world’s oil, rather than "25 percent."We looked to the Energy Information Administration -- the nonpartisan Energy Department office that publishes the most complete set of statistics on U.S. energy use -- to confirm these numbers.For U.S. oil reserves, we turned to EIA's "World Liquid Fuels Analysis to 2030." A table in this report showed that, as of Jan. 1, 2009, the U.S. has 21.3 billion barrels of oil reserves. That's about 1.6 percent of the world total which, rounded up, would be 2 percent, as Markey said. (For the curious, that ranks the U.S. 12th in the world in reserves, with the top five being, in order, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait.)As for the second claim, about U.S. consumption, we turned to EIA's country-by-country summaries of petroleum consumption. The most recent figures, available for 2008, are preliminary. These show that the U.S. consumed 19,498,000 barrels per day, compared to 85,462,000 for the world as a whole -- or 22.8 percent. That's a bit lower than Markey's 25 percent. But we'll add that in 2006 and 2007, the U.S. share of world consumption was 24 percent, which is just a hair under the number Markey cited.All told, Markey would have been better off using Obama's formulation -- that the U.S. consumes "more than 20 percent" of the world's oil. But he's still close. We rate his statement Mostly True.
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With the state facing a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill White recently aired advice to GOP Gov. Rick Perry on how to save the state some money: Move.In fall 2007, the state rented a home for the governor and his wife, Anita, about 11 miles southwest of downtown Austin so the Governor's Mansion could be renovated. In an April 13 press release, White, who faces Perry in November, calls the monthly rent an "extravagant, unwarranted use of taxpayer dollars," adding that by the end of his current term, Perry "will have drained Texas taxpayers ... of more than $360,000 to pay for the rental mansion he has been living in while the historic Governor's Mansion is repaired and renovated."White then calls on Perry to "set a budget-cutting example for other state employees and move out." We wondered whether White's right about how much Perry's rented pad will cost taxpayers.Katy Bacon, a spokeswoman for White, pointed us to a column in the Houston Chronicle that mentioned the monthly rent of the 4,600-square-foot home and to an earlier PolitiFact Texas item, in which we rated as Mostly True a statement by U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, that Perry "lives in a luxury house that costs taxpayers $10,000 a month."The lease for the house at 8113 Hickory Creek Drive, which last year was appraised by the Travis Central Appraisal District at $1.1 million, was initially for one year starting Oct. 1, 2007. The rent was set at $9,900.Less than a year after the Perrys moved into the rental home in a gated community near Barton Creek, the Governor's Mansion, just southwest of the Capitol, was heavily damaged in an arson fire for which no one has been arrested. Work has stopped on the mansion pending a decision on options for rebuilding the historical structure.In fall 2008, the lease on the rental home was renewed through October 2011 with the rent lowered to $9,000. Through this April, the state has paid $290,700 in rent. Toss in the eight months left in Perry's current term -- as White does -- and the total rental payments come to $362,700.So, does White get the tab for Perry's rented digs right? Yes -- and that's not counting other housing-related expenses.The state has not responded to requests for information on the costs of security at the governor's home-away-from-mansion.However, $197,000 has been spent on utilities and other items, such as preparing the rental residence for the governor, according to the Texas Facilities Commission and State Preservation Board.
While we don't have an exact comparison of the ancillary costs of living at the Governor's Mansion, we know that in 2007 -- the last year that Perry lived there -- those bills, including for grounds work and utilities, totaled more than $330,000. (Kay Molina, assistant executive director of the Facilities Commission, said high maintenance costs that year reflected the fact that the mansion needed to be renovated.)Regardless, White nails the expected rent costs for the Perrys to reside in suburban Austin. We rate White's statement as True.
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Wealthy Florida businessman Rick Scott entered the Republican primary for governor on April 9, 2010, promising to wage a new kind of campaign against the veteran politicians running for the GOP nomination, state Sen. Paula Dockery and Attorney General Bill McCollum. Scott launched his first TV ad on April 13, 2010, and quickly set up a Facebook page.In just a week, Scott says, that new campaign already is showing promise.Scott, a former hospital CEO and outspoken opponent of President Barack Obama's health care reform, said on April 19 that his fan page on the social networking website Facebook already reaches more people than the pages of Dockery and McCollum, who both have been running for months."Thanks to you, in under one week we have the largest GOP (Facebook) page in the Governor's race!" Scott said in a status update.The number of people who follow a Facebook page isn't the most significant measure of support (the press secretary for Dockery follows Scott's Facebook page to keep track of her opponent's campaign, for example, and political journalists and strategists follow most candidates' pages in case they make news). But the total number of followers on Facebook and Twitter is a statistic campaigns like to throw around in order to appear web-savvy and more popular.It also can be a way for a campaign to test messages, or organize events.We measured the three Republican candidate fan pages at 11:30 a.m. on April 21, 2010. Scott had 5,611 people who "like" his page.McCollum had 5,070.Dockery had 4,281.We should point out, however, that likely Democratic nominee Alex Sink, the state's chief financial officer, had 10,779 people who "like" her page.Still, when it comes to the Republican campaign for governor, newcomer Scott says he can reach more people on the social-networking website Facebook than either McCollum or Dockery and he's right. We rate his statement True.
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State Sen. Dan Gelber says he has received more contributions than any other candidate in the race to become Florida's next attorney general.''We received over $325,000 in contributions – and we did this during a shortened fundraising quarter of two months,” he wrote. ''I have received more contributions than any other candidate in the race – Republican or Democrat. Since announcing last year, our contributions total just under $1 million.''We wondered if this was accurate, so we checked in with the Gelber campaign where aide Christian Ulvert told us the actual number was $321,000.We went to the Division of Elections website to see how that stacked up with the other candidates.We confirmed the $321,000, but noted that he included in-kind donations. Those would include restaurants comping Gelber for campaign events and the Democratic party sending staffers to assist from elsewhere but not charging for the hours.So we ran our own numbers using the same yardstick for first-quarter figures and found that state Sen. Dave Aronberg, another Democrat in the race, raised more -- $328,543 to Gelber’s $321,426. None of the Republican candidates broke $100,000. (Holly Benson raised $97,566.48; Pam Bondi raised $44,337 and Jeff Kottkamp, $27,230.)We also decided to check the total for the entire campaign, which goes back to June 2009. There again, Aronberg edged out Gelber, $999,609.87 to Gelber’s $991,922.35.Ulvert, Gelber's aide, then tried to move the goalposts by suggesting his boss' claim was true because ''we have the greatest number of contributors to our campaign. Our total contributors are 3,487.'' This, in fact, is true. The state database counted 91 more individual contributors to Aronberg’s 3,396 with none on the GOP side breaking the 2,000 mark.We don't accept that interpretation. When someone says contributions, we believe it's universally interpreted as the dollar amount.Said Aronberg campaign spokeswoman Allison North Jones: ''He is leading the public to believe -- and his supporters and his donors and everyone else -- that he had raised significantly more than his opponents.''For his part, Gelber conceded in an e-mail to PolitiFact Florida that he did not outraise his opponent in the race. Rather, he said, ''We were innocently and unknowingly comparing apples to oranges,'' because Aronberg had published his fundraising totals first, minus in-kind donations. The Gelber campaign believed Aronberg's figures included in-kind contributions.''Of course the difference turned out to be very, very minor ($8,000 in a million dollar race),'' wrote Gelber. ''Although I did not know or try to say when I wrote the e-mail that we had a greater number of contributors than Dave (which is pretty important as it shows actual level of support) -- I assumed we did and that did turn out to be totally true and accurate.''The e-mail didn't focus on number of donors. It was about dollars. So we find the claim to be False.
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Patriots, take notice. Clay Cox wants to convince you that he's the man who can fight the move toward what he labels as "socialism" in the U.S. government. A rousing campaign mailer lists the 7th Congressional District candidate's credentials. It says Cox has "real-world" experience balancing budgets, both as a successful businessman and a state representative: "For six years, I served our community as a conservative state legislator. In every one of those years, I helped balance the state's budget."So Cox helped balance the state budget? Well, of course. So did the state's 235 other legislators.The state Constitution requires the Legislature to balance the budget. Consider Article III, Section IX, Paragraph IV: "The General Assembly shall not appropriate funds for any given fiscal year which, in aggregate, exceed a sum equal to the amount of unappropriated surplus expected to have accrued in the state treasury at the beginning of the fiscal year together with an amount not greater than the total treasury receipts from existing revenue sources anticipated to be collected in the fiscal year, less refunds, as estimated in the budget report and amendments thereto."Put more simply: "Unlike the federal government, the state of Georgia has a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget," said Alan Essig, executive director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.If the budget isn't balanced, the spring legislative session doesn't end, said Katherine Willoughby, a professor of public management and policy at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. If the budget goes out of balance during the course of the fiscal year, the governor must call a special session. "There's no way for them [legislators] to get around doing their job," Willoughby said. Any legislator who participated in the session helped balance the budget. And unlike elementary school, there's no award for attendance in Georgia politics. The Cox campaign counters that his participation in the state budget process shows that he has the toughness to avoid tax increases in the face of dwindling government revenues.Still, avoiding tax increases wasn't the accomplishment Cox makes it out to be. He and other legislators didn't cut enough spending for state government to pay for itself. Cox was among those who voted for a fiscal 2011 state budget with almost $13 billion in federal funding, according to a recent article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The budget was balanced, in part, by shifting the burden to the U.S. government. Cox's claim was misleading. Not only did he leave out the crucial fact that balancing the state's budget is a legislator's duty. He and his colleagues "helped" pass a budget that's reliant on money from the federal government, which is deep in debt. In effect, Georgia's in the black thanks in large part to the deficit spending Cox rails against. We rate his statement Barely True.
Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.
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Texas Gov. Rick Perry, hailed by many conservatives who see Democrats in Washington as trampling on states' rights, told an interviewer for the Texas Tribune and Newsweek magazine last week that his public endorsement of a 2009 Texas House resolution on state sovereignty was not covered by mainstream news organizations.
Perry said: “We had a press conference here that interestingly no one in the mainstream media covered."
We wondered if Perry accurately recapped the April 9, 2009, news conference at which he endorsed a concurrent resolution authored by state Rep. Brandon Creighton stating the Legislature claims "sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States."
Perry’s office didn’t respond to our request for elaboration on the media presence at the press conference.
Next, we found indications the news conference was covered by at least two media outlets -- the Austin American-Statesman and the Associated Press. Currently, more than 100 Texas newspapers and more than 150 Texas broadcast outlets are AP members and get its dispatches, according to Dale Leach, AP's Dallas bureau chief.
Leach said the AP distributed five photos taken by a staff photographer who attended the press conference.
The 246-word AP report on the press conference, sent out at 5:53 p.m. that day, quotes Perry saying: “I believe that our federal government has become oppressive. I believe it's become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens and its interference with the affairs of our state.”
The article also states: “Answering a question from a news reporter, Perry suggested that (U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey) Hutchison,” then poised to challenge Perry in the 2010 GOP primary for governor, “is part of the federal government's expansion.”
Our hunch: The mentioned reporter was Ken Herman, then a staff writer in the Austin American-Statesman’s Capitol bureau. Herman posted a blog and video from Perry’s press conference at 3:10 p.m. the same day; both remain online.
According to the video, Perry took questions from Herman, who asked if Perry included Hutchison among active participants in expanding federal powers. Perry said she'd be among individuals in that category. Herman also asked if Perry could specify ways Hutchison had supported expansions in federal powers. “I’ll get you the long and distinguished list of those shortly,” Perry said.
We found one Statesman news article that could explain why Perry says no one from the mainstream media covered the press conference. The article by Jason Embry of the Statesman’s Capitol staff -- published a week after the event -- states that Perry's remarks gave him a bounce in national attention even though the resolution itself “barely drew a mention in the print editions of the state’s daily newspapers” the day after the press conference.
So, how does Perry’s recap stand up?
The AP and the Statesman are clearly part of the mainstream media. We rate Perry's statement as False.
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And then there were none.On the April 12, 2010, episode of The Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert pointed out that "the departure of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will leave an unsual void.""Stevens is the last Protestant," Colbert said to his guest, legal expert Jeffrey Toobin. "When he's gone, who will speak for the people in Bermuda shorts?" In fact, much has been made of Stevens' religion since he announced his retirement on April 9. Once he steps down -- and unless President Barack Obama appoints another Protestant to take his place -- there will be no more Protestants on the bench. Justice David Souter, who left the court in 2009, is Episcopalian, a religion that combines both Protestant and Catholic traditions. He was replaced by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is Catholic. In addition to Sotomayor, five of the justices are Catholic, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg are Jewish. So, why all this discussion of Stevens' religious affiliation? If anything, it says a lot about how the demographics of the court have changed over the years. Historically speaking, the religious affiliations of the current court are quite unusual, according to a report and study done by NPR's Nina Totenberg. For decades, the court was majority Protestant, she reports. It was Catholics and Jews who were the anomaly. That shift is even more pronounced when you look at the nation's religious affiliations. According to the CIA World Factbook, a little more 50 percent of Americans identify as Protestant. Catholics make up about 24 percent of the population, while Jews represent about 1.7 percent of the population. So, back to Colbert's claim. He's correct that Stevens is a Protestant and he's the last one on the Supreme Court bench. Colbert's first statement on the Truth-O-Meter gets a True.
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UPDATE, May 3, 2010: Oil production totals below for 1972, 2007 and 2008 have been corrected to make up for our initial misreading of a state chart. As originally noted, however, oil production in Texas still topped out in 1972. The corrected production figures don't affect our rating of Commissioner Patterson's statement.
Jerry Patterson, the state land commissioner seeking a third term this November, refers to the the state’s oil-soaked history in a recent column extolling renewable energy. In his article, published Tuesday in the Austin American-Statesman, Patterson writes: “We’re making more than ever off oil and gas right now, but it’s no secret that oil production in Texas peaked in the 1970s.”
Even though oil production has been declining, state revenue from oil and gas is the tops?
When we sought background, the General Land Office shared a chart showing state oil and gas income reached a historical high of $495 million in 1982 that wasn't exceeded until 2008, when it hit $533 million.
The state's oil-and-gas-related proceeds dropped to $381 million in 2009, the land office says. Counting revenue during the first seven months of this fiscal year, we calculate it will reach $279 million by the end of the 2010 fiscal year Aug. 31.
Total state take during Patterson's seven-plus years as commissioner: $2.7 billion.
And when did oil production peak?
According to the Texas Railroad Commission, which tracks in-state oil production, the peak year for crude oil production was 1972 when more than 167,000 wells produced nearly 1.3 billion barrels. As of 2007, production had ebbed to about 336 million barrels. In 2008, production increased for the first time since 1991 to more than 346 million barrels, before falling in 2009, according to the commission.
R.J. DeSilva, spokesperson for the State Comptroller's office, offered this analysis for the surge in state income from oil and gas surged well after oil production peaked: "Oil and natural gas production are taxed on the value of oil and natural gas that’s produced. Oil and natural gas prices were higher in the early ‘80s than in the ‘70s (and reached all time highs in 2008)."
So how does Patterson’s statement shake out?
He gets the peak-production timing right; it was the '70s.
But he's off in saying state government is making more than ever from oil and gas "right now." That was true for the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, 2008, but in 2009 state oil and gas revenue fell 29 percent from the year before and it's on pace to register another decline this fiscal year.
We rate Patterson's statement as Mostly True.
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Jerry Patterson, the state land commissioner seeking re-election this year, champions the prospect of gathering electricity from ocean winds in a recent column in the Austin American-Statesman even though no wind turbines have been built in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Regardless of any delays,” Patterson says in the column published Tuesday, “the Land Office has earned the school children of Texas $451,932.89 on wind leases that haven’t produced a watt of energy.”
Half a mil for school kids without producing electricity? We wondered if Patterson was sparking on extra cylinders.
Responding, Patterson said that since the state started leasing the rights to erect wind turbines in about 163,000 acres of Gulf waters in 2005, two companies have paid in the cited money in bonus royalties and delay rentals even though no wind turbines have been built.
Land office spokesman Jim Suydam said the total, paid to the state since January 2005, also reflects nomination fees, application fees and interest earned on the collected money. Suydam said nomination fees are what someone pays to nominate a tract of state land for an energy lease. The state then puts the tract up for bid, with the high bidder winning the lease. Rental or bonus payments are the amount someone pays (as determined by their lease with the state) to lease the tract of land for a period of time. Application fees are what they pay to apply for the lease.
The agency shared a breakdown showing $44,117 of the total Patterson touts came from leaseholders of acreage on land where turbines have not yet been built. That makes the total income from Gulf leases $407,815.
We nudged Patterson about saying he "earned the school children of Texas money” -- does he mean kids are getting checks from the state?
“Of course not,” Patterson said. “I don’t think anybody would believe I meant the school children get a check.” (Indeed, land commissioners traditionally mention the "schoolchildren of Texas" in connection with proceeds from state-owned lands; it's hallowed parlance.)
Patterson said the described proceeds—like mineral royalties from state lands—went instead to the Permanent School Fund, the state's public education endowment, which had a $22.6 billion balance as of the end of August. The State Board of Education receives a share of earnings from the fund for distribution to school districts on a per-student basis. Also, districts use the fund to back bonds for capital projects, according to the endowment's 2009 annual report.
