O'Reilly says no one on Fox raised issue of jail time for not paying health coverage penalties

"We researched to find out if anybody on Fox News had ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody's ever said it."
Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 in a segment on the Fox News show The O'Reilly Factor

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.


The provision made into the bill passed by the Senate in December 2009, and also into the final version of the law that was passed by both chambers and signed by President Barack Obama included the following: "In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure."

Now let's analyze O'Reilly's specific statement.

It turns out that several Fox shows did mention the possibility of jail time. Here are some examples:

• Paul Gigot, host of the Journal Editorial Reports, Oct. 3, 2009

"Democrats want to require you to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. But they don't want you to call it a tax. Under the Baucus bill, the so-called individual mandate would require everyone to buy health insurance or pay as much as a $1,900 fee. If you don't pay up, the IRS could punish you with a $25,000 fine or a year in jail."

• Andrew Napolitano, guest-hosting the Glenn Beck Program, Nov. 10, 2009

"For the first time in American history, if this bill becomes law, the feds will force you to buy insurance you might not want or may not need or cannot afford. If you don't purchase what the government tells you to buy, if you don't do so when they tell you to do it, if you don't buy just what they say is right for you, the government may fine you, prosecute you, and even put you in jail."

• Glenn Beck, on his Fox show, Nov. 12, 2009

"But if you don't play by their new rules on health care -- oh, here's a new little twist. Have you heard this? You're going to be looking at a fun little stint in jail."

Later in the show, Beck said, "And oh, yes, the potential jail time. If you don't have health insurance? Jail time. You heard Nancy Pelosi defend that portion of the bill just a few minutes ago. There has got to be some way to force everybody to have health care, right? It is jail."

So we found at least three cases in which hosts or guests brought up the possibility of people being jailed for not having health insurance.

O'Reilly said definitively that "nobody's ever said it" on the network, but also said that his staff had researched the question. So we are left to conclude that either his staff muffed its research or that O'Reilly trying to pull a fast one.


So Bill O'Reilly --- Are you Kidding?

E-mail claims 'In God We Trust' removed from dollar coins

On the new dollar coins, "'In God We Trust' is gone!"
Chain e-mail on Friday, February 5th, 2010 in a message circulated to many people

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

The e-mail has the standard ingredients of an Internet falsehood -- sloppy punctuation, an abundance of exclamation points, a plausible story ("I received one from the Post Office as change and I asked for a dollar bill instead"), a request to spread the e-mail far and wide ("Please send to all on your mailing list!!!") and screaming capital letters ("'IN GOD WE TRUST' IS GONE!!!") .

The people forwarding the e-mail included some snarky comments such as "Don't know anything about this, but it does not surprise me. Typical of todays government."

Each year the U.S. Mint releases new coins to honor four U.S. presidents in the order that they served. (For 2010, Presidents Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan and Lincoln are featured.) The law that authorized the coins called for the U.S. president to be on the front, the Statue of Liberty on the back, and, on the edge of the coin, the year of minting and the inscriptions "E Pluribus Unum" and "In God We Trust."

The law changed in 2007 and specified that "In God We Trust" appear on the front of the coin (the "heads" side) rather than the edge. That took effect with coins minted in 2009, starting with the release of the coin honoring President William Harrison. The U.S. Mint Web site says all of the subsequent coins will follow this design.

In God We Trust" also appears on the front of the Native American and Sacagawea dollars. Since 2009, all of the coins in the presidential series have had "In God We Trust" inscribed on the front.

Are you Kidding?

McCain's ultimate maverick move, denial

"I never considered myself a maverick."
John McCain on Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 in a comment on Newsweek magazine's Web site

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

He said he was a maverick so many times I don't have enough webspace to show them all. So here are 7 instances found:

• “If you want real reform and you want change, send a team of mavericks." -- campaign appearance in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sept. 6, 2008

• "And what 'maverick' really means, what this team of mavericks really means is we understand who we work for. We don't work for the party, and we don't work for a special interest, and we don't work for ourselves. We'll work for you and the American people." --campaign appearance in Lancaster, Pa., Sept. 9, 2008

• "Stand by, because change is coming. And real change is coming to Washington, D.C. And we're going to shake things up. And you've got a team of mavericks, a team of mavericks." -- campaign appearance in Lebanon, Ohio, Sept. 9, 2008

