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How does PolitiFact Georgia’s Truth-O-Meter work?
Our goal is to help you find the truth in American politics. Reporters from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact-check statements by local, state and national political leaders, including lobbyists and interest groups. We then rate them on the AJC Truth-O-Meter.
To fact-check a claim, reporters first contact the speaker to verify the statement. Next, the research begins. Reporters consult a variety of sources, including industry and academic experts. This research can take hours or a few days or even longer, depending on the claim. Reporters then compile the research into story form and include a recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling.
The fact check then moves on to a panel of veteran editors who debate the statement and the reporter’s recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling. The panel votes on a final ruling; majority prevails.
PolitiFact’s non-partisan truth squad checked statements last week from four of the announced presidential candidates — Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Martin O’Malley — and found flaws with them all.
Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.
Full versions can be found at www.myajc.com/s/news/politifact/.
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Bernie Sanders on Wednesday, October 28th, 2015 in a speech
“It costs a hell of a lot more money to put somebody in jail than to send them to the University of Virginia.”
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders says society needs to figure out a way to focus more on educating people and less on throwing them behind bars.
Sanders told an Oct. 28 rally that it’s a simple matter of dollars and cents.
“It costs a hell of a lot more money to put somebody in jail than to send them to the University of Virginia,” Sanders said.
Warren Gunnels, the Sanders campaign policy director, sent us two figures to prove his point.
For the cost of imprisonment, Gunnels cited a statistic from the Federal Bureau of Prisons published in March that says the average cost of incarcerating federal inmates was $30,619 in fiscal 2014. For the cost of sending someone to U.Va., he pointed us to a “Tuition, Fees and Cost of Attendance” table on the school’s website.
The truth behind Sanders’ statement rests to some extent on the length of sentence for each prisoner and where they are held.
If their incarceration surpasses four years, then it easily could surpass the cost of sending a student to the University of Virginia. Also, if that prisoner is held in a state such as New York, with high state prisoner incarceration costs of roughly $60,000 annually, it also could outpace the cost of sending someone to U.Va.
We rated his claim Half True.
Donald Trump on Tuesday, November 17th, 2015 in an interview on Laura Ingraham’s radio show
The federal government is sending refugees to states with governors who are “Republicans, not to the Democrats.”
As growing numbers of governors were expressing opposition to the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their state, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump raised the ante in an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham.
Trump charged that the Obama administration is deliberately trying to resettle Syrian refugees in states with Republican governors while sparing states that have Democratic governors.
“They send them to the Republicans, not to the Democrats, you know, because they know the problems,” Trump said on Nov. 17, 2015. “In California, you have a Democrat as a governor (Jerry Brown). In Florida, you have Rick Scott (a Republican). So you know they send them to the Republicans because you know why would we want to bother the Democrats? It’s just insane. Taking these people is absolutely insanity.”
Is the administration sending refugees to Republican-led states but not Democratic ones? In a word, no.
The numbers show that Democratic-led states recently received almost as many refugees as — and by some calculations, even more refugees than — Republican-led states on a per capita basis.
We rated Trump’s statement Pants on Fire.
Democrat Martin O’Malley on Thursday, November 12th, 2015 in an interview with the Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith
“If we pass immigration reform, it will make wages go up on average $250 for the average household.”
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley recently said immigration reform would pay off for all Americans through their paychecks.
“If we pass immigration reform, it will make wages go up on average $250 for the average household,” he said during an interview.
O’Malley’s campaign press secretary, Haley Morris, said the governor got the $250 figure from a July 2013 White House report, published in support of a 2013 Senate immigration reform bill. That report, “The Economic Benefits of Fixing Our Broken Immigration System,” states that “in the long run, the Senate bill raises wages for all groups of workers by boosting productivity.”
The $250 figure O’Malley cites is certainly long term. It refers to a rise in wages between 2013 and 2033 – and doesn’t otherwise estimate year-by-year changes.
In the near term, the same analysis projects wages would dip slightly.
O’Malley’s statement contains an element of truth, but the wage-raising conclusion is misleading.
We rated it Mostly False.
Democrat Hillary Clinton on Thursday, November 19th, 2015 in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations
“The Libyan people have voted twice in free and fair elections for the kind of leadership they want.”
During the presidential race, any discussions about Hillary Clinton and Libya have typically focused on the deadly attack on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012.
But after a recent foreign policy speech, Clinton was asked about the success — or lack thereof — of democratization in Libya, a country ruled for decades by dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
“The Libyan people have voted twice in free and fair elections for the kind of leadership they want,” Clinton said in the Nov. 19, 2015, speech. “They have not been able to figure out how to prevent the disruptions that they are confronted with because of internal divides and because of some of the external pressures that are coming from terrorist groups and others.”
Even acknowledging that Clinton mentioned some of the problems with Libya’s democratization in the rest of her comments, she is spinning the facts of recent Libyan elections in the most favorable way. Security concerns kept some polling places closed, and the most recent election was punctuated by a mass shooting by Islamist attackers and the assassination of a leading human-rights advocate.
We rated Clinton’s statement Half True.
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