We rate Patterson’s statement as True.
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Alan Grayson, a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives representing central Florida, is a prolific fundraiser. He recently trumpeted his success in an e-mail to supporters on April 26, 2010. Grayson wrote: "Our Grayson for Congress campaign raised over $800,000 last quarter, from almost 25,000 contributors. That was #1 among all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives."We're always curious when we hear someone claim to be No. 1 in anything, so we looked into it.The Grayson campaign was slow in getting back to us with data to back up the claim, so we examined at Grayson's report on the Federal Election Commission website for the most recent quarter that ended March 31, 2010. We found he raised $809,111.83 in net contributions. We went to the Center for Responsive Politics site OpenSecrets.org and looked at a chart of the top 10 fundraisers for this current election cycle for candidates for the House of Representatives. On that list, Grayson is No. 6. We ran those 10 names -- which include eight incumbents and two other candidates -- through the FEC database to examine reports for the most recent fundraising quarter. The result: Grayson was third behind two Republican members of the House -- Eric Cantor of Virginia at $831,851.79 and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota at $810,991.74.The Federal Election Commission sent us a list of the top 10 fundraisers among candidates in the House for the most recent quarter. For incumbents, Grayson came in third behind Cantor and Bachmann.We showed the figures we found for Cantor and Bachmann to Grayson's office and asked how the campaign concluded that he was No. 1. Julie Tagen, senior advisor to the campaign, then acknowledged to us an in an e-mail that he was "not number one last quarter.''But she added that, "Although we were not number one last quarter, we are number one in the past two quarters combined," wrote Julie Tagen, senior advisor to the campaign. "We were among the top fundraisers, and no campaign claims to have more donors than us. That makes us number one in the context of what we were discussing." We don't believe there is sufficient public data for a campaign to prove her latest claim. Comparing the number of donors is a difficult task -- in part because donors who give less than $200 don't have to be reported. That would require calling all of the members of the House and asking for their donor lists -- something they would be hesitant to provide. We doubt the Grayson campaign had time to do that.But back to the claim we're checking: Grayson said in an e-mail to his supporters that he was "#1 among all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives."We proved he was wrong because at least two others raised more, and his campaign has acknowledged the claim is not accurate. We find it False.
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Before Daniel Webster was for running for Congress, he was against it, his possible Democrat opponent says.Webster, the former Republican Florida House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader, announced he was running for the Florida 8th Congressional District at a rally on April 22, 2010.His announcement produced an immediate reaction from an adviser for incumbent U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando."Daniel Webster said he's out. Now he says he's in," Tagen said in a statement on behalf of the campaign. "If he flip-flopped on this, will he flip-flop on delivering for the people of our district?"We've already ruled on a claim from Webster's campaign announcement. In this item, we wanted to see if the Grayson retort that Webster already announced he wasn't running is accurate.Indeed, on Oct. 13, 2009, Webster said he was out. Here's his statement: "After much prayer and thoughtful consideration, I have decided not to run for the United States House of Representatives, District 8. This has been a very difficult decision for me personally, especially because of the tremendous outpouring of support that has flooded me from all sides. However, in spite of this incredible encouragement, I still have a certain check in my spirit, prompting me to follow a principle that has always served me well: 'When in doubt, don't.'"I do firmly believe that in every public office there needs to be a resurgence of the basic principles on which this Republic was founded, and a return to our original standards of integrity and character. While I will not be pursuing a place in Congress, I am grateful for the privilege of serving the citizens of Central Florida for 28 years in our state Legislature, and look forward to future opportunities of service."Webster told the Orlando Sentinel he originally opted against running because his family wasn't 100 percent behind the idea. Now they are.Grayson's right. Webster once said he wasn't running. Now, he is. We rate Grayson's statement True.
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Elected officials’ pay can be a sensitive topic with taxpayers, especially in today’s economic climate. So it’s no surprise Ohio Treasurer Kevin Boyce, who is running in November to keep his job, is bragging about cutting his salary.
Boyce talked about his six-figure earnings in a YouTube video released by his office. Presented as a preview of the office’s forthcoming annual financial report, the production feels more like a tribute to Boyce’s performance as treasurer aimed directly at voters.
"I’ve even cut my salary -- twice," said Boyce, a Democrat and former Columbus city councilman.
Boyce was appointed Treasurer in late 2008. Richard Cordray left a vacancy when he took the state attorney general’s job in the wake of Marc Dann’s resignation.
Annual salaries for the state’s elected officials are set in state law, which lawmakers can amend to increase or decrease pay. The treasurer’s salary has been set at $109,986 since 2008.
In June 2009, Boyce sent a memo to the state Department of Administrative Services saying he was taking a pay cut that would reduce his gross salary that year to $107,874. The pay cut, effective July 1, 2009, was the equivalent of taking five unpaid furlough days, a cost-saving measure that has been forced upon many state employees.
In the same memo, Boyce authorized an extension of the reduction for all of 2010. This year’s pay cut is the equivalent of 10 unpaid furlough days, according to the administrative services department.
Boyce’s gross salary this year will be $105,757.
Boyce lumped both cuts -- each about 2 percent -- in the same memo, but he effectively trimmed his salary twice. Had he not extended the cut into 2010, his pay would’ve jumped back up to $109,986, a spokeswoman for the administrative services department said.
We find Boyce’s statement True.
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An online video by the Charlie Justice for Congress campaign tries to link opponent Rep. Bill Young with jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff. It is a case of guilt by association without proving any association. In a separate item, we've rated the suggestion of an Abramoff connection as Pants on Fire. But the video makes other claims about Young, a Pinellas County Republican, that have some truth to them, including one that Young used campaign money for "a luxury car."The video uses Abramoff's fedora as a metaphor for the alleged ties between the two men. A copy of the hat flips off Abramoff's head and lands on Young's. The screen says that Abramoff "used his money for, among other things, luxury cars." The hat lands on Young as the screen says, "Bill Young uses his campaign money for, among other things, a luxury car."Putting aside the sleight-of-hand implication of an Abramoff connection, it's worth exploring the simple question of whether Young did indeed use campaign money for a luxury car.The Justice campaign is referring to a 1990 revelation in the St. Petersburg Times that Young used campaign money to buy a Lincoln Continental for nearly $30,000.
The Times article noted that he also billed the campaign for the new car's taxes and title, "a portable telephone and frequent fill-ups at the gas station." The article said the purchase did not violate federal laws, which give members wide discretion for spending campaign money.That, however, was 20 years ago. Justice used the present tense in the words on the screen, implying that Young is still paying for his car with campaign contributions. We wondered if that part was true.Indeed, though the model of car has changed -- it's a Lincoln Navigator now -- Young spokesman Harry Glenn told us that the campaign makes monthly payments to lease the vehicle. He said the expenses have never been questioned by the Federal Election Commission and that Young felt it was better to use campaign money for the vehicle than taxpayer dollars as other members of Congress do.According to an expenditure report filed with the Federal Election Commission, in 2009 Young paid $799 per month to Ford Motor Credit for the "campaign vehicle." Is it fair to call a Lincoln Navigator a luxury car? We'll start with the price. The Web site says they start at $54,950, so it's definitely on the high end. The Navigator is an SUV, but Justice's use of "car" seems to suggest a vehicle rather than to specify a sedan. Lincoln describes the Navigator as "the world's first luxury SUV." The "premium leather-trimmed" seats are available in hues of Camel, Charcoal Black or Stone and have heating and cooling built into the front seats. Sounds like luxury to us.So Justice is right. Young used campaign money to buy the Lincoln Continental in 1990, which was traded in many years ago. But he is still using campaign money today to lease a Lincoln Navigator. Both can reasonably be called luxury cars, so we find Justice's claim True.
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In a race for the state attorney general, we'd usually expect to hear about consumer protection, fraud, and corruption. So we were surprised when Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, a Republican candidate for attorney general, brought up the question of energy efficiency in a recent interview with Newsmax TV, a conservative Web site.
"If every house in Florida had a solar-heated water tank, that would eliminate consumption by 17 percent," said Kottkamp.
He's right they would help. But would they help that much?
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, solar water heaters are indeed a cost-effective way to generate hot water. Although they are generally more expensive to install than conventional systems, the cost is offset through long-term savings: On average, water heating bills drop by 50 to 80 percent. That also reduces carbon dioxide emissions.
First, we contacted Kottkamp's campaign to ask about the source of their claim. A press representative told us that because water heating makes up anywhere from 17 to 20 percent of the utility bill, a solar water system would reduce our consumption by up to 20 percent.
We checked a variety of sources to see how much water heating makes up of the average utility bill. We found a few different numbers, but for the most part, Kottkamp was in the ballpark. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, it's about 12 percent. An MSN Money article puts the figure between 14 and 20. The Western Area Power Administration says that it's 18 percent.
But there's a flaw in Kottkamp's conclusion because he's assuming a solar heater would eliminate energy consumption. Kottkamp didn't note that most solar water heaters also require a back-up system, usually in the form of an electric or gas heater. And it takes energy to power them.
Dan Olney, vice president of operations for Suntrek Industries, a California company that installs solar systems, said he tells customers that solar heating "can only supplement conventional water heating."
That's why the Department of Energy says the reduction for water heating energy costs is more along the lines of 50 to 80 percent of the current cost. That means rather than the 17 percent savings Kottkamp cites, it could be as low as 8.5 percent.
So Kottkamp's underlying point is correct, but he's overreaching with his conclusion that it would reduce energy costs 17 percent. According to the federal estimate, the actual savings could be only half of that -- as low as 8.5 percent of total energy costs. So we find his claim Half True.
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With a new report calling her Florida's most liberal member of the U.S. House, Rep. Kathy Castor said the label doesn't fit because she broke with her party on a key issue: the bailout for financial firms. Castor, who represents portions of Hillsborough, Pinellas and Manatee counties, was quoted in the Tampa Tribune last month saying she was "the only Democrat to vote against the Wall Street bailout." Castor spokeswoman Ellen Gedalius told PolitiFact Florida that the partial quote omitted some important context. She said that the congresswoman was saying she was the only Democrat in Florida to vote against the Troubled Assets Relief Program, an emergency federal plan in the fall of 2008 intended to keep the financial system from collapsing. "The context was a discussion on the Florida delegation," said Gedalius, "so her comment about being the only Democrat to vote against TARP was in that context of being the only Florida Democrat to vote against it."Tampa Tribune reporter William "Windy" March, who wrote the story, said he did not want to characterize the quote or its context."She didn’t explicitly say and I didn’t explicitly ask,'' he told Politifact Florida.Still, Gedalius' explanation matches our reading of the Tribune story. It is headlined "Rep. Castor disputes liberal ranking," and is primarily about her political leanings relative to other members of the Florida delegation to the U.S. House. The article attributed the ranking to the National Journal, an influential Washington-based publication that covers politics and national affairs.The TARP was proposed by President George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who sought congressional approval for $700 billion to buy bad assets from the nation's banks. The first vote took place on Sept. 29, 2008, when the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the bill in a stunning 205-228 vote. Ninety-five of the no votes came from Democrats, including Castor, who indeed was the only Florida Democrat to vote against it. The second vote came just days later when on Oct. 3 the House reversed itself, 263-171, in favor of another version of the same bill that had been approved by the Senate. Again, Castor was the lone Florida Democrat in the House to vote against the measure. This is what she said at the time: "After thoughtful consideration and review, I voted against President Bush's $700 billion bailout. The Bush plan does not provide sufficient help to middle-class families in the housing squeeze or taxpayer protections.” So Castor is right, with the caveat that she was referring to Florida Democrats. And so we rate her claim True.
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Democrats gained 12 seats in the Texas House in elections and thanks to one party switch from 2004 through 2008, though a seat went the other way in 2009 when an East Texas member switched parties.
Now the Republican Party of Texas sees Democratic weakening in the results of this year's March primaries. That’s of interest because Republicans seek to widen their 77-73 House edge on Democrats in November's general election while Democrats hope they can win the three additional seats they need to gain the majority. In a Twitter post on the morning of March 10, the GOP states: "War for the soul of the TxDems: 57% of Dem incumbents for Tx House LOST their primary." Hold the horses: Did nearly six in 10 House Democrats lose re-election all of a hurry — and if so, where was that story told? GOP spokesman Bryan Preston told us the 57 percent figure, which the party repeated in a second Twitter post that day, reflects the fact that four of seven House Democrats who had opponents lost their primaries. The losers were Reps. Terri Hodge of Dallas, Al Edwards of Houston, Dora Olivo of Rosenberg and Tara Rios Ybarra of South Padre Island. But that's an incomplete way of analyzing the results. It overlooks 64 Democratic incumbents who didn't have opponents and were renominated and Rep. Norma Chavez of El Paso, who faces an April runoff. The 64 unopposed incumbents are set to stand for re-election in November. One Democratic incumbent, David Farabee of Wichita Falls, didn’t seek re-election.Punch line: Some 67 of 72 Democratic incumbents on the March 2 ballot qualified for the November ballot. Take them into account and the share of incumbents who lost their primary drops to nearly 7 percent.Preston reminded us, correctly, that in order to lose a primary "one must face a primary challenge, and of those state House Democrat incumbents who were challenged in the primary, 57 percent lost." If the party had included the word "opposed" in front of "incumbents," there'd be no confusion. It could have done so within the 140-character limit set by Twitter.Preston said: "If I had it to do over again, I would certainly throw 'opposed' in there." The GOP's item misrepresents the overall results for Democratic House incumbents. We rate the party's statement as 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.
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A school superintendent turned state Senator wants to relax a requirement that the state continue shrinking K-12 class sizes.State Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, says that while a 2002 constitutional amendment mandating smaller classes has produced positive results, the expensive cost in a weak economy don't justify a continued investment.Gaetz, the former superintendent in Okaloosa County, thinks voters might get sticker shock if they heard how much taxpayers already have spent implementing the state's class amendment."The cost of class size so far: $16 billion," Gaetz said on the Senate floor March 23, 2010.That's an awful lot of money -- about a quarter of the total annual state budget. Put another way, with $16 billion the state could build new baseball stadiums in St. Petersburg and Miami ($1 billion), fund NASA's mission to put people back on the moon for two years ($2.5 billion) and give every Floridian $500 ($8.8 billion). With what's left over -- $3.7 billion -- the state could fund every Congressional campaign in 2010. Has the cost been that large?First, some background about the class-size amendment.In November 2002, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment that sets limits for how many students are allowed per class starting in the 2010-11 school year. The limits are no more than 18 students for grades K-3, no more than 22 students for grades 4-8 and no more than 25 students for grades 9-12.In 2003, the state started to slowly implement the changes. First, classroom reductions were measured at the school district average, then at the school average. This fall, districts are scheduled to meet the new limits in every classroom.But Gaetz wants to freeze the class-size reduction program. His proposed amendment to the constitution would require schools to meet class-size averages, instead of the exact numbers in every room. The proposal must be approved by three-fifths of the Legislature and 60 percent of voters in November if it is to become law.As for the costs, Gaetz is nearly right on.The House PreK-12 Appropriations Committee received a class size update from the state Department of Education in January. The report on class size, which you can see here (starts on page 36), includes a breakdown of the operating and capital costs to implement the class size amendment.The total cost listed in the report actually is slightly more than $19 billion, but that includes the money requested for the 2010-2011 school year.Counting only the money that's already been allocated, the cost so far is $15.8 billion, according to the same report. A Senate staff analysis of Gaetz's bill includes the same $15.8 billion figure.Gaetz said on the Senate floor that the cost so far implementing mandatory class size reductions has been $16 billion. The Florida Department of Education puts the bill at $15.8 billion to date, and could spend another $3.2 billion next year. We rate Gaetz's claim True.
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Florida Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum says politics isn't the reason for his legal challenge to the landmark health care bill signed into law by President Barack Obama.To help make the point, McCollum says the 22-page suit filed in a Pensacola federal court on March 23, 2010, is "bipartisan." "This bipartisan effort by attorneys general around the country should put the federal government on notice that we will not tolerate the constitutional rights of our citizens and the sovereignty of our states to be trampled on," McCollum said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. "This law represents an unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of the American people, and I will pursue this litigation to the highest court if necessary."The lawsuit argues that the federal government cannot impose taxes or financial penalties on someone who fails to have health insurance.Given how polarized the health care debate has become, we wondered how "bipartisan" the suit truly was. Thirteen attorneys general have signed on. They are:
McCollum, Florida
Henry McMaster, South Carolina (R)
Jon Bruning, Nebraska (R)
Gregg Abbott, Texas (R)
Mark Shurtleff, Utah (R)
James D. "Buddy" Caldwell, Louisiana (D)
Troy King, Alabama (R)
Michael A. Cox, Michigan (R)
John W. Suthers, Colorado (R)
Thomas W. Corbett Jr., Pennsylvania (R)
Robert M. McKenna, Washington (R)
Lawrence G. Wasden, Idaho (R)
Marty J. Jackley, South Dakota (R)
Of that list, Caldwell of Louisiana is the lone Democrat. The rest are Republicans. There is no hard and fast definition of bipartisan, but it's quite a stretch to say one out of 13 is bipartisan. As a point of reference, consider two Congressional actions that are almost universally described as bipartisan -- the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the 1996 welfare overhaul.