• "Can I just mention one other thing? You know there's now this going around that there's differences between myself and Sarah Palin. We're very close. We're both mavericks." -- interview with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity, Oct. 28, 2008

• "When two mavericks join up, we don't agree on everything, but that is a lot of fun." -- campaign appearance in Hershey, Pa., Oct. 28, 2008

• "We get along fine. Sarah is a maverick. I'm a maverick. No one expected us to agree on everything." -- interview with CNN's Larry King, Oct. 30, 2008

And finally:

• Worth the Fighting For: The Education of an American Maverick, and the Heroes Who Inspired Him -- book by John McCain and Mark Salter, published 2003


So John McCain --- Are you Kidding?

Obama didn't expand offshore drilling, Boehner says

"Obama did not open new lands to offshore drilling – all of these areas were already open for drilling once Congress and President Bush lifted the moratorium in 2008. Instead, President Obama yesterday announced what areas he would CLOSE to offshore drilling."
John Boehner on Monday, April 5th, 2010 in a news release posted on his website.

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Rep. John Boehner of Ohio is the leader of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Here are the basics of Obama's plan, which lasts from 2012 through 2017:

• The coasts of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and part of Florida's eastern seaboard will be open to "exploration, study and potential development."
• The northern coast of Alaska in the Chuckchi and Beaufort Seas will also be open to study and potential development.
• The Bristol Bay area off of the southern coast of Alaska in the North Aleutian Basin is now protected by a presidential memorandum until 2017.

March 31, when Obama announced that he would be allowing new drilling. Looking at his plan -- and the proposal Bush put on the dockets right before he left office -- it's clear that Obama decided to move forward on some parts of the Bush proposal, including drilling in the Atlantic, but scrap other parts, such as drilling in the Northeast and in Bristol Bay.

There is some truth to Boehner's assertion that Obama hasn't opened new areas to drilling given the Bush proposal that was already on the books. But he overlooked the patch of ocean in the eastern Gulf that was not part of Bush's plan and is in Obama's proposal. On his second point, Boehner is also on less than solid ground. Indeed, Bristol Bay -- which likely would have been leased for drilling under the Bush administration -- is closed to drilling, at least until 2017. But other areas not included in Obama's current five-year drilling plan, such as areas in the Pacific, are not technically closed; they're just unavailable for the time being.

So John Boehner --- Are you Kidding?

Schumer claims no one questioned that Sotomayor was out of the mainstream

"No one questioned that she (Judge Sotomayor) was out of the mainstream."
Charles Schumer on Sunday, April 11th, 2010 in ABC's "This Week"

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Charles Schumer is a Democrat senator from New York.

Direct your attention to a July 13, 2009, AP story under the headline, "Sessions: Sonia Sotomayor 'out of mainstream.'"

That's Sessions as in Sen. Jeff Sessions, the leading Judiciary Committee Republican. The AP wrote that just hours before Sotomayor's initial confirmation hearing, Sessions charged that Sotomayor is "out of the mainstream" of legal thinking and has a very activist judicial profile.

• In a press release issued Aug. 5, 2009, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., took issue with Sotomayor's ruling in a gun case, saying, it "shows an alarming hostility to law-abiding gun owners across the country. That is a view that is certainly out of the mainstream in this nation."

• In a press release issued Aug. 6, 2009, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said that at her confirmation hearing Sotomayor attempted to distance herself from several statements "and explain them away, most likely recognizing that they were controversial and out of the mainstream. However, in my mind, she was not very successful."

• In a statement released on Aug. 4, 2009, Grassley said Sotomayor "openly questioned whether 'ignoring our differences as women, men, or even people of color...we do a disservice both to the law and society.' This is yet another example of an out of the mainstream judicial philosophy."

• A June 29, 2009, story in Roll Call noted that talking points prepared for House and Senate Republicans urged members to make the case that Sotomayor's written statements, rulings and speeches "show an out of the mainstream view of the role of a judge."

Perhaps Schumer meant "hardly anyone" claimed Sotomayor was out of the mainstream. But Schumer's absolute claim that "no one questioned that she was out of the mainstream" isn't accurate. "Out of the mainstream" is a subjective term, but the fact is that a number of Republican senators used that exact phrase. Schumer's statement is False.

