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Truth-O-Meter rulings
The goal of the Truth-O-Meter is to reflect the relative accuracy of a statement.
The meter has six ratings, in decreasing level of truthfulness:
TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
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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.
Georgia scored a major coup recently with its selection as the new headquarters of Mercedes-Benz USA. So PolitiFact Georgia got behind the wheel to fact-check a claim that pocketbook issues helped convince company officials to leave New Jersey after 50 years.
Gov. Nathan Deal was still gushing.
“The Mercedes slogan is “the best or nothing. The company that accepts nothing but the best chose Georgia,” he said during the first State of the State of his new second term.
Fact-checkers also looked at claims last week about wages and about a special delivery from the post office you won’t believe.
Abbreviated versions of this week’s fact checks are below. Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
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Mark Drewniak on Tuesday, January 6th, 2015 in a press interview:
Mercedes said high taxes and the cost of doing business in New Jersey worked to Georgia’s advantage in landing the company’s USA corporate headquarters.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s spokesman said his state could not effectively compete against Georgia in the battle over the Mercedes-Benz USA corporate headquarters.
“Mercedes USA made one thing very clear about its decision to leave (New Jersey) : the cost of doing business and the tax environment is just too high here to be competitive with a state like Georgia,” Michael Drewniak told The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record on Jan. 6.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation rates New Jersey as the state with the worst overall business tax climate, Georgia 36th.
And on specific taxes: Georgia’s corporate tax rate is 6 percent, New Jersey’s 9 percent, for example.
John Boyd, principal of the Boyd Company Inc., a New Jersey-based site selection consultant, predicted the move to Fulton County will reduce Mercedes-Benz’s costs, including labor and property taxes, by about 20 percent.
We don’t begin to know all the costs that were taken into consideration, given both states staying mum on incentives and all the costs associated with running a major corporation.
We rated the statement by Mark Drewniak as True.
Viral Facebook post on Monday, January 12th, 2015:
“In 1913, it was legal to mail children.”
A viral claim making the rounds on social media conjures up images of babies bouncing around in mail bags and wayward teenagers being stamped and shipped “special delivery” to grandma and grandpa down on the farm.
“In 1913, it was legal to mail children,” says the Facebook post, complete with pictures of “mailed” children.
Nancy Pope, a historian and curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, told us there were “a handful” of children who were “mailed” after the Postal Service created the parcel post service in 1913.
These children, for the most part, were sent short distances, not across the country or internationally, Pope said. They also were typically delivered personally to their destination by a rural letter carrier — someone well-known and trusted in the community, considered on par with a member of the local clergy, she said.
But was it ever officially legal to mail a child? No, Pope said.
“The law did not specifically address (mailing children) when parcel post began Jan. 1, 1913, because nobody thought anybody would do such a stupid thing,” she said.
A year later, when a few children had been “mailed” and made the news, the postmater general declared all human beings were barred from being mailed, Pope said.
We rated the Facebook post Mostly False.
Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday, January 7th, 2015 in a speech at the AFL-CIO National Summit on Raising Wages:
The average family not in the top 10 percent makes less money today than they were making a generation ago.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. says the bottom 90 percent of earners in America have a lower income than they had more than 30 years ago.
The statistic comes from data compiled by well-known economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, who study income inequality. Their World Top Incomes Database specializes in cataloging the highest level of incomes over time in more than 20 countries.
According to one measurement, the bottom 90 percent of American earners had a lower income in 2012 than they had 30 years ago.
By other measurements — mainly ones that include government payments such as Social Security — incomes have grown across the board. However, this data still supports Warren’s overall point that income inequality is growing.
Additionally, given the context of her speech at a forum about wages, it makes sense that Warren would reference data that gives more weight to pre-tax income. She’s arguing that middle-class wages haven’t increased enough over the past couple decades.
We rate Warren’s claim Mostly True.
Gov. Nathan Deal in his State of the State speech on January 14th, 2015
Georgia is now the eighth most populous state in the nation, moving from the number 10 position in just four years.
Political junkies know that with more people comes, at the very least, more Congressional seats. Or, as Deal would have it, evidence that a state is creating jobs and drawing top talent from around the nation.
But looking at just the data, is Deal right on the numbers?
Deal was trying to make the point that there is a psychological impact that we are growing, that shows people there is a reason to be here.
The governor was off on the state’s ranking four years ago. But he is right about where the state’s population is now – and how that population can tie to jobs.
We rate Deal’s statement Mostly True.
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