Ninety-eight Democrats and 230 Republicans voted for the welfare reform package in the U.S. House. Another 25 Democrats joined 53 Republicans voting for the bill in the U.S. Senate. No Child Left Behind passed 381-41 in the House with 183 Republicans and 198 Democrats voting for it. It passed 87-10 in the Senate with the support of 44 Republicans and 43 Democrats.
McCollum, who is running for governor, claims that his constitutional challenge of the landmark health care bill passed by Congress is a "bipartisan effort." That's pretty misleading when only one out of 13 attorneys general supporting the lawsuit is something other than a Republican. As such, we rate his claim Barely True.
Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.
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Texas Gov. Rick Perry draws mention in GOP consultant Karl Rove’s autobiography with attention focused on Perry’s win for lieutenant governor in 1998 and Rove's role in his pivotal earlier switch from the Democratic to Republican party while he was a third-term member of the Texas House.
Rove writes: “Rick Perry had planned to retire from the legislature until his best friend, David Weeks, and I talked him into switching parties and running for the GOP nomination for agriculture commissioner.” His book, "Courage and Consequence, My Life as a Conservative in the Fight," was published March 9.
We wondered if Perry’s 1989 party shift and his 1990 challenge to Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower played out so simply.
Perry didn’t comment, but Weeks, a long-time Perry friend who’s been a consultant in Perry’s statewide campaigns, said Perry was seriously considering retirement, perhaps to become a lobbyist, partly because his wife, Anita, was saddled with raising their young children at the time.
Weeks said Rove was part of a group of Republicans who encouraged Perry to switch parties and make the statewide run. “He wasn’t the only one,” Weeks said.
Published stories also single out Weeks and Rove.
Perry considered working as a lobbyist or high-level Capitol aide rather than leaving Austin entirely, according to a February article in the Austin American-Statesman. Instead, Weeks and others encouraged him to run for ag commissioner, the newspaper said. Perry told the Statesman: “I'll give David the bulk of the credit. He came and sat down with me and said, 'You ought to run for statewide office.'”
According to a 2003 Rove profile published in Texas Monthly magazine, Rove and Weeks “persuaded Perry, an obscure Democratic legislator from Haskell who had co-chaired Al Gore's 1988 Democratic presidential primary campaign in Texas, to switch parties for the election. West Texas was swinging Republican anyway, and Perry, who was discouraged by his failure to advance in the House leadership and thinking of becoming a lobbyist, had nothing to lose.”
The rest is dramatic Republican history: Perry, whose advisers included Rove, upset Hightower and has now held statewide office for nearly 20 years. Rove went on to help Bush to the White House.
Others were involved, though, in Perry making his initial leap. We rate Rove’s statement as Mostly True.
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Stop, drop and roll?
Houston businessman and first-time candidate Farouk Shami wasn't successful in his bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, but we're still, um, singing his praises for a song his campaign debuted the night before the primary election.
From a March 1 press release issued by his campaign: "In a last-minute push to win supporters and motivate Texans to go to the polls tomorrow, Farouk Shami has publicly released the song 'Farouk' ..."
Playing on the well-worn lyric "the roof is on fire," 17-year-old Houston hip-hop artist J. Xavier penned a catchy refrain that stuck: "Farouk, Farouk, Farouk is on fire, serving da community his number one desire."
We wonder: Was Shami ever on fire?
First, let's review the lyrics the campaign sent in March.
Who got da new solutions for Texas... Farouk! / when it comes to da state who's gon rep it... Farouk! / now say it Farouk Farouk Farouk is on fire / serving da community his number one desire...
Came to America 44 years ago / 71 dollars to his name now dat's pocket change / kinda like President Obama a few years ago, in his mind frame it's time to change / creating Texas jobs & reforming health care / he cares if nobody else cares, elsewhere / providing quality education / preserving our environment / Farouk is on fire please call da fireman / his drive is inspiring / lives he inspire them...
Xavier, a Houston native, wrote "Tell Your Mama to Vote for Obama" during the 2008 presidential campaign, but that song made no reference to pyrotechnics.
However, chants of "fired up, ready to go" were often heard during Obama's campaign rallies.
Shami falls in line with a other office-seekers who have dabbled with fire. The late Reagan Brown, who once served as state agriculture commissioner, infamously stuck his hand in a fire-ant mound as a campaign stunt in 1982, only to have the fiery pests swarm up and bite his arm.
What about Shami's personal relationship with fire?
On Nov. 19, the Houston Chronicle reported that Shami had come "under fire" when a conservative commentator claimed his support for Palestinian rights put him opposition to Israel. The Chronicle later pointed out that Shami could fire his employees, some of whom quit rather than be fired.
We couldn't reach Shami to gauge if he was ever truly "on fire."
But seeing as we've previously rated a Shami statement as Pants on Fire, he definitely was en fuego here.
So, we must rate J. Xavier's statement as True.
And we wish you a happy April Fools' Day.
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When one of his challengers switched from being a Republican to the Tea Party, Orlando Democrat Alan Grayson issued a news release that included another memorable series of one-liners.
Yes, he's the guy who compared former Vice President Dick Cheney to a vampire and called Sarah Palin a wild Alaskan dingbat."I read (Peg) Dunmire’s announcement," Grayson said in a March 23, 2010, press release. "I then forwarded it to the Guinness Book of World Records, for consideration under the category 'Most Consecutive Cliches.' This kind of right-wing drivel gave America $4-a-gallon gas and two endless wars, and drove us all to the brink of national bankruptcy. Was she living in a cave for eight years?"Grayson then explained why he thought Dunmire decided not to run as a Republican. "Dunmire is not running as a Republican, because the Republican Party of Florida smells worse than a rotting carcass," he said. "The stench reaches all the way to the Georgia state line. For goodness' sake, on the day that their state leader resigned in disgrace, a 'Shred-It' truck rolled up to Republican headquarters."At PolitiFact Florida, we wanted to thoroughly analyze Grayson's claim about the Guinness Book of World Records. But alas, there is no "Most Consecutive Cliche" category. (We checked).So we settled on Grayson's accusation that on the day former Republican Party of Florida chairman Jim Greer resigned, a "Shred-It" truck was spotted at the party headquarters.Greer, who was chosen by Gov. Charlie Crist, resigned under pressure from big GOP donors Jan. 5, 2010, after a series of stories documented troubled spending patterns of state party political donations. Greer suggested he was a victim of a witch hunt.On the day he resigned, reporters working in Tallahassee did notice a white "Shred-It" truck parked outside RPOF headquarters. Indeed, it was a mobile paper shredding company.Whitney Ray of the Capitol News Service filed the first report that day:
"It was a quiet and somber day outside the Republican Party of Florida headquarters, the only noise was traffic, and the sound of a paper shredding truck.
"The driver came out wheeling an empty cart and a blue bag, one hour before embattled chairman Jim Greer made this announcement, on a conference call with reporters."
A party spokeswoman said the timing of the Shred-It visit was just a coincidence. The mobile shredder comes monthly and just happened to coincide with the day Greer was announcing his resignation.But there was the image nevertheless.In mocking Republicans and his new Tea Party challenger, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson said that on the day the state party chairman resigned, "a 'Shred-It' truck rolled up to Republican headquarters." It did. We rate his statement True.Now about those Guinness world records ...
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You knew it wouldn't take long for "the hug" to get some love during Sunday's debate between Republicans Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist. Minutes into the 40-minute "Florida Senate Showdown," Rubio made a case that he'll stand up to President Barack Obama's agenda and Crist won't."Everyone knows that you won't stand up to the Obama agenda because just a year ago you were campaigning for it," the former House speaker said, referring to Feb. 10, 2009, when Crist embraced the president at a Fort Myers campaign event for the federal stimulus package.We've fact-checked several claims about Crist's support for the stimulus. Indeed, he earned a Pants on Fire rating for saying he didn't endorse it. So it was a Rubio comment later in the program that drew our attention. FOX News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Rubio, "Why is $8 billion and 87,000 jobs bad for a state that has 12 percent unemployment?""Well ... if it's bad for America, it can't possibly be good for your state," Rubio said. "Let me tell you why the stimulus has failed. The stimulus has failed because since that famous day in February where the governor campaigned with Barack Obama on behalf of the stimulus program, 211,000 Floridians have lost their jobs."211,000 is a big number, so we wanted to check Rubio's facts.Conveniently, the state's Agency for Workforce Innovation released a report on state employment figures just two days before the debate. In it, Florida's record 12.2 percent unemployment rate is announced, along with many statistics on the state's jobs picture, including year-over-year numbers from February 2009, the month Crist campaigned with Obama. The report shows Florida had 8,356,000 jobs in February 2009 and 8,125,000 in February 2010, the difference being 231,000. These are the seasonally adjusted numbers for the civilian population.However, if you look at seasonally adjusted nonagricultural employment --- a less-inclusive number --- you see the basis for Rubio's claim. There the job loss in a year's time is 211,500.It's the latter number that the Rubio campaign points to. Spokesman Alberto Martinez also shared a report from House Way and Means Republicans that seeks to highlight the stimulus as a job-killer, rather than a job creator, where Florida is said to have lost 240,400 jobs since the stimulus passed.Like any statistics, these are easily sliced and diced to make the key point. But Rubio is very close to the precise number, and in fact, he underestimates it slightly when his point is that Florida has lost a lot of jobs. So we rule this one True.
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During the first primary debate between Gov. Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio, the former House speaker said that Social Security needs to be reformed or it will go bankrupt."Social Security, whether we want it to or not, in its current form cannot survive and will not exist for us," he said during the March 28, 2010, showdown on FOX News Sunday. "In fact, just this week we received the news that for the first time Social Security is now paying out more in benefits than it's taking in. That was something that was supposed to happen in 2016. It's now happening in 2010."Calls to reform Social Security are nothing new; many economic analysts say that the program is unsustainable. But privatizing the program has become a hallmark of the conservative agenda. Its latest proponent is Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, who is the top Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives' Budget Committee. His Roadmap for America's Future would reduce Social Security benefits for those who are 55 or younger in 2011 and supplement the reduction with private accounts.On March 24, that argument was put in the spotlight again, when the Congressional Budget Office, the independent number-crunching arm of Congress, issued some sobering news: This year, the Social Security Administration will take in less than it pays out, resulting in an approximately $29 billion shortfall. The projections are part of its yearly analysis of President Barack Obama's budget. In an interview with the New York Times, Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the SSA, explained the problem. He said that the recession has put people out of jobs and more people have applied for benefits sooner than expected. Simultaneously, fewer jobs means fewer paychecks are going out and that translates to less collected by the government in taxes. In the same interview, Gross pointed out that the SSA has a $2.5 trillion balance that will carry benefits for a while. So, Rubio's correct on the first part his claim.He's right on his second point as well. In its May 2009 annual report to Congress, the SSA projected that "annual cost will exceed tax income starting in 2016." As a result, we find Rubio's claim to be True.
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Under fire from Republicans for his sweeping plans to reform health care and the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, President Barack Obama is trying to portray himself as a budget-cutter. So in a recent speech, he said the Washington Times, a newspaper famous for its conservative editorial page, had given him a shoutout.During a speech at a retreat of the House Democratic Caucus on Jan. 14, 2010, Obama said, "The Washington Times -- not known for (being) a big promoter of the Obama agenda -- pointed out that we had succeeded where previous administrations had failed because of the work that was done here in this Congress to finally get serious on some of these spending cuts that had been talked about for years."That surprised us, so we looked into it.Indeed, we found that on the same day the president delivered the speech, the Washington Times had published a story with the headline "Obama wins more spending cuts than Bush." Anyone who heard Obama's speech or read the transcript very well could have thought he was referring to praise from the Times' conservative editorial page. In the parlance of the nation's capital, references like this are usually referring to editorials, not news stories. But in this case, it was a news story.
It began:"President Obama notched substantial successes in spending cuts last year, winning 60 percent of his proposed cuts and managing to get Congress to ax several programs that had bedeviled President George W. Bush for years."The story offered a remarkably positive account of Obama's budget cutting, saying that he "was victorious in getting Congress to slash 24 programs and achieved some level of success in reducing nine other programs."It called the cuts a "bright spot in an otherwise dreary budget picture" and said Obama's "success rate at cutting programs was significantly higher than President Bush. But the article noted that the cuts would barely put a dent in the overall federal deficit, pointing out that they accounted for "well less than one-half of 1 percent of the total federal budget."So Obama was right that the Washington Times had run such an article. But his comment suggested it was editorial praise when it wasn't.
So we'll take Obama down one notch for not noting it was a news story and rate this claim Mostly True.
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U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, heartily welcomed Republican Scott Brown’s upset win Tuesday of a Senate seat in Massachusetts — a victory that’ll soon give the GOP the 41 Senate seats needed to filibuster legislation to foil the Democratic majority. Cornyn, who doubles as chairman of a political committee devoted to electing GOP senators, was asked by the Fox News Channel on Wednesday what Republicans should do with the message sent by Massachusetts voters. Cornyn initially mentioned public concern about Democrats’ closed-door rewrites of a health care overhaul. But, Cornyn continued, this "is a matter also of misplaced priorities and the No. 1 issue that the American people care about is getting America back to work." We wondered if Cornyn correctly pegged Americans' priority issue. Indeed, a recent national poll places the economy at the top of voter concerns. In the poll taken Jan. 12-15 for The Washington Post and ABC News, 42 percent of respondents identified the economy as the most important problem they’d like to see President Obama and Congress address this year. Among those economy-focused respondents, 26 percent singled out jobs/employment as a priority. The second-highest-rated issue was health care, named as the first concern of 24 percent. Similarly, a poll taken Jan. 10-14 by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News found jobs topping Americans’ concerns. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said job creation and economic growth was the top priority. Thirteen percent chose national security/terrorism and 13 percent said the deficit and government spending. So the senator got it right. Americans consider jobs the No. 1 issue right now. We rate Cornyn’s statement True.
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As Jan. 20, 2010, approaches, pundits and pollsters are scanning the numbers to see how President Barack Obama has done during his first year in office.
A group of news analysts discussed Obama's job approval rating Jan. 17, 2010, on ABC's This Week, and specifically focused on a new ABC-Washington Post poll conducted between Jan. 12 and 15, 2010.
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said that Obama is doing the best job he can given the circumstances.
"He's had to inherit two wars, he's had to work with a Congress that often tries to take the lead. ... And of course he's worked against a Republican Party that was united against him and against all of his policies," she said. "Despite all of that, there's some good stuff in [the poll results]. ... Not only is his job approval up but most Americans consider him a strong leader."
Brazile's comment that Obama's job approval is up piqued our interest. Could the numbers be so optimistic?
We went back to the ABC-Washington Post poll and found that Brazile is technically correct: Obama's approval rating has increased three percentage points from 50 percent in December 2009. That was his lowest job approval rating to date, according to the same poll.
So, Brazile is correct that Obama is polling three points higher than he did in December. But the latest figure also falls within the poll's three-point margin of error; statistically speaking, not much has changed since December. (She was more accurate with her claim that "most Americans consider him a strong leader." The poll showed that overall, 63 percent of the people characterized him that way.)
To get some perspective, we looked at other recent job approval statistics.
Pollster.com, a Web site that aggregates polling data from numerous sources and averages the results, shows that Obama's approval rating has been increasing since December. These averages are a bit squishy because each poll has a different margin of error, but they give a good estimate of where the country stands.
Fox News, for example, has Obama's approval ratings up four percentage points from November to 50 percent this month. According to Gallup, Obama's approval rating is up slightly as well. Rassmussen polling demonstrates a similar trend, though it also shows that slightly more people disapprove than approve of Obama's performance.
Other polls, including Quinnipiac, however, show Obama's numbers on the downturn.
So, Brazile claimed that Obama's job approval ratings are improving, and generally speaking, it seems they are. But we're going to lower our rating by one notch because she based her claim on one poll in which the increase is within the margin of error. So we rate this one Mostly True.
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When the candidates faced off on immigration in the GOP primary debate Thursday night, Gov. Rick Perry accused Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of supporting sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants.
"Senator," he said, "you voted for sanctuary cities."
Hutchison said the charge was "absolutely wrong."
Who's right? We decided to check the vote.
Perry's campaign pointed us to the proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. Hutchison voted against an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R.-Okla., to enforce existing border security and immigration laws before granting illegal immigrants amnesty. (The bill itself never passed the Senate.)
From a press release Coburn issued, the amendment would have required enforcement of "existing border security and immigration laws before amnesty can be granted to illegal immigrants. These provisions of existing law include: control over maritime borders, full fencing required by law, integrated alien databases, US-VISIT program, biometric ID system, and ending 'sanctuary city' policies."
A 1996 provision in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act requires states and localities to pass along someone's immigration and citizenship status on request from any government entity. Coburn's amendment tried to insure it would be enforced.
From a 2006 report by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan agency that provides analysis to Congress: "Most cities that are considered sanctuary cities have adopted a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy under which they don't require their employees, including law enforcement officers, to report immigrants who may be illegally present in the country."
The Senate rejected the amendment 54-42. Hutchison's campaign said she voted against it because it also prevented local input on the location of a border fence — a project widely opposed in the Rio Grande Valley.
