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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 clai
Jobs. They drive the economy and provide the fuel for many political speeches.
PolitiFact and PolitiFact Georgia found employment numbers to check last week in the State of the County address by Lee May, interim CEO of DeKalb County, and in a major policy address by 2016 presidential hopeful Jeb Bush.
May was touting his efforts to boost public safety employees and other jobs. Bush, the former governor of Florida, was lamenting that “six years after the recession ended, median incomes are down, households are, on average, poorer, and millions of people have given up looking for work altogether.”
PolitiFact scribes also truth-tested the headline of 2012 story making the rounds on social media today. It is the claim that helped spur the anti-vaccination movement, despite being repeatedly debunked: Childhood shots contain mercury, a powerful neurotoxin with no safe level of use.
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Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.
Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
Mike Adams on Tuesday, February 10th, 2015 in a story making the rounds on social media
Mercury is used in vaccines, and there is no safe level of mercury.
With a measles outbreak sprouting in 14 states, and Georgia reporting its first case in almost three years, vaccine opponents are reviving claims about the dangers of vaccines against the disease in newsfeeds across the country.
An alert reader was skeptical of one Facebook post, reviving a 2012 story that purports to list “10 outrageous (but true) facts.”
It starts with the claim that helped spur the anti-vaccination movement, despite being repeatedly debunked: Childhood shots contain mercury, a powerful neurotoxin with no safe level of use.
There has been debate in the scientific community about removing a mercury compound from some vaccines. But the science has always been clear that there is no evidence that compound causes harm.
Bluntly, vaccines help, not hurt.
And if you still don’t believe that? Consider that the recipe in question — that is, the series of shots recommended for childhood immunization — does not include the ingredient singled out as the problem.
Any claims to the contrary muddy what should be a simple issue.
We rated the claim by Adams Pants On Fire.
Lee May on Thursday, January 22nd, 2015 State of the County address
DeKalb County has graduated five police academies and three fire academies to help reach its ambitious hiring goals in both departments.
Public safety is one of the top issues voters cite when creating new cities.
So it’s no surprise that interim CEO Lee May would highlight growth in the police and fire departments in DeKalb County – where four new towns are being discussed on the neighborhood and legislative levels.
“Since taking on this position, we have graduated five police academies and three fire academies,” May said during his recent State of the County address. “This is proving to make our neighborhoods safer places for our children and families to grow.”
The claim would put DeKalb on pace to reach an ambitious goal May laid out in Fall 2013: Hire 160 police officers and 100 firefighters every year for three years to halt the hemorrhage of public safety workers that hurt the morale of workers and taxpayers.
Those five police academies resulted in 151 hires, or 94 percent of the department’s annual goal. But as of Feb. 1, DeKalb had 859 sworn officers out of 1,060 authorized sworn positions. The fire department met its first year goal.
We rated May’s statement Mostly True.
Jeb Bush on Wednesday, February 4th, 2015 in a speech in Detroit
“Millions of people have given up looking for work altogether.”
Jeb Bush, the former Republican governor of Florida and a 2016 presidential hopeful, recently used a major policy address to criticize the economic performance of President Barack Obama.
“Six years after the recession ended, median incomes are down, households are, on average, poorer, and millions of people have given up looking for work altogether,” Bush told the Detroit Economic Club on Feb. 4, 2015.
We’ve already fact checked a similar claim about median incomes being down ( we rated it True), but we wondered whether Bush is correct that “millions of people have given up looking for work altogether.”
Bush’s staff pointed us to two Bureau of Labor Statistics data points — persons who are “marginally attached to the labor force” and “discouraged workers.”
These two measurements are similar, but slightly different.
One meets Bush’s “millions” threshold at 2.26 million, and one does not. But despite some uncertainty over the definitions and the scope of the data, economists told PolitiFact that Bush is on reasonably safe ground in making this claim.
We rated Bush’s statement Mostly True.
Interim DeKalb CEO Lee May in the State of the County address January 23rd, 2015
In the past year, DeKalb has “attracted and retained more than 2,300 jobs.”
DeKalb County has “attracted and retained more than 2,300 jobs” in the last year, interim CEO Lee May told business and community leaders during his State of the County address last month.
PolitiFact Georgia wondered, could the county often in the news for corruption allegations and political gridlock also be responsible for growing jobs? We decided to check.
May directed us to DeKalb Workforce Development, the local agency that provides “one-stop” education, training and employment programs under the federal Workforce Investment Act.
Sheryl Stone, Workforce’s director, said the program counts 2,341 people working for the year.
That would support May’s claim, except for hiccups with the counts themselves.
In one category of jobs, the program counts part-time jobs as equal to those with full-time hours (which the county considers after only 32 hours).In another, it lists workers without knowing how many jobs are being done. Without more data, which the county does not collect, we don’t know what is happening.
Overall, the statement appears to be mostly right, except for problems the county acknowledges with the jobs count.
We rated May’s statement Mostly True.
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