So Charles Schumer --- Are you Kidding?

Beck says labor leader is most frequent White House visitor

Labor union president Andy Stern is "the most frequent visitor" at the White House.
Glenn Beck on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 in his Fox News Channel show

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

When the White House released its first batch of visitor logs on Oct. 30, 2009, as part of a pledge to bring more transparency to the White House, Stern's name did indeed appear 22 times, more than anyone else listed.

But that's not the whole story.

Stern led the pack for the first data release, which covered visits from Jan. 20, 2009 to July 31, 2009. But he was surpassed by several other individuals in the second release, which updates the data through Aug. 31, 2009 (and which was made public more than a week before Beck aired his comment).

Among those who visited more frequently than Stern, according to the combination of the two logs, were Lewis (Lee) Sachs, counselor to Treasury Secetary Timothy Geithner, with 92 visits; associate attorney general Tom Perrelli, with 49; Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski with 47; Spencer Overton, principal deputy assistant attorney general, with 38; and Health and Human Services office of health reform director Jeanne Lambrew, with 27. (Stern visited twice more during the period covered by the second batch of data, giving him a total of 24 visits.)

Another complication is that the first batch of data -- covering the period from Jan. 20, 2009, to July 31, 2009, which found Stern in the lead -- is not a complete accounting of White House visits during that period. It only includes data for visitors whose names were first requested by the public. If no one requested a specific name, that name would not appear in the database. So there's no way of knowing whether Stern actually had the most visits for that period; he simply had the most of anyone whose name was requested by the public. (All records dated after Sept. 15, 2009, will be released, the White House says, with exceptions for issues of national security, personal safety and a few other caveats.)

So, while Beck did pass along a widely reported finding as he made his point about Stern, the data it was based on was incomplete and out of date by the time of his show, and ultimately the conclusion he drew was incorrect.

So Glenn Beck --- Are you Kidding?

Bush's tax cuts biggest contributor to the budget deficit

Bush's tax cuts for high earners "have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit."
Nancy Pelosi on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 in during a news conference

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Tax cuts for rich not biggest deficit factor

The Tax Policy Center calculated what share of the federal tax changes each income bracket gained from the Bush tax cuts. The top 5 percent of earners (those making about $225,000 or more) received 30.5 percent of the tax benefits in 2008, according to their analysis. But conversely, the bottom 95 percent of tax payers got 70 percent. Zoom out from the top 5 percent to the top 20 percent, and their share is 47.8 percent. Critics of the Bush tax cuts can call that disproportionate, but it's still less than half and therefore not "the biggest."

All of this indicates that Pelosi is mistaken. Although the wealthy did get big benefits from the Bush tax cuts, their benefits did not outweigh those of everyone else put together.

Certainly tax cuts for high earners have increased the deficit. Pelosi might have made a more convincing case if she had said high earners received a disproportionate benefit from the Bush tax cuts.

But Pelosi said tax cuts for "the high end" were the "biggest" contributor to the federal deficit. Looking at the numbers from a bunch of different angles and found no evidence that tax cuts for the wealthy are larger than those of everyone else combined. In fact, all the numbers we looked at showed that tax cuts for middle and lower incomes represent a bigger slice of the overall revenue pie. The evidence directly contradicts her.


So Nancy Pelosi --- Are you Kidding?

Howard Dean says U.S. is only democracy without universal health care

"Every other democracy in the world has a health care system that covers everybody, and we don't."
Howard Dean on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 in remarks on NBC's Meet the Press

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Howard Dean was chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The former governor of Vermont ran for president in 2004

It is true that most, if not all, industrialized democracies in Western Europe have systems that experts consider universal coverage, as do wealthier countries such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. But other democracies fall short, according to international statistics.

While dozens of countries are classified as democracies, Examine a few that are large and have been politically stable in recent years.

India. In the cities, and especially for families with means, the medical care ranks among the best in the world. But hundreds of millions of Indians are desperately poor, and about three-quarters live in rural villages. For these Indians, health care is sporadic and substandard.

Mexico. The United States' southern neighbor has a constitution that guarantees universal health care, and observers credit the Mexican government with launching Seguro Popular, a federal program that targets the uninsured. For better-off Mexicans, health insurance and facilities are similar to what is found in richer nations. But in practice, the Mexican system falls short of universal coverage.