"I must protect my constituents," Hutchison said in a speech on the Senate floor before the vote. Border fence decisions belonged to the Border Patrol, "not the Congress, most of whom have never visited Laredo, Texas."
The Secure Fence Act of 2006, which Hutchison voted for, extended reinforced fencing and other barriers, roads, cameras and sensors, along 700 miles of the southern border.
Hutchison said that she agreed with with the "purpose" of Coburn's amendment but objected to what she said it would have allowed: government disregard for the opinion of private property owners and cities on the Rio Grande who would be affected by the fence.
But by voting to kill the amendment, was she also voting in favor of sanctuary cities?
We found no evidence that Coburn considered opposition to his amendment as support for sanctuary cities.
Coburn's amendment would have reaffirmed established border and immigration policies. From all evidence, there’s no reasonable way to conclude that Hutchison’s vote against the amendment was a vote in favor of sanctuary cities.
Perry's spinning the facts. We rule his claim False.
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Texas' job growth is a key tenet of Gov. Rick Perry's re-election campaign, and he sounded that theme again in Thursday's debate. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison tried to take him down a few notches.
"And, oh, by the way, we definitely lost more jobs in Texas this year than we gained," she said. "We lost 300,000 jobs in Texas alone this year. That is not a record to be proud of."
We couldn't let Perry sit on his laurels without checking Hutchison's claim.
After clarifying that "this year" meant 2009, her campaign provided data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed Texas lost 271,700 jobs between November 2008 and November 2009.
Perry's campaign didn't respond to our query — is Hutchison correct? — so we turned to the Texas Workforce Commission, which supplies the federal labor bureau with Texas' seasonally-adjusted employment numbers (farm jobs not included).
Ann Hatchitt, the commission's director of communications, said Hutchison is right, and "there's certainly no problem in rounding that up to 300,000 jobs."
The bottom line: Texas had a net job loss of 271,700 jobs, which means the state did lose more jobs than it gained. Nearly 300,000.
That net job loss stands in contrast to 2007-08, when Texas led the nation in net job gains, as the Perry campaign frequently notes.
Stay tuned for Jan. 22 when the commission updates its data with December's employment rate. And again in March, when number crunchers fine-tune their report.
Until then, we rate Hutchison's claim True.
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Florida's leading Republican candidate for governor, Bill McCollum, is bragging that he raised more money in the last three months of 2009 than any other candidate running for the state's top elected post.
That produced some crowing in response from Alex Sink, the major Democratic candidate. Sink raised more than $5 million in cash and check contributions in 2009, state campaign finance records show.
"No Democratic campaign for governor has ever had these kinds of resources this early on in an election cycle, proving what a strong position our campaign is in going into 2010," Sink campaign manager Paul Dunn said on Jan. 6, 2010.
We wanted to see if Sink, the state's chief financial officer, has built a war chest so large it's unusual for Florida Democrats.
The state Division of Elections maintains an online database of campaign finance information for candidates going back to 1996. The online database covers gubernatorial elections in 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010.
We searched the years prior to each election to see if anyone matches or comes close. Sink's 2009 total -- not including in-kind donations -- was $5,050,000.
There were two leading Democrats running for governor in 2006, former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis and former state Sen. Rod Smith. Davis reported raising $1.65 million in 2005; Smith reported a total of $1.26 million in cash and check contributions. That's a little short of $3 million combined ($3.3 million when adjusted for inflation), way short of Sink's haul. Davis ultimately won the party's nomination, but was defeated by Republican Charlie Crist.
In 2002, the two frontline Democrats were former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Sink's husband, lawyer Bill McBride. Reno raised $570,000 in the year ahead of the election; McBride raised $743,000. McBride won that primary, but lost in November to incumbent Gov. Jeb Bush.
The Democrat in 1998 was Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay, who was trying to hold the governor's mansion following Lawton Chiles. MacKay raised $1.57 million the year ahead of the election. MacKay lost to Bush.
We also checked back to the 1994 gubernatorial election, the last time Democrats won in Florida. Chiles raised a total of $2.7 million in private donations for that campaign, the St. Petersburg Times reported. That's worth nearly $4 million in today's dollars, but Chiles' total includes contributions made in the year prior and year of the election. Sink, on the other hand, still has 11 months of fundraising ahead.
Prior to 1994, eclipsing $5 million a year before the election was inconceivable.
Sink clearly has benefited by being the only major Democrat running for governor. She's also campaigning at a time that simply requires candidates to raise more money. Yet the $5 million Sink raised in cash and check contributions in 2009 is more than what Jim Davis and Rod Smith raised in 2005, combined. It's also more than what her husband, McBride, and Reno raised a year ahead of the 2002 election. MacKay in 1997 and Chiles in 1993 don't come close, either. We rate Sink's statement True.
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Two former state senators are warming up Texas-style in anticipation of a fall showdown over who should be Texas land commissioner through 2014.
Lately, they've kidded each other about gunplay.
Democrat Hector Uribe's campaign went so far as to issue a press release suggesting the Republican he hopes to defeat, incumbent Commissioner Jerry Patterson, recently threatened to shoot him.
Uribe's Jan. 11 release states: "Meanwhile, Uribe’s Republican opponent threatened to shoot him last week."
Keeping our own tongues firmly in cheek, we checked into the claim.
Uribe's spokesman, Harold Cook, traced Patterson's threat to an item in the online Quorum Report.
In the Jan. 4 item, Patterson notes that he and Uribe both appeared in "The Alamo," a movie. Patterson wrote, according to the report: "Hector's a friend and fellow actor. We were both in the recent movie ‘The Alamo’, filmed near Austin, albeit on different sides in the conflict (actually Hector had a real part, I was just an extra). When Hector surrendered at San Jacinto, I should have shot him when I had the chance... "
"I hope folks understand then we were just acting, now it's a real war," the item quotes Patterson saying.
Contacted later, Patterson — who once helped pass Texas' concealed-weapon law — said he was joking about any shooting.
"If it's not tongue-in-cheek stuff, that's a criminal offense," Patterson said. "You're not supposed to threaten people. Does this put me on the (federal) no-fly list?"
Probably not. Especially when it's all just in good fun — and he didn't really make a threat. He just expressed ex post facto regret.
This is why we love Texas politics. Where else would a (pretend) gunfight spill into a (real) race for land commissioner? And where else would we get to fact check a claim like this one?
For making us laugh and for reminding us not to take this stuff too seriously, we give Uribe's claim that he was threatened a rating of Pants on Fire. And we suggest that all guns remain holstered for the rest of the campaign.
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Gov. Rick Perry's campaign landed a Nutcracker-like leap in December by suggesting that Republican U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison enabled Democrats to advance their health-care package by voting for the Senate to take up an unrelated spending proposal.
Hutchison's vote caused a small stir back home. Texas "tea party" activists gathered outside Hutchison's offices in Austin, Houston and Dallas.
Perry spokesman Mark Miner said Dec. 20: "After promising to fight health care, Sen. Hutchison abandoned Republicans and stood with Democrats to ensure health care legislation would pass quickly."
But is that the way it happened in Washington? We decided to check Perry's version of events.
True, Hutchison voted with the majority Democrats in favor of the Senate taking up the defense appropriation.
Early on Dec. 19, Democratic leaders amassed more than the 60 votes needed under Senate rules to proceed to action on the measure. Outnumbered Republicans had hoped to keep members stewing on the defense plan, thereby putting off action on the looming health care legislation.
The vote kept the Senate on a schedule that allowed the Democrats to bring up the health care overhaul. On Christmas Eve, the Senate passed it.
By Perry's analysis, Hutchison's vote eased the Democrats' passage of the health care bill she opposed. Perry's campaign posted several videos online including the version we're showing to the right musically casting Hutchison as flip-flopping. The video includes a snippet showing Hutchison telling colleagues before the vote that its early-morning timing was being driven by the "underlying" health care legislation.
Remember, Democrats needed only 60 votes to stay on their schedule. We found that Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, voting at 1:14 a.m., provided the crucial 60th vote in favor of action on the defense bill.
One minute later, two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine — voted "aye." Video broadcast on C-SPAN2 shows Hutchison voting "aye" at 1:16 a.m.
At 1:20 a.m., the final tally was read: 63 Yeas, 33 Nays.
Most Republicans — including Hutchison — then joined Democrats in passing the spending measure, 88-10.
Did Hutchison's procedural vote in any way ensure the Democrats' health care legislation would pass quickly?
We don't see how. The Perry campaign hasn't offered evidence to prove Hutchison blessed the Democratic health plan in any way other than casting a vote on that defense bill after the outcome was determined.
Asked why Hutchison signed off on taking up the earlier spending measure -- surely knowing her vote might generate sparks back home -- Hutchison spokesman Joe Pounder said: "After the Democrats had their 60, Sen. Hutchison felt it was important to register her vote for our defense priorities."
Significantly, Hutchison later joined fellow Republicans and voted against passage of the Democratic health plan.
In claiming that Hutchison paved the way for the Democratic health bill, the Perry campaign leaped to a conclusion not supported by the facts. We give the Perry campaign's statement a ruling of Pants on Fire.
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Gov. Rick Perry touts Texas as a model state that escaped the recession with few battle scars and a lot of jobs, if you're looking for one.
An unemployment rate significantly below the national rate is one reason folks are coming here — 1,000 people daily, according to Perry.
"I am pleased to receive the endorsement of the Southwest Movers Association, which plays a key role in supporting the more than 1,000 people who move to Texas every day," he said Dec. 29. "As our state continues to grow, I look forward to working with members and stakeholders of SMA to ensure that Texas remains a top destination for job seekers."
Matthew Thompson, a senior writer and editor at the Office of the Governor, said the governor's staff divided the state's annual population growth by 365 days to estimate how much the population swells daily. The statistics came from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Between July 1, 2008 and July 1, 2009, Texas gained 478,012 more people — more than any other state (California, still boasting the biggest population overall, was second with 381,000 new people). That's about 1,300 people per day, by Thompson's calculation.
But 478,000 is the net population change. It includes births as well as people relocating to Texas, after accounting for deaths and people leaving the state. So, what part of that net figure represents newcomers?
With help from the U.S. Census Bureau, we learned that about 635 people come to Texas every day, on average. A census official based that number on average daily net migration from other states (393) plus average daily net migration from other countries (242).
A separate estimate of the actual number of people entering the state comes from the Internal Revenue Service, which tracks the addresses of people who file taxes each year, and reports that information to the Census Bureau. The IRS found that 493,840 people switched their residence to Texas between the time they filed in 2007 and when they filed in 2008 — that's about 1,353 people each day. (The IRS' data are slightly older than the figures Perry cites as evidence for his claim.)
In the end, Perry came close to getting it right, though he didn't take into account in-state births or people moving away. Statistically speaking, of course, a set number of people aren't moving to Texas every day because that number varies. But if you rely on IRS data collected in 2007 and 2008, more than 1,300 people on average were relocating here during that time frame.
We rule Perry's claim Mostly True, even if he wasn't using the right data as evidence.
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During an exchange with President Barack Obama at a Republican retreat in Baltimore, Rep. Tom Price, a Republican from Georgia, complained that Obama has been hostile toward GOP suggestions on health care.
"You have repeatedly said, most recently at -- at the State of the Union, that Republicans have offered no ideas and no solutions," Price said on Jan. 29, 2010.
"I don't think I said that," Obama replied. "What I said was within the context of health care -- I remember that speech pretty well. It was only two days ago. . . . I said I'd welcome ideas that you might provide. I didn't say that you haven't provided ideas. I said I'd welcome those ideas that you'll provide."Price then said, "Mr. President, multiple times from your administration there have come statements that Republicans have no ideas and no solutions, in spite of the fact that we've offered, as demonstrated today, positive solutions to all of the challenges we face, including energy and the economy and health care."
Because Price appeared to correct himself after Obama's reply, we decided to focus on the second claim, that people in Obama's administration have made "statements that Republicans have no ideas and no solutions." Price spokesman Brendan Buck provided a couple of examples and we found a couple of our own:
• At a picnic with labor officials in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Sept. 7, 2009, Obama complained that the critics of health care reform -- he didn't identify them as Republicans, but it was clear he was referring to them -- were not offering their own solutions. He said, "I've got a question for all those folks: What are you going to do? What's your answer? What's your solution? And you know what? They don't have one. Their answer is to do nothing. Their answer is to do nothing."
• A White House blog post attacking the Republican health care plan said it offered "no ideas." (The posting appears to have a typo. It reads: "The Republican bill offers new no ideas.")
• White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel on April 19, 2009, described the Republicans as "the party of never . . . the party of no new ideas." (He was referring not just to health care, but also to fiscal discipline.)
• At a White House briefing April 28, 2009, press secretary Robert Gibbs made a similar comment: "I think you heard me and others say that you can't just be the party of no or the party of no new ideas."
The White House doesn't dispute that aides have portrayed Republicans that way, but a spokeswoman said the Democratic health care plan includes many amendments that were proposed by Republicans.
Still, Price is right. Obama and his aides have said the Republicans have no ideas on health care and other issues. We rate Price's statement True.
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In the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, newly elected Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said his state had the chance to be the first on the Atlantic coast to drill offshore for oil and natural gas."Advances in technology can unleash more natural gas, nuclear, wind, coal, alternative energy that will lower your utility bills," McDonnell said Jan. 27, 2010, from the floor of Virginia's House of Delegates. "Here in Virginia, we have the opportunity to become the first state on the East Coast to explore for and produce oil and natural gas offshore."
If drilling happens in the Atlantic, is Virginia first in line?Drilling in the Atlantic -- like in the eastern Gulf of Mexico -- has been taboo until recently. The Minerals Management Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior, has not held a lease sale for oil or natural gas drilling in the Atlantic since 1983. No leases remain active. The MMS, however, included 2.9 million acres off the shores of Virginia as part of its 2007-2012 gas and oil leasing program. But exploration was prohibited by both executive order and a congressional moratorium.That changed in the summer of 2008. President George W. Bush lifted the executive order banning drilling, then Congress allowed the moratorium to expire.In November of that year, the MMS initiated what it called a "multiyear" leasing process for the rights to drill off Virginia's coast. The area potentially open to drilling would start 50 miles offshore and sits north of the opening of the Chesapeake Bay, closest to Virginia's Eastern Shore counties on the Delmarva Peninsula. The MMS says the area may contain 130 million barrels of oil and 1.14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It's the only area in the Atlantic under consideration.Why is McDonnell bringing this up?He believes the Obama administration has done little to move the lease sale ahead. The MMS says it won't happen before 2011.In a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Dec. 23, 2009, McDonnell pressed for prompt action, saying drilling could create 2,578 new jobs over 10 years and $271 million in state and local taxes. Those figures, which McDonnell says were based on a 2005 report by the former president of Old Dominion University, subsequently have been questioned. But that's not what we're checking.McDonnell said Virginia was ready to "be the first state on the East Coast to explore for and produce oil and natural gas offshore." Indeed, the nearly 3 million acres off the coast of Virginia is the only area in the Atlantic in the federal government's current five-year oil and gas leasing program. It also is the only area currently in the leasing process. It puts Virginia at the head of the class. And it makes McDonnell right. We rate his claim True.
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President Barack Obama talked a lot about economic recovery during his State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010, including the benefits of the economic stimulus bill passed last year.The stimulus, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, included tax cuts for many Americans, Obama said. "We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses," Obama said. "We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college."Democrats applauded, while Republicans were silent for the most part. In one of the unscripted moments of the night, Obama looked at the Republican side of the room, smiled and said, "I thought I'd get some applause on that one." Here, we wanted to check Obama's statement that he cut taxes for 95 percent of working families.The key word in his statement is "working." Obama's claim is based on a tax cut intended to offset payroll taxes. Under the stimulus bill, single workers got $400, and working couples got $800. The Internal Revenue Service issued new guidelines to reduce withholdings for income tax, so many workers saw a small increase in their checks in April 2009.The tax cut was part of Obama's campaign promises. During the campaign, Obama said he wanted $500 for each worker and $1,000 for working couples. Since the final number was a bit less than he promised, we rated his promise a Compromise on our Obameter, where we rate Obama's campaign promises for fulfillment. During the campaign, the independent Tax Policy Center researched how Obama's tax proposals would affect workers. It concluded 94.3 percent of workers would receive a tax cut under Obama's plan based on the tax credit to offset payroll taxes. According to the analysis, the people who wouldn't get a tax cut are those who make more than $250,000 for couples or $200,000 for a single person. Obama said he intended to raise taxes on those high earners, a promise he reiterated during the State of the Union, and that revenue would offset the stimulus tax cut. Because the stimulus act did give that broad-based tax cut to workers, we rate Obama's statement True.
