Several readers asked how it is possible that small businesses consistently create 70 percent of the nation's private sector jobs but employ only half of the workers. Here's our answer.
The 90-minute debate gave us just what we wanted for the holidays: a new list of political claims to fact check.
"For you to give an overall `score’ based on your own selectivity about which quotes to analyze, and which to ignore, simply says more about you than about the featured politicians or their political parties."
We hope you usually agree with our ratings and understand when you don’t. During an age of blaring rhetoric from all political sides, our goal is present facts to help you reach your own judgements. That’s what makes this work important.
Elections are coming Nov. 8. If you come across a political claim that raises your eyebrows, or sounds too good or too bad to be true, let us know. We’d be interested in researching it for you and putting it to the Truth-O-Meter.
We’re introducing the Bob-O-Meter, a service aimed at monitoring some 50 campaign promises by McDonnell. The Bob-O-Meter will report what progress, if any, has been made on each pledge and rate whether it’s been kept, broken, altered in a compromise, or in the works. Those ratings will be tallied on PolitiFactVirginia.com, creating an up-to-the-minute and evolving report card on McDonnell’s administration.
We’ve calibrated it to monitor campaign promises Gov. Bob McDonnell made during his 2009 campaign and measure how well he is fulfilling them.
The radio ad says: "Congressman Scott Rigell voted to end Medicare, forcing seniors to pay more to protect tax breaks for Big Oil and millionaires."
We received more than 120 comments about our False rating on Cantor's recent claim that a Democratic plan to lift the debt ceiling would give the president a "blank check." Most of the comments took issue with Cantor, but a few were directed angrily at us. We thought we’d share a sampling of the response.
PolitiFact has been watching the debt-limit debate closely. As the deadline nears and the partisan impasse over tax increases and spending cuts remains, we thought we’d review a few major claims that have been weighed on the Truth-O-Meter.
We cited a widely-referenced investigation by USA Today. It showed average total compensation for federal employees was $123,049 -- $81,258 in salary and $41,791 in benefits. Average total compensation for private workers was $61,051 -- $50,462 in pay and $10,589 in benefits.
Did Obama really break with U.S. policy and call on Israel to return to its 1967 borders?
No.