Turkey. The other OECD nation besides the United States to fall short of full coverage is Turkey. The most recent statistics, from 2003, show that 67.2 percent of Turks were covered. A 2008 report by the U.S. Library of Congress found that "the rural population is poorly served by the health care system" and that "workers in Turkey’s large informal economic sector generally lack health coverage."

A spokeswoman said that the former governor "simply misspoke. He meant to say, as he has for years, that every other industrialized democracy" has universal coverage. If Dean had said that, he'd probably be right. But on Meet the Press , he didn't.

So Howard Dean --- Are you Kidding?

Mitch McConnell says financial regulation is bailout of Wall Street

New financial regulation "actually guarantees future bailouts of Wall Street banks."
Mitch McConnell on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 in a press conference

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Bank bailouts not in bill, but liquidation is

The financial regulations under consideration in the Senate do a number of things: The government receives additional authority to regulate over-the-counter derivatives and hedge funds. A new consumer protection agency within the Federal Reserve will regulate financial products. And the bill creates a process for federal authorities to dissolve financial institutions that are teetering on collapse.

It's that last item that got McConnell's attention. He said the bill was "taking that experience in the fall of 2008 and institutionalizing it, setting up in perpetuity the potential for additional taxpayer bailouts of large institutions."

If a "systematically significant" firm is teetering on collapse, the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve would have to agree to liquidate the firm, using a special fund created with payments from the largest financial firms. The FDIC "shall impose assessments on a graduated basis, with financial companies having greater assets being assessed at a higher rate," according to the legislation.

It clearly states that the intention is to liquidate failing companies, not bail them out. To do that, it creates a fund with contributions from financial firms, not from taxpayer funds. There is not any element of the bill that expressly permits ongoing, "endless" outlays from the federal treasury. McConnell is using seriously overheated rhetoric. Nothing in the bill "guarantees" future bailouts of Wall Street banks.

So Mitch McConnell --- Are you Kidding?

Alleged Obama birth certificate from Kenya is a hoax

Birthers have obtained a copy of Obama's Kenyan birth certificate.
Orly Taitz on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 in an attachment to a lawsuit

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Orly Taitz is a lawyer, dentist and real estate agent based out of California who has filed several lawsuits on behalf of so-called "birthers," people who question whether President Obama was born in Hawaii and is eligible to serve as president.

Alleged Obama birth certificate from Kenya is a hoax

Steve Eddy of California, did a Google image search and came across a similar-looking birth certificate posted on a genealogy Web site by a South Australia man named David Jeffrey Bomford. Eddy put it side-by-side with the Obama one. Same format. Same book and page number in the birth registry. Some of the officials' last names were even the same.

Val Edyvean, Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages for South Australia said this:

"It appears that a South Australian loaded an image of his own birth certificate onto a family history website and that the format was used by others to 'create' a document which purported to be a Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Obama. As the South Australian man has now removed this image, and the date of his birth is in the period of certificates which are restricted from public access, I do not intend to add to speculation by commenting on details of either that certificate or any aspects of it."

The purported Kenyan birth certificate posted by Taitz is a fake.

So Orly Taitz --- Are you Kidding?

Joe Biden says every Senate decision now requires 60 votes

"As long as I have served . . . This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators."
Joe Biden on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 in a fundraiser in Florida

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Biden says every Senate decision now requires 60 votes

Senate History.

In 1917, new rules allowed Senate leadership to end debate so long as it had support from two-thirds of the Senate. In 1975, the Senate reduced that to three-fifths, or 60 of the current 100 senators. With only 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster, the majority party would simply file cloture motions -- the technical term to set up a vote to stop debate.

The minority can unify and oppose a cloture motion, effectively stalling a bill. And the majority, knowing it has no chance of winning on a vote, can file a cloture motion and then blame the opposition for holding things up.

Biden won his Senate seat in 1973, just two years before the Senate adopted its new cloture rules, and served until Jan. 15, 2009, shortly before he was sworn in as vice president.