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A big part of President Barack Obama's first State of the Union speech on Jan. 27, 2010, focused on the economy. To set the stage, he said his predecessor was largely responsible for the country's fiscal shape. "At the beginning of the last decade ... America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion," Obama said. "By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program." We've checked several claims to this effect in the last year, most recently one by Obama adviser David Axelrod. Indeed, we found that the government was enjoying a surplus of about $236 billion circa 2001. Later, when Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office reported the deficit was over $1.2 trillion. A good chunk of the deficits racked up by the Bush administration came from tax cuts, the war in Iraq and actions that Bush and a Democratic Congress took to prop up the economy right before he left office. In the same report, the CBO projected a 10-year deficit of about $3.1 trillion. But Obama said $8 trillion, based on budget numbers published by the White House Office of Management and Budget shortly after Obama took office. Why the discrepancy? When we checked the similar claim by Axelrod, we spoke with Josh Gordon, policy director for the Concord Coalition. He said it has to do with how the two offices estimate the future. The CBO bases its projections on the assumption that the Bush tax cuts would expire in 2010 and that a patch to fix the alternative minimum tax would expire, among other things. The White House does not; instead, it assumes that nothing changes in current law.So, Obama's overall point is correct that the government was enjoying a substantial surplus when Bush took office and had a big deficit when he departed; he's spot on about the surplus Bush began with. He's also correct about the deficit at the end of Bush's presidency, but there are two different ways to measure the 10-year projection when Bush left office. The CBO's estimate is $5 trillion lower than the White House numbers, though economists don't quibble with the White House methodology. So given that discussion, we'll take Obama down a notch to Mostly True.
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Gov. Rick Perry casts his leading Republican challenger, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, as a fiscally irresponsible lawmaker who’d bring a free-spending approach to state government. Amplifying that theme, Perry’s campaign said Nov. 30: “Hutchison has voted nine separate times to raise the national debt ceiling.” We wondered if that was so. Perry’s camp compiled votes — undisputed by Hutchison — showing that since joining the Senate in 1993, Hutchison has voted nine times to raise the ceiling. But she’s also voted five times against raising the ceiling. Our request for an explanation of Hutchison’s votes didn’t generate an immediate reply from her. If she does pipe up, we’ll update this item.
UPDATE: Hutchison spokesman Jeff Sadosky offered a statement Jan. 28 suggesting that Hutchison's "aye" votes while George W. Bush was president reflected her support for his across-the-board tax cuts and spending initiatives including commitments to fight terrorism, provide prescription drugs to senior citizens and rebuild after 9/11 and Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike. Sadosky said: "She has voted against efforts to increase the debt ceiling when it is necessitated by wasteful spending like that seen in the stimulus bill and in the annual discretionary appropriations bills proposed by the Democratic-led Congress and presidency." We wondered anyway what any vote on the debt ceiling really means. Josh Gordon of The Concord Coalition, which was founded by the late Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass) to advocate for long-term fiscal responsibility, advised that votes to raise the ceiling might be portrayed as big deals to score political points. In reality, they’re not, he said, though they are necessary. “If they didn’t do it, the (U.S.) Treasury would no longer be able to borrow money,” Gordon said. “Everything from savings bonds to Treasury bills to very short-term financial instruments of the Federal Reserve would cease to be worth anything. It would basically destroy the economy.” Unlike congressional votes on taxes or spending, Gordon said, lawmakers' votes to increase the debt limit aren't necessarily indicators of members' fiscal philosophies. Gordon said the fact all but two of Hutchison’s votes to raise the ceiling occurred with Republicans in charge of the Senate was probably not a coincidence. Typically in Congress, the majority party bears responsibility for attending to essential business, including hikes in the debt ceiling if necessary. When the ceiling issue comes up, members of the minority party can vote "no" knowing the other side will muster the votes to do it.
Hutchison’s five “no” votes occurred when Democrats controlled the Senate. With Democrats holding the Senate majority, she voted for raising the ceiling as part of the Wall Street rescue plan approved in October 2008 and earlier voted for raising the ceiling in June 2002. Perry got all of Hutchison’s “yes” votes right. We rate his claim as True.
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The Texas Department of Transportation has become an easy target this campaign season, and Debra Medina, the Wharton businesswoman vying to knock Gov. Rick Perry from his seat, took a swing at the agency during the Jan. 14 GOP gubernatorial debate.
"We've got to look at transparency, efficiency and accountability in all areas of state government," she said. "We have seen sloth, if you will, sloppy management in the Texas Youth Commission, in criminal justice, in the Texas Department of Transportation, where they misplaced a billion dollars."
A billion dollars, MIA?
Chris Lippincott, TxDOT director of media relations, said: "That's not correct."
In October 2007, TxDOT officials accidentally counted $1.1 billion in bonds revenue twice, he said — a mistake that led the agency to commit an extra billion to road projects.
Chief Financial Officer James Bass realized the agency had erred by a billion dollars when it approved $4.2 billion for construction in fiscal 2008. Because of the mistake, the department announced huge cuts in spending that froze some road projects that were ready to go.
"There was an accounting error," Lippincott said. "A miscalculation."
Actually, there were two accounting errors, according to an August 2008 state audit of the agency. In adding up what was available for projects, department forecasters added $581 million of bond money that was already in a $3.1 billion total. Then, they lumped in another $488 million from the Texas Mobility Fund, money that was actually already tabbed to pay for past projects. Taken together, that was $1.069 billion that at least some people in the agency counted twice.
TxDOT didn't announce its gaffe until a February 2008 legislative hearing, where lawmakers were skeptical that it was just a number-crunching error and not a tactical move to create a financial crisis and thus pressure legislators to ease the limits on private toll road contracts.
The audit concluded that "ineffective communication, a complex reporting structure, and misunderstanding of reported data led the Department of Transportation to overschedule $1.1 billion in planned contract awards for fiscal year 2008."
No one has shown that any money was misplaced, as Medina claimed. The money never existed in the first place.
But she didn't miss the point. The transportation behemoth did make a billion-dollar mistake, a misstep that hobbled crucial road projects.
We rate Medina's claim Mostly True.
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On his Fox News Channel program on June 18, 2009, political commentator Sean Hannity mocked the "Cash for Clunkers" program recently approved by Congress, saying a loophole would allow someone to buy an old heap at a junkyard, have it towed to his or her house, and the government would pay $4,500 for it.
The Cash for Clunkers program is actually called the "Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009." Having passed the House and Senate, it now sits on the president's desk awaiting his signature.
Under the program, people can get $3,500 to $4,500 if they trade in their old gas-guzzler for a more fuel-efficient new car. The idea is to boost the ailing auto industry while improving the environment.
There are lots of eligibility rules, and you can read all about them
here
in a Web site created by the government.
The bill provides $1 billion for the program from July through November. In an interview with Hannity, Sen. John McCain criticized the program as more "out-of-control spending" by the Obama administration. Hannity then added his claim about how it would be easy to game the system to soak the government.
"Listen, all we've got to do is you got to go to a local junkyard — all you've got to do is tow (the car) to your house. And you're going to get $4,500," Hannity said. "I'm going to go do that."
Actually, legislators anticipated just such a scheme and included provisions to prevent it.
First, the law requires that the vehicle must be in "drivable condition." So if it needs to be towed to your house, no dice.
And second, the trade-in has to have been "continuously insured consistent with the applicable state law and registered to the same owner for a period of not less than one year immediately prior to such trade-in." In English: You have to have owned the car for a year, and you have to be able to prove it.
Those safeguards were written into the bill to safeguard against the very scenario Hannity described, said Rae Tyson, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Hannity's statement is "not accurate," he said.
You could always lie and forge documents. (Don't do it, Sean!) But that would be fraud. And the bill says anyone who knowingly violates the provisions of the program could face a fine of up to $15,000.
The wording in the legislation makes this one an easy call for us. The bill is written to prohibit the very scenario Hannity describes as possible. His statement goes on the junk heap. We rule it False.
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For weeks, Republicans have questioned the wisdom of closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Barack Obama plans to transfer the approximately 230 remaining detainees to other countries or to prisons in the United States.
Responding to the Republicans, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters on June 16, 2009, that it's important to consider Obama's plans in context with the overall number of releases in the past seven years.
"Some 500 detainees were released from Guantanamo during the Bush administration," Hoyer said.
We wondered if he was correct.
Indeed, government documents indicate more than 500 detainees were released or transferred from Guantanamo while George W. Bush was president. A White House executive order issued on the second day of Obama's presidency said, "
The federal government has moved more than 500 such detainees from Guantánamo, either by returning them to their home country
or by releasing or transferring them to a third country."
That's backed up by a fact sheet from the military task force that runs the detention camp, which says 520 detainees had been released or transferred by March 2009.
Our only quibble with Hoyer is his use of the word "released." That could be interpreted to mean that under Bush, 500-plus detainees left the center and were immediately freed. But the Pentagon says there is a difference between a release and a transfer to another country. The vast majority of detainees leave Gitmo under a transfer, which means they are transported to another country that places them under some type of restrictions. Some are incarcerated in those countries because of criminal charges, while others face monitoring or travel limitations.
But Hoyer only said "released," so we'll take him down a notch to Mostly True.
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It's not unusual for a minority party to engage in soul-searching, finger-pointing and general agonizing over why it lost power. The Republican Party is in the midst of such a process right now.
Mike Murphy, a GOP political strategist, has argued that the Republicans need to address why they lost so badly among two demographics: the young and Latinos.
Obama crushed McCain among Hispanic voters by a 35-point margin, Murphy wrote in a column in Time magazine.
"By 2030, the Latino share of the vote is likely to double," Murphy wrote. "In Texas, the crucial buckle for the GOP's Electoral College belt, the No. 1 name for new male babies — many of whom will vote one day — is Jose."
Murphy added, "Latinos need to see a quick end to the Republican congressional jihad on immigration," Murphy concluded, adding that they should support immigration reform with a path to citizenship. "Republicans should differentiate themselves from the left by heating up the lukewarm American melting pot with a firm insistence on learning English and a rejection of the silly excesses of identity politics."
We were intrigued by his claim — which he repeated on Meet the Press on June 14 — that Jose was the No. 1 baby name for boys in Texas. We wondered if that could be proved with hard numbers or if it was mostly conjecture.
It turns out that the Social Security Administration compiles baby names for infants born in the United States, based on applications for Social Security numbers. The administration includes a few caveats about the data — names are counted only when the year of birth, state, and gender are known, for example. But it's hard to think of a better source for name popularity.
In 2008, the No. 1 name for a baby boy born in Texas was indeed Jose. (It's held the top spot since 1996.) Nationally, it was 41st.
In Texas, Jose was followed by Jacob, Daniel, Christopher, Joshua, David, Angel, Ethan, Juan and Michael.
In case you're wondering, that same year in Texas, the most popular name for a girl was Emily, followed by Isabella, Abigail, Emma, Madison, Sophia, Mia, Natalie, Ashley and Ava.
We're not rating Murphy's political advice one way or the other. But the numbers confirm he had his facts right about Jose. We rate Murphy's statement True.
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Shortly after General Motors filed for bankruptcy, a plan that will involve significant government ownership of the auto company, Republicans went into attack mode.
The General Motors restructuring plan "is nothing more than another government grab of a private company and another handout to the union cronies who helped bankroll his presidential campaign," said Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele in a statement accompanying a newly minted ad. "President Obama will now own 60 percent of GM, and his union buddies will own almost 20 percent. And what do the taxpayers get? They’ll get stuck with up to a $50 billion tab for the taxpayer dollars Obama is using to pay for his takeover of GM."
In its bankruptcy filing, the company said it has $172.81 billion in debt and $82.29 billion in assets — all that despite a $20 billion General Motors has already received from the government, money that was initially earmarked for buying bad mortgages from banks.
Now, the company will adopt a restructuring plan that is "tailored to the realities of today's auto market," said Obama. It's "a plan that positions GM to move toward profitability, even if it takes longer than expected for our economy to fully recover; and it's a plan that builds on GM's recent progress in making better cars."
So, there's no dispute that the government is invested in General Motors — it has already shelled out $20 billion in loans — but is Steele correct about the government's new financial ties to the ailing company?
We assume that by referring to President Obama owning 60 percent of the automaker, Steele means that the government as a whole will own that stake under the restructuring plan. In fact, the White House was the first to state this fact, during a May 31 briefing with reporters. By the administration's own words, the RNC is correct on this point.
Steele goes on to say that Obama's "union buddies will own almost 20 percent." To be exact, the United Auto Workers will get 17.5 percent of General Motor's common stock, plus cash to help pay for a $20 billion health care trust fund for retirees. Whether this is a boon to Obama's "union buddies," as Steele's statement says, is a matter of opinion. However, it's worth noting that the UAW endorsed Obama for president and spent more than $4 million to assist his candidacy, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
So Steele is right that the administration will have a 60 percent ownership in the new General Motors and that the union will have nearly 20 percent. Steele earns a True.
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Facing international condemnation for a recent underground nuclear weapon test, the North Korean Foreign Ministry released a statement accusing the United Nations Security Council of hypocrisy.
"There is a limit to our patience," its Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried on the official Korean Central News Agency. "The nuclear test conducted in our nation this time is the Earth's 2,054th nuclear test. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have conducted 99.99 percent of the total nuclear tests."
As a matter of policy, PolitiFact does not take totalitarian dictatorships at their word. Beyond that, we were simply curious which countries have done nuclear weapons testing, and how much. So we decided to check this claim.
According to a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, there have been 2,051 nuclear tests worldwide since 1945 done by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council:
U.S. - 1,030
Russia/U.S.S.R - 715
U.K. - 45
France - 210
China - 45
There have been only a handful of other tests, although there are doubts about the exact number.
In 1974, India tested a nuclear device, although it produced a relatively small explosive yield. India claimed to have detonated five more nuclear devices in May 1998. In response to the Indian tests, Pakistan announced that it had exploded five nuclear devices a couple weeks later.
It has been widely speculated that India and Pakistan exaggerated the number and size of the explosions for political reasons. Nonetheless, that's the number of announced nuclear tests.
Since then, North Korea is the only country to perform an announced test. Its first came in 2006. And then on May 26, 2009, North Korea announced that it had successfully conducted its second underground nuclear test, in defiance of international warnings.
(There has also been some speculation that Israel may have conducted a test in 1979, but those claims have never been substantiated.)
So arguably, there have been as many as 13 nuclear tests conducted by countries other than the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, said Carey Sublette, creator of the Nuclear Weapon Archive, which tracks nuclear testing via public records. By Sublette's count, there have been a total of 2,054 nuclear tests. That means 99.37 percent of all the tests were done by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, he said.
"It's about right," Sublette said of the figures cited by North Korea. "If it's off, it's only off by a few (tests)."
We aren't inclined to quibble with fractions of one percent. We find North Korea's claim to be True.
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Houston businessman Farouk Shami, running for governor, turned to his leading Democratic foe on Monday night and leveled a foul charge.
In a televised debate, Shami told Bill White, the former Houston mayor: "Our city is the third-most toxic city in the United States of America."
White didn’t take issue with Shami’s description, but it was news to us. We decided to check into the Bayou City’s "ick" ranking.
Shami’s campaign said the candidate based his statement on a 2009 article in Forbes magazine putting Houston behind only Atlanta and Detroit for toxicity among major U.S. cities.
The magazine said it based its rankings of the nation’s 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas on data provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"We counted the number of facilities that reported releasing toxins into the environment," the magazine said, "the total pounds of certain toxic chemicals released into the air, water and earth, the days per year that air pollution was above healthy levels, and the number of times the EPA has responded to reports of a potentially hazardous environmental incident or site in each metro area's principal city."
Its article states Houston's residents live with with air that's far filthier than it should be.
"Facilities in Houston released 88.7 million pounds of toxic chemicals in the environment in 2007," the magazine says, "and the former site of a methanol fire and chemical explosion number among the city's 50 sites necessitating an EPA response. Factories that serve the local petrochemical industry emit benzene and 1-3 butabeine, toxins proven to be particularly harmful, that the area's intense sunlight and lack of wind keep trapped in the local area's atmosphere."
Jim Lester, vice president of the Houston Advanced Research Center, a Woodlands-based nonprofit group that studies and promotes sustainable development, is quoted saying Houston has become "one of the favorite places in the world for doing air-quality science." He saw that as a boon: "The more people understand about it (air quality), the more changes are likely that will take us in a positive direction."
When we reached Lester, he revisited pollution levels reported by industries and posted online by the EPA. In 2007, Harris County industries reported either releasing or disposing of 36.1 million pounds of toxic chemicals, while industries around Detroit in Wayne County nearly matched that dubious achievement, reporting the disposal or release of nearly 30 million pounds of toxic pollutants.
Shami correctly referred to a recent national comparison. We rate his statement as True.
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Democrat Bill White, the former Houston mayor running for governor, has said if elected, he'll "move Texas forward" — a vow he's said will include revamping education.
"Texas should be America's great state of opportunity," White says in his first TV ad, which started airing Feb. 1. "But how can we move forward when our graduation rate ranks 43rd out of 50 states, and we're lagging behind in test scores?"
Almost the bottom of the barrel? We decided to check.
White spokeswoman Katy Bacon pointed us to the the Legislative Budget Board's 2010 Texas Fact Book, which lists everything from elected officials' phone numbers to — we're not kidding — our state snack and tie (tortilla chips and salsa, and the bolo, by the way).
The fact book also ranks Texas' estimated public high school graduation rate for 2009 — 43rd, with 61.3 percent of students who were enrolled in ninth grade graduating.
John Barton, the board's public information and report production manager, said the agency pulled the statistic from State Rankings 2009, a comprehensive publication issued by CQ Press, a widely-regarded nonpartisan publisher of infomation related to American politics and policy.
