FactCheck.org Author: Brooks Jackson

Our Clinton Nightmare

September 6, 2012

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Former President Bill Clinton’s stem-winding nomination speech was a fact-checker’s nightmare: lots of effort required to run down his many statistics and factual claims, producing little for us to write about.
Republicans will find plenty of Clinton’s scorching opinions objectionable. But with few exceptions, we found his stats checked out.
Overselling ‘Obamacare’
The worst we could fault him for was a suggestion that President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was responsible for bringing down the rate of increase in health care spending,

Democratic Disinformation from Charlotte

September 5, 2012

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — We heard a number of dubious or misleading claims on the first night of the Democratic National Convention:

The keynote speaker and others claimed the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, would raise taxes on the “middle class.” He has promised he won’t. Democrats base their claim on a study that doesn’t necessarily lead to that conclusion.
The keynote speaker, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, also said there have been 4.5 million “new jobs”

Republican Retreads from Tampa

August 28, 2012

TAMPA, Fla. — On the first day of the Republican convention — marked by a delegate vote making former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney the party’s official nominee for president — we’re already hearing a lot of exaggerated, misleading or downright false claims that we’ve heard before.
The theme of the day centered on repeated misrepresentations of a quote from President Obama. From the various speakers we also heard:

A misleading statistic about women’s job losses that has grown so stale it is now wholly false.

Another Abortion Falsehood from Obama’s ‘Truth Team’

August 23, 2012

The Obama campaign is falsely accusing the Republican Party’s platform of calling for banning abortions even in cases of rape or incest. That’s not true. The 2012 platform is silent on exceptions — leaving that decision up to Congress and the states — just as it was in 2008 and in previous presidential election years.
To make matters worse, the latest falsehood comes from the president’s “Truth Team.” An Aug. 20 posting on the “Truth Team’s”

Obama’s ‘Boss’ Baloney

August 10, 2012

The Obama campaign strikes another low blow with a TV spot accusing Mitt Romney of “personally” approving a notoriously abusive tax-avoidance scheme and suggesting he may have paid “zero” tax. That’s badly misleading.
It wasn’t Romney who was avoiding taxes, it was Marriott Corp. And there’s no evidence to support the ad’s speculation that Romney himself paid no income tax, or that he did something illegal.
The ad opens with an unsupported insinuation that Romney isn’t releasing more federal income tax returns because some would show he didn’t pay any income tax in those years.

Obama’s ‘Sealed’ Records

July 31, 2012

Q: Are Obama’s early records “sealed”?
A: No. Many records that presidential candidates don’t ordinarily release do remain confidential, but they are not “sealed” by a court. The 16 claims in a widely distributed graphic are mostly false or distorted.

Bain: Still ‘No Evidence’

July 25, 2012

The Obama campaign says a new Associated Press story backs up its claims that Mitt Romney “did not leave [Bain Capital] when he says he did,” and that he’s responsible for “American jobs that were outsourced” by Bain-controlled companies after February 1999. We don’t think so.
Some impressive reporting by the AP and others recently has shown that Romney retained ownership and corporate titles at Bain for a time after he took a hurried leave of absence on Feb.

Whoppers of 2012, Early Edition

July 20, 2012

Thomas Hobbes’ oft-cited phrase from 1651, “nasty, brutish and short,” does not describe the 2012 presidential campaign — unfortunately. The contest so far has been nasty all right, and disregard for the truth has been brutish on both sides, in our judgment. But alas, it won’t be over until Nov …

Romney’s Bain Years: New Evidence, Same Conclusion

July 12, 2012

New reporting cites strong evidence that Mitt Romney wasn’t actively managing Bain Capital while he was running the Olympics, despite what the Obama campaign (and some news reports) would have voters believe.
Dan Primack, a senior editor at Fortune Magazine, reports on previously confidential “offering documents” that Bain circulated to potential investors in June 2000, September 2000 and again in January 2001. And he says that in each of those three documents Romney’s name is conspicuously absent from lists of senior investment managers at Bain.

Tax Facts: Lowest Rates in 30 Years

July 11, 2012

Politicians talk about the burden of taxes incessantly. Now comes a rare chance to check the facts. And the fact is that federal tax rates had fallen to the lowest in 30 years when President Barack Obama took office — and fell again in his first year in office.
This news comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which just issued the latest update of its invaluable series on “Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes,”