Biden said "every single solitary decision has required 60 senators," which is an exaggeration. In 2009, for example, there were 397 roll call votes. According to the Senate Historian's office, only 39 of them were cloture votes. Indeed, we found plenty of major bills that did not require 60 votes to start or end debate, including a bill meant to give more children health insurance and a bill to prevent mortgage foreclosures. Furthermore, the Senate frequently passes noncontroversial bills unanimously, so there are countless pieces of legislation such as post office namings and resolutions that don't require 60 votes. If Biden had said every "major" decision requires 60 votes, he would have been on more solid ground.

So Joe Biden --- Are you Kidding?

Sarah Palin falsely claims Barack Obama runs a 'death panel'

Seniors and the disabled "will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."
Sarah Palin on Friday, August 7th, 2009 in a message posted on Facebook

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Sarah Palin falsely claims Barack Obama runs a 'death panel'

There is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's "level of productivity in society" to determine whether they are "worthy" of health care. The truth is that the health bill allows Medicare, for the first time, to pay for doctors' appointments for patients to discuss living wills and other end-of-life issues with their physicians. These types of appointments are completely optional, and AARP supports the measure.

Palin also may have also jumped to conclusions about the Obama administration's efforts to promote comparative effectiveness research. Such research has nothing to do with evaluating patients for "worthiness." Rather, comparative effectiveness research finds out which treatments work better than others.

In fact, the House bill states in the section creating the Comparative Effectiveness Research Center and an oversight commission, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit the Commission or the Center to mandate coverage, reimbursement, or other policies for any public or private payer." In other words, comparative effectiveness research will tell you whether treatment A is better than treatment B. But the bill as written won't mandate which treatment doctors and patients have to select.

She said that the Democratic plan will ration care and "my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care." Palin's statement sounds more like a science fiction movie than part of an actual bill before Congress.

So Sarah Palin --- Are you Kidding?


Thanks to Politifact

Obama claims America is one of the largest Muslim countries

"If you actually took the number of Muslims [sic] Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
Barack Obama on Monday, June 1st, 2009 in interview with Canal Plus Television

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.


Obama claims America is one of the largest Muslim countries

By the numbers from the CIA Online World Factbook, a highly regarded government source for global statistics. It's updated twice a month, and we're relying on the latest version. By the World Factbook's count, Muslims in the United States make up about 0.6 percent of the population. That's around 1.8 million.

Coming in first is Indonesia, More than 240 million people live there, and 86.1 percent of the population identifies as Muslim. That means that about 206 million Indonesians are of the Islamic faith.

No. 2 on the list is Pakistan, where 95 percent of the roughly 176 million people identify as Muslim. That means about 167 million residents are of the Islamic faith. India, Bangladesh and Turkey come in next at 156 million, 129 million and 76 million, respectively.

Moving down the list, Morocco takes 10th place with 34 million Muslim residents, and Syria comes in at number 20, with about 18 million Muslims. The No. 60 slot goes to Serbia, home to 236,138 Muslims.

So, of the 60 most populous Muslim states, the United States ranks 58th. If we rely instead on NationMaster.com, which pegs the Muslim population at 6 million, the United States is 37th out of 60. And if we go with 8 million, as the Islamic Information Center estimates, the United States comes in at 29 on the list.

Obama dramatically overreaches by saying the United States would be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.

Ranking 58 out of the world's 60 most populous Muslim nations would not be one of the largest Muslim countries. Indeed, by even the most generous estimate we found of 8 million, the United States still ranks 29 out of 60.

So Barack Obama --- Are you Kidding?


Thanks to Politifact, CIA Online World Factbook, NationMaster.com and Islamic Information Center.

Michelle Bachmann claims Constitution only requires you to answer how many people are in your household

Michele Bachmann says the Constitution only requires her to tell the census "how many people are in our home."
Michele Bachmann on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 in a Washington Times interview

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Here's what the Constitution actually says:

"Representation and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers ... the actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct."

So the Constitution itself does not contain any requirement, as Bachmann claims.

We draw your attention to the last clause, "in such a manner as they shall by law direct." The "they" in that sentence refers to members of Congress. They write laws about the content of the Census and require that people answer the questions.

What's more, a law passed by Congress requires people to answer "any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any Census" from the U.S. Census.

Bachmann is not only wrong here, she is engaging in fearmongering that encourages people to break the law. And in doing so, she's falsely telling people that the Constitution would support them.

So Michele Bachmann --- Are you Kidding?