The budget board's depressing ranking indeed matched CQ's, which used data from the National Education Association in Washington and the National Center for Education Statistics to compare the estimated number of public high school graduates in 2009 with the number who were enrolled in 9th grade in fall 2005.
Vermont ranked first, with 96.6 percent graduating. South Carolina ranked last with 55.2 percent; Washington, D.C., isn't included. The national rate of graduating students in 2009 was 69.3 percent.
Texas' graduation rate has been sliding. In 2001 the state ranked 35th, with 65 percent of students graduating from high school. In 2008, Texas ranked 42nd with 62.6 percent of students graduating.
We rate White's claim as True.
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(Published Oct. 15, 2008)
One of the more pointed exchanges between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain in the third and final debate on Oct. 15, 2008, was over the topic of negative ads.
Here’s how one exchange went:
Obama: "And 100 percent, John, of your ads — 100 percent of them have been negative."
McCain: "It’s not true."
Obama: "It absolutely is true."
(You can find the exchange on the YouTube version about 26:30 into the debate.)
Obama appears to be cherry-picking the ads run during a single week — from Sept. 28 to Oct. 4 — during which the Wisconsin Advertising Project found "nearly all" of McCain’s ads were negative. That week, they found that 34 percent of Obama’s ads were negative.
But McCain has aired many, many ads that were not negative. If you look at a report from the same organization on Sept. 17, they found that in the week after the conventions, for example, Obama aired a higher percentage of negative ads than did McCain (76 percent to 56 percent).
In all, the Wisconsin Advertising Project has found that 73 percent of McCain’s ads have been negative, to date. That's far short of 100 percent. (It also found 61 percent of Obama’s ads have been negative.)
That’s up for both parties from the 2004 election, when 64 percent of George Bush’s ads were negative, compared to 34 percent of John Kerry’s.
So Obama might be right for one week, but he is way off for the overall campaign, when McCain's negative ads accounted for 73 percent. That's so far off that we find it Pants on Fire wrong.
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The Planned Parenthood Action Fund has launched an attack ad on John McCain that makes a case that his health care plan hurts women.
The ad features a nurse, Shaina Klackle, talking about a study created by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
"As a nurse, I'm concerned about your health care," Klackle says. "And so is Planned Parenthood's Action Fund. In fact, their study found John McCain's plan won't guarantee coverage of cancer screenings or maternity care."
The ad goes on to make other claims about McCain's health plan, but here we wanted to look at the claim about guaranteed coverage for cancer screenings and maternity care.
We should say off the bat that McCain's health plan contains no details about specific conditions or coverage. The heart of his plan seeks to stimulate the market for individual health insurance by ending the tax exemption on employer-provided health care benefits in exchange for a tax credit. McCain hopes this will lead to greater competition in the health care market by allowing people to shop around for their own insurance. Also along those lines, his plan calls for allowing people to shop for policies across state lines, so they can purchase the most effective policy, no matter where the insurance provider is located.
It's that last provision that is the basis for Planned Parenthood's statement, according to the report they issued to back up the ad. Many states have passed laws that say health care providers operating in their state must provide coverage in certain areas. Planned Parenthood cites requirements for cancer screenings and maternity care in more than 20 states. Under a McCain plan, insurers could operate in any state and sell all over the country.
A rollback of insurance requirements isn't spelled out in McCain's plan. But it's a reasonable fear, said Sara Collins of the Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan policy group that seeks to improve the health care system.
Health insurance requirements differ substantially from state to state, and insurance companies would likely locate in the states with the least regulations, Collins said.
"Ultimately, you would have an individual market that's not regulated in any state," Collins said. "It's very different from what we have right now."
Planned Parenthood's ad says that McCain's plan doesn't "guarantee" coverage of cancer screenings or maternity care, and on a literal level, that's true. But Planned Parenthood's deeper point is that some people have a "guarantee" under their respective state's current laws, and they could lose that guarantee under McCain's plan. McCain's plan has no literal guarantees for coverage, and Planned Parenthood makes an additional case that his regulations could undermine existing state guarantees. On that basis, we rate Planned Parenthood Action Fund's statement True.
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In an appearance on
Meet the Press
with a little more than a week to go before Election Day, John McCain criticized Barack Obama's health plan as too burdensome to many Americans.
"I think that we cannot fine small business people ... small business people who have employees without health insurance, that he's going to fine them if they don't have the insurance policy that Senator Obama wants them to have, that if they have children that don't have health insurance that Senator Obama wants them to have, they will be fined," McCain said.
We've previously checked McCain's statement that Obama wants to fine small businesses that don't participate in his health plan and
found it False
. Now we'll look at the statement that "if they have children that don't have health insurance that Senator Obama wants them to have, they will be fined."
Obama's health plan does have a mandate that children have insurance, and it would likely include an eventual fine once all the elements of the health plan are in place. Here's how Obama explained it in an interview with the
Indianapolis Recorder
published Oct. 24, 2008:
"We would not impose a penalty until we’ve ensured the (State Children's Health Insurance Program) and other programs have made it absolutely affordable for every child to be covered. My belief is that you’ve got to make sure people have an option before you start fining them. Once we’ve got the options in place, we’d impose a fine in the ballpark of what it’d cost to provide insurance for their child. ... Children are relatively cheap to insure. We’re going to be providing subsidies to make sure people can afford them, but we’re also going to expect our parents are showing some responsibility in signing up their kids."
So McCain is right about a possible fine, even if he doesn't mention that it would not be imposed until after the program is in place.
We have a bigger problem with McCain's explanation that people get fined if their children "d
on't have health insurance that Senator Obama wants them to have." Actually, the fine is if the children are uninsured, not if they are insured under a certain
type
of plan. Obama wants all children to be insured, but he leaves many options through which this could occur. One of the central premises of Obama's plan is that people who are currently insured keep the insurance they have.
So we find McCain is correct to say that the parents of children could face fines, but he is wrong to imply that it's the type of coverage that matters. We rate his statement Half True.
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One of the most common Republican attack lines against President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package has been that the money isn't flowing to the nation's economy quickly enough. If the bill's supporters really wanted to help the economy quickly, the argument goes, they should have spent the stimulus money right away rather than using it on projects that will take more time to get up and running. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the No. 2 Senate Republican, made that point on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos on July 12, 2009. "The reality is (the stimulus) hasn't helped yet," Kyl told Stephanopoulos. "Only about 6.8 percent of the money has actually been spent." It's a matter of opinion and interpretation whether the stimulus has helped the economy since it passed in February. So we won't rule on that. But Kyl is mostly right about the amount that's been spent. The Obama administration publishes u pdated spending figures on Recovery.gov , the administration's Web site tracking the stimulus money. It includes a graph showing the week-by-week trend in spending, which shows how it has steadily increased. As of July 3, $60.4 billion in stimulus money had been spent, according to the chart. If you divide this by the full stimulus amount of $787 billion, you get 7.7 percent — a bit higher than Kyl's 6.8 percent, but in the ballpark. It appears that Kyl was a few weeks out of date in his statistics. The figure spent by June 19 was 6.7 percent; in the subsequent two weeks of reported data, the government shelled out an additional $7.5 billion, boosting the percentage slightly. But on the larger point, Kyl is accurate: A relatively small portion of the stimulus has been spent. So we find his claim Mostly True.
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The day before the Supreme Court nomination hearing for Sonia Sotomayor began, Sen. Jon Kyl said President Barack Obama's nominee was losing the support of the American public.
"It's interesting that I just reviewed the Rasmussen poll, most recent poll about American public opinion about Judge Sotomayor. They oppose her confirmation. Only 37 percent support it," the Arizona Republican said during an appearance on This Week with George Stephanopolous.
Stephanopolous seemed surprised by that, and said he wasn't familiar with the poll. We wanted to check the poll for ourselves and see what it said.
The Rasmussen Reports poll was conducted June 29-30, 2009, and was a national survey of 1,000 likely voters.
The poll asked this question: "The United States Senate has the constitutional authority to confirm all Supreme Court nominees. Based upon what you know at this time, should the United States confirm Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court Justice?"
The results were very close. Thirty-seven percent said yes, the Senate should confirm, 39 percent said no, and 23 percent said "not sure."
And it's important to note that the margin of error on the poll was 3 percentage points. So the 37-39 split is within the margin of error, and could be considered a statistical tie.
As a side note, the same poll showed that most respondents expected Sotomayor to be confirmed, with 58 percent saying it was "very likely" and another 26 percent saying it was "somewhat likely."
And a Gallup poll, conducted after the Rasmussen poll but released the day after Kyl made his remarks, found that 53 percent favored Sotomayor's nomination, with 33 percent opposed and 13 percent having no opinion.
Kyl specifically cited the Rasmussen poll, though, and he got the number who favored confirmation right. But his comment leaves the impression that a solid majority opposes Sotomayor's nomination. Sotomayor fans could use the same data to say that "only" 39 percent oppose her nomination. In fact, the polling data reads more like a tie, with a significant percentage of people not having a firm opinion. We rate Kyl's statement Half True.
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In an interview with
Novaya Gazeta
, a Russian newspaper, President Barack Obama was asked what caused the economic crisis. Obama answered that oil imports were partly to blame.
"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he said in the July 6, 2009, interview. "We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before."
Obama said the same thing on February 24, 2009, during his first address to Congress.
At first, it sounded plausible to us that the United States would be importing more oil these days. But as our friends at FactCheck.org
first pointed out
, crude oil and petroleum imports have actually declined in recent years after peaking in 2005 and 2006. FactCheck cites the Energy Information Administration, a branch of government that keeps an enormous database of all things energy-related, and we confirmed it on the EIA's Web site.
In two decades, imported oil will be down by about 20 percent, according to a March 2009 EIA report.
And in April 2009, the American Petroleum Institute said that imports have fallen to their lowest levels in three years.
The reason?
"The big one is the decline in consumption," said Ron Planting, an economist with the API, a trade group representing oil and natural gas companies. "Our figures through May are that domestic consumption has declined 4.7 percent from a year ago."
Through 2008, high gas prices spurred the decline, he said. Now, it's the recession.
The proliferation of gasoline-ethanol blends and a 4.4 percent increase in domestic oil production have also contributed, Planting said.
So Obama needs to check his figures. Twice this year, he has said that oil imports are higher than ever, but studies by the government and the energy industry show that's not true. As a result, we give Obama a False.
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President Barack Obama says California is a role model for energy conservation.
In a June 29, 2009, speech to promote new light bulb efficiency standards, Obama said energy conservation will produce big results in the future, and cited California as an example.
"In the late 1970s, the state of California enacted tougher energy-efficiency policies. Over the next three decades, those policies helped create almost 1.5 million jobs. And today, Californians consume 40 percent less energy per person than the national average — which, over time, has prevented the need to build at least 24 new power plants."
That paragraph is chock-full of claims to check, but for now, we're going to focus on the key point of Obama's statement: that because of long-standing energy efficiency standards, "Californians consume 40 percent less energy per person than the national average."
The White House provided us with a 2008 report written by David Roland-Holst at the University of California-Berkeley to back up Obama's claim. It said that Californians' electricity consumption is 40 percent below the national average. Had Obama specified electricity, he would have been correct. California's low electricity consumption is widely known. More than three decades ago, the state adopted building and appliance efficiency standards, and it required that electricity profits be separate from the amount of energy sold. This prompted utilities to offer incentives to consumers who save energy.
Indeed, since the mid 70s, the amount of electricity used per person has grown by almost 50 percent in the rest of the country while California’s numbers remained relatively flat. For example, in 2006, electricity use in the entire country hovered around 12,000 kilowatt hours per person, while California's was approximately 7,000 kilowatt hours, according to a 2007 report by the the California Energy Commission, a branch of the state government. That's about 40 percent less than the national average.
But Obama
said
"energy," which includes other sources in addition to electricity, so that is what we are checking.
Our first stop was the Energy Information Agency, where we found that overall energy consumption per person in California is quite low. In 2006, individuals there used about 232 million Btu of energy, which includes natural gas, petroleum and coal. The state's level was about 30 percent less than the national average of 333 Btu, which ranked the state 47th in the nation.
Statemaster.com, a database that compares states by demographics and economics, shows a similar pattern based on statistics from 2001; then, California ranked 46th in per capita energy consumption.
So Obama is correct with his underlying point that California's energy efficiency measures have reduced consumption dramatically, but he is off target with his statistic. It's actually 30 percent lower, not 40 percent as he said. We rate his claim Mostly True.
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Congress recently gave the Food and Drug Administration the ability to regulate tobacco, and George Will is not impressed.
He said the new law is flawed because it restricts advertising (new rules could "merit a constitutional challenge"), because it is supported by the tobacco industry ("a crystalline example of Washington business as usual") and because it it perpetuates what Will calls a government "addiction to tobacco tax revenue."
"The February expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program is supposed to be financed by increased tobacco taxes, so this health care depends on an ample and renewable supply of smokers," he wrote in a June 18, 2009, Washington Post column. Governments will never outlaw smoking because "governments cannot loot tobacco companies that do not flourish."
Will thinks the new law is no good, but he's certainly no fan of smoking either, and he made this claim to demonstrate his aversion to the habit:
"Three decades ago, public outrage killed an automobile model (Ford's Pinto) whose design defects allegedly caused 59 deaths," he wrote. "Yet every year tobacco kills more Americans than did World War II — more than AIDS, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, vehicular accidents, homicide and suicide combined."
More than AIDS? More than car accidents? We were skeptical, so we decided to take a look ourselves.
It seems that Will plucked part of his claim from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a leading advocate for the new law. According to the organization, about 400,000 people die from their own smoking each year, and about 50,000 die from second-hand smoke annually. And according to the group's Web site, "Smoking kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined."
Even though that fact is repeated by many antismoking campaigns, and by the American Cancer Society, we decided to crunch the numbers ourselves. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2006, when their database was last updated, 22,073 people died of alcohol, 12,113 died of AIDS, 43,664 died of car accidents, 38,396 died of drug use — legal and illegal — 18,573 died of murder and 33,300 died of suicide.
That brings us to a total of 168,119 deaths, far less than the 450,000 that die from smoking annually.
As for the part about World War II, Will came up with this comparison himself. About 292,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were killed in battle during World War II, according to a U.S. Census Bureau April 29, 2004, report in commemoration of the new World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. An additional 114,000 members of U.S. forces died of other causes during the war, bringing the total to 406,000 people.
Will's claim — that smoking kills more people annually than in World War II or from other dangerous diseases and habits — holds up with the CDC and the Census Bureau. As a result, we give Will a True.
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Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore has a new film coming out —
Capitalism: A Love Story
— and he appeared on Comedy Central's
The Colbert Report
to promote it.
The show's ironically conservative host, Stephen Colbert, defended capitalism and the bailouts of late 2008, which led to a mock debate between them.
At first, Wall Street was actually angry about the bailouts, Colbert claimed. "Because it might come with strings attached," he explained. "But they forgave Obama when he didn't add any. Now all is forgiven."
"That's why you like Obama so much now?" Moore asked.
"I don't like Obama so much," Colbert said. "On this, I do. And your film is helping me like Obama, because you're a critic of his. You think he's in the pocket of guys like Goldman Sachs."
"I point out in the film that Goldman Sachs is his No. 1 private contributor," Moore answered. "But I voted for the guy. I'm still hopeful that he's going to do the right thing and side with us, and not Wall Street. But the jury's out on that."
We'll let you draw your own conclusions on their debate. We wanted to check Moore's statement about Obama's contributors and the financial services firm Goldman Sachs.
Obama made a big deal during the election that he didn't accept money from federal political action committees or lobbyists.
But laws require individuals to disclose their occupation and their employer when they donate to federal political candidates. We checked with the Center for Responsive Politics, a well-respected nonpartisan group that specializes in analyzing campaign data. Their numbers include contributions from employees and their immediate families.
Their analysis of the 2008 presidential campaign found that University of California employees were Obama's top donor, giving a collective $1.6 million. That system is run by the state of California, and hence is a public employer.
No. 2 was Goldman Sachs. Goldman employees gave Obama $994,795.
Obama's next biggest donors were the employees of Harvard University, Microsoft, Google, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Time Warner, the law firm Sidley Austin, and Stanford University. View Obama's
complete list and amounts
here. Incidentally, Goldman Sachs ranked No.4 on
John McCain's list
of employee contributions, at $230,095.
Moore said that Goldman Sachs is Obama's "No. 1 private contributor." The data shows that is correct. We rate his statement True.
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At the conclusion of a wide-ranging interview on NBC's Meet the Press , President Barack Obama said he was holding out hope that his beloved Chicago White Sox can still make the playoffs.
Host David Gregory asked him, "On a lighter note, before I let you go, Mr. President, you were brazen this summer at the All-Star Game wearing your Chicago White Sox jacket out there to throw out the first pitch. Hate to break it to you, but doesn't look so good for your White Sox here. So I want to know who is your pick to win the World Series?"
Obama replied, "You know — I am — I think mathematically, the White Sox can still get in the playoffs."
Here at PolitiFact, we're focused more on the American League East (Go Rays!), so we had lost track of how the White Sox were doing in the AL Central. We turned to our favorite baseball writer, Marc Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times , to find out if Obama was right.
Topkin told us that while the White Sox are out of the running to be the wild-card team for the American League, it's mathematically possible they could still win their division and then be in the playoffs.
As of Sunday morning when Meet the Press aired, the White Sox were 5 1/2 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers. Topkin told us the White Sox "wouldn't be mathematically eliminated until there were 6 games left, and going into today they have 13 left."
So Obama can hold out hope for at least another week or so. The odds are against the Sox — they play the Tigers and the Minnesota Twins, the No. 2 team in the division, in the next week. And Topkin noted that a lot of things have to break in favor of the Sox.
But Obama is right that it's at least mathematically possible, so he earns a True.
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To show that Social Security today is not what President Franklin Roosevelt intended when he signed it into law in 1935, talk show host Glenn Beck claimed that its creators may have designed it so many people would not live long enough to receive the benefits.
"When Social Security started, age expectancy for the average man was 58. It was 62 for women," said Beck. "Wait a minute, when did benefits come in? At 65."
His point was that Social Security was not meant to benefit as many people as it does today. Indeed, Beck went on to say that if Roosevelt had passed the law now, the starting age would be around 80 years old, due to longer life expectancy.
We wondered if Beck was right about life expectancy in the 1930s.
Indeed, he was correct. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal agency that tracks birth and death data, says that a man born in 1935, on average, lived until he was 60; a woman typically lived until she was 64. So Beck's claims of 58 and 62 were just off slightly. And Beck was correct that an average person would die before Social Security took effect.
What about Beck's implication that the age was chosen purposefully so that the majority of Americans would never recieve their Social Security benefits? Was FDR making this calculation?
Probably not, said Edward Berkowitz, a professor on Public Policy at the George Washington University and author of several books on Social Security. "I think that the age was chosen somewhat at random, certainly not to hedge actuarial bets."
Berkowitz thought that an alternative explanation for the age choice was that the Germans had a similar program that the Americans used as a model. Berkowitz also pointed out that the median age might not reflect real life expectancy because the number was skewed by a large share of infant deaths. "After you survive infancy, life expectancy goes up."
Of course, we can't be sure what FDR was thinking, but for our purposes, Beck's statement is off by just a couple of years and his overall point is right that life expectancy was below the retirement age of 65. That's close enough to earn a True.
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Former Houston Mayor Bill White, who won the 2010 Democratic nomination for governor Tuesday, wasted no time attacking Gov. Rick Perry's legacy.
Hint: White doesn't think it's shaping up so well.
"Rick Perry and his consultants and his insiders will take credit for all the good times in Texas," White said. "But they won't take responsibility for the fact that today, there's almost 1 million Texans who are unemployed and that's an all-time record number in our state."
The gauntlet is thrown. Do the jobless numbers back White up?
According to the Texas Workforce Commission, more than one million people were unemployed in January, but that includes seasonal employees who were laid off after the holidays. The seasonally-adjusted data shows that 996,863 were unemployed — about 3,000 shy of 1 million. That number has been increasing steadily since early 2008.
The latest count also is a Texas record, topping the 765,894 residents who were out of work in October 1986.
But a head count isn't the only way to judge joblessness over time. We looked at the rate of unemployment, too.
The state rate — 8.2 percent as of January — has also crept up since 2008, due at least in part to a nationwide recession. But it hasn't yet matched the worst times of the 1980s recession in Texas, which was driven by an oil bust.
The monthly unemployment rate peaked twice that decade, reaching 8.4 percent in January 1983 and 9.3 percent in September 1986.
The annual unemployment stats are similar. The 2009 unemployment rate was 7.6 percent — the same as the rate in 1992. But the state's annual unemployment rate has been higher; it was 8.5 percent in 1987 and 8.9 percent in 1986.
So the unemployment rate isn't yet at its highest in Texas — not that having the third highest rate is anything to celebrate.
Anyway, White didn't cast the rate as highest-ever. Nor did Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, when he blasted Perry on primary election night for an "unemployment rate (that's) higher than it's been in decades." Two decades, to be precise.
White is correct that the number of unemployed Texans — almost 1 million — is an all-time high. We rate his statement as True.
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Federal regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? "Don't tread on us" sums up the reaction of GOP Gov. Rick Perry, who's running for reelection.
In February, the state filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency to prevent the regulation of carbon dioxide. Perry has resisted the EPA's finding last year that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health — a verdict that sets the stage for federal regulation.
State officials say such curbs could jeopardize jobs and threaten businesses in Texas, which leads the nation in carbon emissions.
As evidence that Texas is doing just fine protecting natural resources, thanks, Perry says Texas also leads the nation in wind power. From a press release the governor issued Feb. 16 announcing the state's lawsuit: "Texas has installed more wind power than any other state, and all but four countries."
Does Perry have it right?
Let's start with those other states.
According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), a trade group that tracks development in the industry, Texas has the largest installed wind capacity in the country. That means its wind projects are producing more power than any other state. As of 2009, Texas boasted 9,410 megawatts of it — enough to power about two million-some homes here.
Iowa has the second-largest installed wind capacity with 3,670 megawatts of power, followed by California, Washington state, and Minnesota.
In 2009, Texas installed the largest amount of new capacity with 2,292 megawatts of wind power, trailed this time by Indiana, Iowa, Oregon and Illinois.
So Texas is — sorry — blowing the competition out of U.S. waters.
How does the state fare worldwide? The Global Wind Energy Council, of which the AWEA is a member, reports the United States had an installed wind power capacity of 35,159 megawatts as of 2009. Germany had 25,777 megawatts, China had 25,104 megawatts, Spain had 19,149 megawatts and India had 10,926 megawatts.
Italy was the country with the sixth largest installed wind power capacity (4,850 megawatts) — just over half of Texas' capacity.
Not including the U.S., Texas had installed more wind power than any all but four countries. And more than any other state.
We rate Perry's statement as True.
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State Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Democratic candidate for attorney general, is trying to appeal across party lines with an eye toward the general election. He's portraying himself as a politician focused on principles rather than partisan warfare.The "About Dave" page on his campaign Web site says, "The Naples Daily News called him 'the real deal,' and Governor Charlie Crist has praised him as "a rock star." It does not explain the context or source for the Crist quote. Given how partisan politics have become, it's surprising to see such favorable comments from someone of the opposite party. So we wondered if the Republican governor really described a Democratic legislator and attorney in such favorable terms.
We found the quote in an April 19, 2007, post on the Miami Herald's Naked Politics blog titled, appropriately, "Aronberg is Crist's 'rockstar.' " Here's what it said:
"To be honest, about anything Sen. Aronberg does is important to me," Crist said when asked about Aronberg's proposal to revise state sex offender residency rules. "The guy is brilliant. He's a rockstar, and I have such great respect for him. And he's just a good, decent man. And almost everything I can think of that he's ever promoted or pushed has been something I'm able to support gladly."The "rock star" quote was repeated in several other articles, mostly in the Palm Beach Post. A May 14, 2007, Palm Beach Post article said: "After Crist gushed last month about Greenacres Democratic state Sen. Dave Aronberg ('The guy is brilliant. I mean, he's almost a rock star.'), Aronberg got a tape and planned to give it to his mom for Mother's Day."
You'll notice the Post version of the quote includes the qualifier "almost," but we listened to audio from the original Miami Herald interview and indeed Crist unequivocally says, "He's a rock star."The "rock star" quote even played a role in a debate among Republicans about whether to support Aronberg. A Palm Beach County-based lobbyist wanted to launch a Republican committee to endorse Aronberg "citing the Democrat as 'honest' and having 'integrity,' and invoking Crist's praise of Aronberg as a 'rock star,' " the Palm Beach Post reported July 19, 2008. Then party chair Jim Greer nixed the idea of the Republican party backing the Democrat.So Aronberg is correct. Crist sang his praises and put him on the big stage. We find his claim True.
UPDATE: This item was updated on March 6, 2010, because audio of the original quote shows Crist did not use "almost" as a qualifier.
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After winning the 2010 Republican nomination for governor, Gov. Rick Perry told supporters Tuesday that energized voters are upset at congressional spending.
In a wide-ranging speech, Perry specified two factors, saying: "Washington cannot hide from the fact that Congress hiked the national debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion. They cannot hide from the fact . . . that the budget that they’re going forward with has more than $5 trillion in debt in it over the next five years."
Do those debt numbers hold up?
Perry's campaign pointed us to news accounts of the U.S. House and Senate voting in January to raise the federal government’s debt limit to $14.3 trillion, a historic high adopted solely with Democratic votes in the Democrat-majority bodies. Proponents noted that the increase was needed to allow the government to continue borrowing and avoid default.
On Perry's reference to the federal debt increasing by $5 trillion over five years, his campaign pointed to a Feb. 1 article on President Barack Obama's proposed 2011 federal budget. The story says Obama's proposal would result in deficits of $5.08 trillion over five years.
Separately, Obama's proposed budget shows the nation's public debt increasing from $7.5 trillion in 2009, reflecting actions taken under President George W. Bush and the Congress that made budget decisions in 2008, to $13.1 trillion in 2014—potentially increasing $5.6 trillion. The debt increase from 2010 to 2015 is projected at $4.7 trillion.
Josh Gordon of The Concord Coalition, which advocates long-term fiscal responsibilty, cautioned that much of the current and immediately expected deficits are due to economic troubles and not White House or congressional actions. Gordon said it's typical for government to run a deficit during an economic downturn.
In the end, Obama’s proposed budget won’t sail through Congress; presidents (and governors) propose, lawmakers dispose. Still, Obama's proposal seems a reasonable basis for Perry’s debt claim.
The governor also is correct on the size of the increased federal debt limit.
We rate Perry's statement as True.
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In his annual State of the State address, Gov. Charlie Crist said Floridians are paying far less in property taxes than they used to."Property owners were seeing double-digit percentage increases in taxes levied prior to the beginning of my administration," Crist said on March 2, 2010. "Now, they have seen significant decreases over the past three years. Due to ... tax cuts and lower (property) values, 2009 property taxes were almost $3 billion below 2007 property taxes."Previously, we rated Crist's claim that he passed the largest tax cut in Florida history. In this item, we'll focus on whether the amount of property tax relief matches Crist's description. The relevant information to back up Crist's claim comes from a Senate committee hearing last month. In the meeting, James McAdams, the Department of Revenue's property tax oversight program director, gave an update on property tax collections across Florida.According to McAdams, Florida property taxes collected between 2007 and 2009 dropped by $2.28 billion, or 7.5 percent, the Associated Press reported.McAdams was unable to delineate how much of the drop was attributed to tax reforms implemented by the Legislature, and how much was a result of falling property values."I would classify that as dropping like a rock," said Senate Finance and Taxation Committee Chairman Thad Altman, R-Viera.Altman's comment prompted a response from Crist during his televised remarks in front of a joint session of the Legislature."Sen. Altman, we agree that does, indeed, qualify as 'dropping like a rock,' " Crist said.The Department of Revenue's 2009 annual report, meanwhile, included an even bigger reduction. The annual report said property tax collections fell from $31.04 billion in 2007, to $28.14 billion in 2009. That's a $2.9 billion decrease in three years. (See page 32 of the report).In his State of the State address, Crist said "2009 property taxes were almost $3 billion below 2007 property taxes." A report prepared for a Senate committee pegs the number at about $2.28 billion and the Department of Revenue's annual report pegs the number at $2.9 billion. With the qualifier "almost," that's close enough not to distort the broader point. We rate Crist's claim True.
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During his term as governor, Charlie Crist has pushed for new legislation to crack down on criminals. Now he says that effort has paid off with a decrease in violent crime.During his State of the State speech on March 2, 2010, Crist told a joint session of the Legislature: "With your help, during the first three years of my administration we made Florida a much safer place for our most vulnerable citizens. You enacted the Anti-Murder Act and improved the Jessica Lunsford Act, striking back at violent criminals and sexual predators of children. Fellow Floridians, I am happy to report we are now seeing a decrease in violent crime."To examine crime rates since he took office in January 2007, we turned to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Uniform Crime Reports. They showed that the violent crime rate per 100,000 dropped from 705.8 in 2006, the year before Crist took office, to 670.3 in 2008, the last year with full statistics. That's clearly a decrease, and matches a nationwide decline.For the first six months of 2009, the FDLE's semi-annual uniform crime reports showed a 9.7 percent drop in violent crime compared to 2008.The FBI's state-by-state report in 2008, "Crime in the United States," also showed drops in the violent crime rate in Florida per 100,000 people though with slightly different numbers: 722.6 in 2007 to 688.9 in 2008. We are not addressing whether the laws Florida legislators passed directly led to a lower violent crime rate -- that's often a matter of debate among criminal justice experts. But the most recent crime reports do show a decrease in violent crime per capita between 2006 and 2008 and that trend appears to have continued in 2009. We rate this claim True.
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President Barack Obama has repeatedly said that he plans to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule, which prevents openly gay and lesbian people from serving in the military.
But so far, no go.
Meet the Press
host David Gregory asked Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, who chairs the Senate's Armed Services Committee, whether Obama would follow through on his promise.
"I think he will and he can," Levin said on the program on Oct. 11, 2009. "I think it has to be done in the right way, which is to get a buy-in from the military, which I think is now possible. Other militaries in the West, the British and other Western armies, have ended this discriminatory policy. We can do it successfully."
Before we dig into Levin's claim that other Western countries have already repealed similar policies, some background: On the campaign trail, Obama wrote an open letter to the LGBT — lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — community, stating that, as president, he would "bring about real change for all LGBT Americans." Chief among his efforts would be a repeal of the military's rule, one that was put into place during the Clinton administration.
That's easier said than done, however. Obama cannot simply undo "don't ask, don't tell" — it must be repealed by Congress. So, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in March 2009 that the administration was not actively pursuing a rule change, we gave Obama a
Stalled
on our Obameter for his promise to overturn the policy.
The issue was back in the news Oct. 11 when Obama spoke at a gathering of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. He told the group: "I'm working with the Pentagon, its leadership and the members of the House and Senate on ending this policy."
Levin hopes the policy will change. To underscore his optimism, he pointed out that the United States wouldn't be the first country to repeal laws banning gays from the military.
Australia ended its ban on homosexuals in the military in 1992, as did Canada.
Levin is also right that Britain does not prohibit gays and lesbians from serving. Its ban was lifted in 2000, when the European Court of Human Rights settled a two-year legal battle involving four homosexual service members.
All told, at least 25 Western countries have no ban on gays and lesbians in the military, according to the Palm Center, a public policy think tank associated with the University of California at Santa Barbara. As of June 2009, that list includes Germany, Austria, Spain, Finland and France.
So, Levin is correct that other Western countries, including Britain, have ended policies that prevent gays and lesbians from serving openly. We give him a True.
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Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., recently wrote an opinion piece for the Capitol Hill newspaper
Roll Call
in which he said, "Insurance companies have seen their profits soar by more than 400 percent since 2001, while premiums for consumers have doubled." We address the first part of this statement in another
item
; we'll take up the second half here.
The 2009 Employer Health Benefits Survey, published by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, is considered the definitive source for health benefits cost information, and its data stretch from 1999 to 2009. (Even though Rockefeller didn't explicitly say it, we'll assume he was talking about the period since 2001 when he made this assertion.)
In 2001, average annual premiums for single people were $2,689, a number that rose to $4,824 by 2008 — a 79 percent increase. The amounts for family coverage rose over the same period from $7,061 to $13,375 — an 89 percent increase.
So, in neither case did the cost of benefits actually double, although they are in the ballpark. However, if you read Rockefeller's language closely, he did say, "premiums for consumers have doubled" — and if you use the data for the employee-paid portion of health benefits by itself, he's right.
For individuals, the employee cost rose from $355 to $779 and for families it rose from $1,787 to $3,515. The former jump is easily double, while the latter is just shy of double. Using this calculation, Rockefeller is right. We rate his assertion True.
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In his new film,
Capitalism: A Love Story
, Michael Moore makes a case that the richest Americans used to shoulder a much bigger portion of the tax burden back in the years of his childhood.
In the 1950s, "A lot of people got rich — and they had to pay a top tax rate of 90 percent," Moore says in the film.
Considering that the top marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans today is 35 percent, that figure seems astounding. But it's true that in the 1950s, the top
marginal
tax rates were over 90 percent.
So does that mean that someone in 1955 making a half million dollars had to fork over $450,000 of it to Uncle Sam? No.
We are talking here about "marginal" tax rates. Moore doesn't go out of his way to explain this, so we will. The marginal tax rate is the top rate of income tax charged to individuals on their last dollar of earnings. So in 1955, for example, when the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent, that was the tax rate owed on a person's income over $300,000. That person would, however, pay 20 percent on the first $2,000 of income; 21 percent on the next $2,000 in income; 24 percent on the next $2,000 and graduated on up to the highest rate. On average, a person making, say, $500,000 would pay substantially less than 90 percent of their income in federal taxes.
The top marginal tax rates peaked in 1952 and 1953 at 92 percent for income over $300,000.
Bob Williams of the Tax Policy Center did some math for us to give this some perspective.
In 1952 and 1953, Williams said, when the top income tax rate was 92 percent for income over $300,000, a person would have to make waaaay more than $300,000 to actually end up paying an average of 90 percent of their income. According to Williams, someone would have to make $2,328,400, and therefore pay $2,095,560, to get to that 90 percent threshold.
But people with income of less than $2.3 million — remember we're talking about 1952 and 1953 — would have paid, on average, something less than 90 percent, and perhaps much less.
Still, Moore's point is valid. The top marginal tax rates paid by the richest Americans were far higher in the 1950s than they are now. In 2009, the top marginal rate was 35 percent on income above $372,958. And although Moore didn't use the term "marginal tax rate," he did say "top tax rate." People without CPAs might mistake that for a person's average tax rate (it's not), but it's valid wording. And so we rule this one Mostly True.
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President Barack Obama's recent decision to halt plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe has opened the door for Republicans to rekindle an attack they've used before: that Democrats are weak on defense.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in a Sept. 23, 2009, speech to investors in Hong Kong, joined Fox talk show host Sean Hannity, Republican chairman Michael Steele, and others in attacking Obama for being too soft on defense.
"Though we are engaged in two wars and face a diverse array of threats, it is the defense budget that has seen significant program cuts and has actually been reduced from current levels!" she said.
She added, "the Defense Department received only one-half of 1 percent of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus package funding — even though many military projects fit the definition of 'shovel-ready.' " She went on to cite examples of defense projects that she said Obama wants to cut.
We recently examined a claim by Hannity that Obama has cut defense spending (we found it Half True), but we wanted to see if Palin was right that a tiny sliver of stimulus spending will go toward defense projects.
The total cost of the stimulus, known officially as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, is $787 billion.
According to the Defense Department, $7.4 billion will be spent on defense projects when the spending from the economic stimulus package is all said and done. That works out to slightly less than 1 percent of its total cost. That's slightly higher than Palin's "one-half of 1 percent," but still very much in the ballpark.
The White House says that the $7.4 billion for the military in the stimulus bill comes on top of an already increased military budget (indeed, when we checked Hannity's claim, we found that Obama increased defense spending 3.9 percent from 2009 to 2010, while the budgeted amount for future years would essentially be flat). And the goal of the package was to directly stimulate the economy.
So Palin's underlying point that Obama is going soft on defense is a bit of a stretch. The amount of defense spending in the stimulus bill is not a good measurement of the administration's overall commitment in that area. But she is correct that defense was a small portion of the stimulus and her number is off only slightly. So we find her statement to be Mostly True.
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In response to a new Democratic proposal to overhaul immigration laws, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith noted that a large number of illegal immigrants have jobs in the United States and suggested that one way to reduce the unemployment rate would be to free up those jobs for citizens and legal immigrants. Smith, R-San Antonio, said the illegal immigrants hold 8 million jobs, according to a news release distributed Dec. 15. Arguing against the Democrats’ proposal to provide millions of immigrants a path to citizenship, Smith says U.S. policies should “put American workers, American taxpayers, and American citizens first, not those who are in the country illegally. This is the kind of legislation that foreign governments would promote, not the U.S. Congress.” He added that “allowing millions of illegal immigrants to stay and take jobs away from citizens and legal immigrants is like giving a burglar a key to the house. Illegal immigrants currently occupy 8 million jobs. Those stolen jobs rightfully belong to citizens and legal immigrants.” Leaving aside the question of whether any of those jobs were "stolen" from their rightful owners, we wondered whether Smith's 8 million figure — about the same as the population of Virginia — was correct. Do illegal immigrants hold that many jobs?
Smith’s source for the number is a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, Jeffrey Passel, who analyzed the relevant data for an April 2009 report, “A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States.” The Pew center is a research organization that seeks to “improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population.” Using March 2008 data, primarily from the U.S. Census Bureau, Passel estimated that the number of undocumented workers in the United States was 7.8 million, so Smith is clearly in the ballpark. But is it fair of the congressman to make his statement about jobs when the data refers to workers? Passel said yes. We found a wrinkle, though. Economic conditions have changed since March 2008. Smith’s statement suggests that the 8 million is a current figure, but the data used for that estimate are more than 20 months old. Since then, millions of people have lost their jobs, including many undocumented immigrants. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate for March 2008 was 5.1 percent; that figure has skyrocketed, to 10 percent, in December 2009. That month, more than 15 million people were without jobs. Immigrants have been hit harder in the economic downturn. The unemployment rate for immigrants, without regard to their citizenship status, has gone up faster than that of natives, Passel said. With huge job losses across all demographic groups, Passel said the number of employed illegal immigrants has most likely dropped. Passel suggested that today the number is closer to 7 million. So Smith is right that millions of jobs are held by illegal immigrants. Yet by citing numbers that were 20 months old, he didn't account for conditions that have caused some of those jobs to disappear. We find his claim Mostly True.
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Hair-care mogul Farouk Shami of Houston thinks "Made in the U.S.A. is the strongest brand in the world," and by promising to create new jobs, he's hoping to win the governorship.
As a head-start, "he just brought 1,200 jobs to Texas by moving his factories here from China," according to his Nov. 23 TV ad.
We decided to follow-up on one of his biggest talking points.
The Palestinian-born businessman, seeking the Democratic nomination in the March 2 primary, has created a $1 billion manufacturing company that makes CHI hair irons and BioSilk shampoo, among hair products.
Shami cut the ribbon on his new Houston facility CHI USA in late July 2009. Earlier that month, he announced he was moving to Houston overseas production of his hand-held products, like hair irons, and in the process bringing more than 1,000 jobs to that city.
But contrary to his ad, those jobs were created as a result of moving production from South Korea, not China, campaign director and senior strategist Vince Leibowitz said.
"That was a miscommunication within our campaign over where those jobs were cut, and unfortunately we got the incorrect information to the talented people who put together our television ad," Leibowitz said. Democratic media firm Devine Mulvey produced the spot.
As of Jan. 11, the campaign had changed its commercial to mention only the shift of jobs from Korea. The change happened after our inquiry. Still, on the same day we found the incorrect China reference in a video of the ad (shown to the right) on Shami's Web site, and on the site's homepage.
Elizabeth Yong, public relations manager for Houston-based Farouk Systems Group, said CHI USA produces "five to 10" of a total 61 hair care tools, including the original flat iron.Yong said bringing all production stateside will take two years, though "more than 1,000" jobs have already been shifted. Last July, the company said it hopes to shift 4,000 jobs to Texas by 2012, starting with the move of 1,000 jobs from South Korea and China.
Leibowitz said that some jobs have been created as a result of relocating production from China, but not the ones advertised as part of Shami's campaign.
Perhaps Shami deserves a back slap for admitting his mistake and reworking his ad. Still, incorrect information was left online. We rule his claim Half True.
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Marc Katz, the Austin deli owner running for lieutenant governor, lists health care as his No. 1 campaign issue on his Web site. So it's no surprise that he took a shot at highlighting Texas' struggling mental health system on Twitter.
"Texas is LAST (50th) in spending for mental health care," he said in a message on Twitter on Dec. 8.
We wanted to know the source for Katz's claim, but he didn't respond to our phone calls or email. We assume Katz was referring to data published by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation for fiscal 2006, which tallied mental health care spending for the District of Columbia and the 50 states. Texas was indeed ranked 50th for spending — per capita — though that was second to last.
Spending $34.57 per Texan, the state squeaked ahead of New Mexico, which spent $25.58 and ranked 51st. Florida came in third from last at $38.17, and the national average was $103.53.
When you look at total dollars spent, Texas ranked 10th in 2006, spending about $805 million.
Aware of the state's shortcomings in health care services, Texas legislators allocated $55 million in 2009 to be distributed during the next year (half of it has been already) to expand services at local mental health centers, and through August this year, community mental health centers will receive another $341.8 million in state money through the Department of State Health Services.
Twitter sometimes leads to clunky writing because items are limited to 140 characters per tweet. In this case, though, Katz sliced information to give it more impact. Sure, he was only off by one state, but that was the difference between Texas ranking last and not, an important detail when you're showing Texas' rank in ALL CAPS. We rank Katz's statement Mostly True.
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Senators love to boast about their voting records, and Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, is no exception. During a weekly conference call with Iowa reporters, Grassley was asked about his re-election prospects this year. "I'm going to have tough competition," he said of his three opponents. "Even though there's suggestions at the national level that this could be a very Republican year, I can't assume that it's going to be a very Republican year. And I'm going to have to campaign very, very hard. ... For instance, I haven't missed a vote since 1993. I hope I don't have to miss any votes this year because of a campaign." Has Grassley really been so steadfast? We had to limit our investigation to roll call votes; in the Senate, less controversial bills or amendments are frequently adopted by unanimous consent or by voice vote, meaning members simply say "aye" or "nay." First, we turned to Congressional Quarterly , a publication that annually studies lawmakers' voting records. According to CQ 's Web site, Grassley has had a flawless voting record since 1993. The Washington Post also compiles similar information, and we found that Grassley hasn't been absent for a vote since he missed four votes on July 14, 1993. (Those votes pertained to a bill that would allow federal employees to participate in the political process so long as it was done outside of work.) What kept Grassley from the Senate floor that day in 1993? Flooding in Iowa, according to the Des Moines Register, noting that the senator has become "the iron man of the Senate racking up ... 5,700 consecutive votes." Indeed, as an average, Grassley has voted about 99.6 percent of the time since he took office in 1981. Other senators elected at the same time cannot tout such near-perfect records. For example, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has, on average, voted 93 percent of the time in the last 28 years, first as a Republican then as a Democrat. And Sen. Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, has voted on average about 90.7 percent of the time. Grassley has gone to great lengths to maintain his record. When, for example, a blizzard threatened Washington, D.C., on the eve of a crucial health care overhaul vote on Dec. 19, 2009, Grassley spent the night in his office to make sure he didn't miss it. "Bc of potential blizzard I've come to office to sleep," he Tweeted the night of the 18th. "Vote at 720am vote Sat. Hv not missed vote 7/93. 5700 votes consecutive." Grassley said he hadn't missed a vote since 1993, which is certainly correct for every recorded vote. Grassley has every right to brag. We give him a True.
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The man running Gov. Charlie Crist's campaign for U.S. Senate is bragging that Crist set a fundraising record in 2009.
"In our first quarter we broke the record for fundraising in a U.S. Senate race in Florida," Crist campaign manager Eric Eikenberg wrote Dec. 18 in a campaign update to supporters. "And we have met our goals time and again thanks to many of you who have invested in the Governor's message and vision of commonsense conservative leadership."
Crist raised $4.37 million between May 12 and June 30, 2009, according to federal election campaign documents .
Is that a record for a single reporting period?
To check, we turned to the two most trusted repositories of federal campaign finance information -- the government-run Federal Elections Commission and the nonpartisan, not-for-profit Center for Responsive Politics.
According to them, Florida's overall Senate fundraising benchmark was set in 2006 by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. Nelson raised a little more than $18 million for his re-election campaign against Republican Katherine Harris.
But his best quarter -- from January through March 2006 -- netted only $2.82 million, according to FEC records .
Crist's number crushes that mark.
Other than Nelson, former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez seemed to be a possible state recordholder. But Martinez's biggest haul was only $1.7 million , from January through March 2004. He repeated the feat again from April through June 2004.
Martinez ended up raising a little more than $12 million for the 2004 election, slightly more than Democratic opponent Betty Castor in that cycle.
No one else comes close to Crist's quarter fundraising total, records show.
Crist raked in $4.37 million in his first campaign fundraising quarter and has raised $6.89 million through September. Nelson raised $6.53 million for his entire 2000 race, compared with $8.66 million for that year's GOP candidate, Bill McCollum. In the 1998 campaign between Crist and former Sen. Bob Graham, the candidates combined to raise about $7 million.
Crist's take from May 12 to June 30 is the largest three-month gain for any Senate candidate in Florida history. We rate the Crist campaign claim True.
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After the New Orleans Saints squeaked by with an overtime win over the hapless Washington Redskins on Dec. 6, 2009, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was apparently feeling pretty confident about his undefeated Saints.
"I'm predicting we'll go, not only undefeated, but all the way through the Super Bowl -- something that's never been done before," Jindal said in an interview with radio station WWL in New Orleans the day after the game. "I think the Saints are going to set a national record right here."
Clearly, Jindal, who has been talked about as a presidential contender, has not seen the annual -- some would say obnoxious -- champagne celebration by some members of the 1972 Dolphins after the last undefeated NFL team falls. Led by coach Don Shula and quarterback Bob Griese, that Dolphins team laid claim to the first and only "perfect season," going 14-0 in the regular season and then going on to win the Super Bowl.
"With all due respect to Governor Jindal, our fans in Louisiana and elsewhere will be disappointed to learn that he forgot about the most accomplished team in NFL history -– the 1972 'Perfect Season' Miami Dolphins," Harvey Greene, the team’s senior vice president of media relations, wrote in an e-mail to
Politico
, which detailed Jindal's misstep.
"We wish the Saints, and the Indianapolis Colts, who are also undefeated, the best of luck in their attempt to match our undefeated season, and we will be the first to congratulate either team if they accomplish that feat. But until then, we remain the only perfect team in NFL history, an achievement our players and coaches rightly are proud of."
That's the kind of measured response we might have expected from the Dolphins' front office.
But with the Saints still only 12-0 (they'd need to win four more regular season games and three playoff games to finish perfect), we think this smack talk from former Dolphins running back Mercury Morris, uttered when the New England Patriots made a run at a perfect season in 2007, is perhaps more appropriate: "Like I said, don't call me when you're in my town, call me when you're on my block and I see you next door moving your furniture in."
We're all for hometown boostering, especially from a guy like Gov. Jindal who said he suffered through the Saints' many bad years too, but we're all about the facts here, and he fumbled this one. We rate his statement False.
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Some Republican critics have scoffed at President Barack Obama's pronouncements that the economy seems to be improving, pointing to the unemployment rate, which keeps going up.
But Obama has consistently tempered his hopeful words about positive economic indicators with warnings that unemployment rates are likely to continue to rise for a while, even as the economy improves.
"History tells us that job growth always lags behind economic growth," Obama said Nov. 6, 2009, in remarks in the White House Rose Garden.
"He's right about that," said William Beach, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's center for data analysis.
In the post-World War II era, there have been 10 recessions and after most of them, employment lagged a few months behind other improving economic indicators. But after the last two, in 1991 and 2001, unemployment rates continued to climb for more than a year.
Interestingly, Democrats criticized President George W. Bush regarding the 2001 "jobless recovery," much as some Republicans now criticize Obama for the current one.
The latest jobless recovery came as little surprise to economists who study such trends.
"Employers are hesitant to hire people back to the work force (after a recession) because they don't know if the economy is going to continue to grow, which is understandable," Beach said.
But more importantly, he said, the American economy has become increasingly reliant on service jobs, such as information and financial jobs. "Those jobs come back very slowly," Beach said.
The recession this time is even more severe, so Beach predicts this jobless recovery will last even longer than past recessions.
"I don't think we'll see jobs coming back for a long time," Beach said.
But even without government meddling, Beach believes employment was destined to lag.
The
San Francisco Chronicle
, relying on numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August charted the lag between recessions' end and the peak of unemployment rates. In the eight recessions between 1949 and 1991, unemployment rates lagged by an average of about three months. After the last two, however, it took 15 months and 19 months, respectively, before unemployment rates peaked.
Bottom line, President Obama is right when he cautions that employment has lagged behind economic recovery in the past. And so we rate his statement True.
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A day after the GOP released its 219-page alternative health care bill, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, sent out a press release boasting that the "the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now confirms that families will see their health care premiums reduced by up to 10 percent."
Lowering health care costs -- rather than reducing the ranks of the uninsured -- has been the primary focus of many Republicans in Congress, and so we wanted to check out Pence's claim.
First, a few words about the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO. The nonpartisan budget agency calculates how much bills in Congress will cost the government. Political leaders and others regularly turn to the CBO as the definitive source for budget projections.
And here's what the CBO concluded about how the GOP health care plan would affect private health insurance premiums:
• For the small group market (generally businesses with two to 50 employees -- about 15 percent of the private market), the GOP plan would reduce average premiums in 2016 by 7 to 10 percent compared with amounts under current law.
• For the individual market (just over 5 percent of the private market), the GOP plan would reduce premiums in 2016 by 5 to 8 percent.
• And for the large group market (which represents 80 percent of private premiums), the GOP plan would reduce premiums in 2016 by 0 to 3 percent.
The CBO cautioned that those estimates are "very preliminary and are subject to an unusually high degree of uncertainty" because of the difficulty in trying to untangle how various proposals in the plan might affect premiums.
But you can see what Pence has done. The Indiana congressman cherry-picked the most favorable number to put the GOP plan in the best light. Yes, for people in the small market group, the CBO estimates they could see average premiums reduced in 2016 by "up to 10 percent" compared with amounts under current law. But only 15 percent of the total private premiums fall into that category. The overwhelming majority, 80 percent of people paying private premiums, are in the large market group. And for them, the CBO estimates the GOP plan would reduce premiums in 2016 by 0 to 3 percent. But Pence did say "up to," providing himself with some very broad wiggle room. And so we rate Pence's statement Half True.
https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/a2bc5368-e052-449d-b9e1-d63c5904a6fb
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