WTF Community

Factchecks

General Discussion
, ,
#61

One of the phrases we often hear crowed by those on the right is “what about black-on-black crime?”

But the numbers show that rates of white-on-white and black-on-black crime are actually quite similar, and this is just another lie to justify their racism.

Fact check: Rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black crime are similar

The claim: There are significant race-based disparities in civilian homicide rates, but not in police homicide rates.

A viral meme purports to list homicide statistics by race in the United States, as follows:

  • Whites killing Blacks — 2%
  • Police killing whites — 3%
  • Whites killing whites — 16%
  • Blacks killing whites — 81%
  • Police killing Blacks — 1%
  • Blacks killing Blacks — 97%

The page behind one viral version of the post, I Support Law Enforcement Officers, had over 611 shares on its post. USA TODAY has reached out to the page for comment.

Some versions of the meme include this line: “America does have a problem. But it’s not what the media tells you it is.”

Rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicide are similar, at around 80% and 90%

Overall, most homicides in the United States are intraracial, and the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black killings are similar, both long term and in individual years.

Between 1980-2008, the U.S. Department of Justice found that 84% of white victims were killed by white offenders and 93% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders.

In 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that 81% of white victims were killed by white offenders, and 89% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders.

In 2017, the FBI reported almost identical figures — 80% of white victims were killed by white offenders, and 88% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders.

Though the numbers differ year-to-year, the stark difference that the viral post attempts to portray between the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicide — which it puts at 16% and 97%, respectively — is inaccurate.

Both numbers tend to hover between 80% and 90% and remain within 10 percentage points of each other.

Rates of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide also within 8 points

Likewise, the post attempts to portray a gulf in the rate of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide — which it lists at 81% and 2%, respectively.

Statistics from the FBI in 2018 and 2017 contradict that claim.

In 2018, 16% of white victims were killed by Black offenders, while 8% of Black victims were killed by white offenders.

Similarly, in 2017, 16% of white victims were killed by Black offenders, while 9% of Black victims were killed by white offenders.

In both years, the numbers remained within eight percentage points, a much smaller gap than the 79% alleged in the viral post.

Police kill Black people at disproportionate rates

Though nationwide statistics are less readily available, multiple studies have found that police kill Black people at disproportionate rates.

A study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine in 2016 examined all 812 fatalities that resulted from use of lethal force by on-duty law enforcement from 2009-2012 in 17 states. The study used National Violent Death Reporting System data.

The majority of victims were white people, at 52%, but “black victims were over-represented (32.4%) relative to the U.S. population.” The fatality rate was 2.8 times higher among Black victims than white victims.

Most victims were reported to be armed, at 83%, but black victims were more likely to be unarmed, at 14.8%, than white victims, at 9.4%, the study found.

Similarly, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 found that Black men and women are killed by police at higher rates than their white counterparts.

Specifically, Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police over the course of their lifetime than white men, while Black women are about 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police than white women.

Both studies reveal that the claim from the viral post that police kill white people at 3% and Black people at 1% is false.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, all six purported homicide statistics in the viral post are FALSE. The significant race-based disparities are also false. In reality, rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black homicides are similar and remain within 10 percentage points of each other, around 80% and 90%, respectively. Likewise, rates of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide remain within eight percentage points of each other, at around 16% and 8%. And police kill Black people at disproportionate and much higher rates than they kill their white counterparts.

Our fact-check sources:

3 Likes
#62

A day of crisis at the US Capitol, fact-checked

Were Pro-Trump Mobs Storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 Actually Antifa?

There was no evidence anyone but a mob of Trump supporters stormed Capitol grounds.

QAnon Believers Were Part Of Mob That Stormed The Capitol

The collective delusion finally reached the level of violence it always threatened.

No, there is no evidence that antifa activists stormed the Capitol.

There’s No Evidence Antifa Was Involved In The Attempted Coup At The Capitol

Right-wing figures have spread baseless claims that antifa was behind Wednesday’s violent insurrection at the Capitol.

4 Likes
#63

4 Likes
#64

Misinformation dropped dramatically the week after Twitter banned Trump

Zignal Labs charts 73 percent decline on Twitter and beyond following historic action against the president

5 Likes
#65


4 Likes
#66

Fact check: Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy makes at least 5 false claims in 7-minute Fox News interview

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy made at least five false claims during a seven-minute Sunday interview on Fox News.

McCarthy uttered inaccurate statements to host Maria Bartiromo about a wide variety of topics – oil prices, inflation, prisoners released in Afghanistan, the behavior of Democratic state legislators, and the content of an elections bill supported by congressional Democrats.

Here is a fact check.

Oil prices

Trying to liken President Joe Biden’s tenure to the 1970s era of former President Jimmy Carter, which was beset by inflation and oil-related challenges, McCarthy claimed that oil prices are now “the highest that we have seen.”

Facts First : McCarthy was wrong. Oil prices under Biden are not even close to the highest we have ever seen. Crude prices peaked in 2008 under Republican President George W. Bush – more than double their level at the time McCarthy’s interview aired Sunday. Crude prices were also higher at various points under Republican President Donald Trump than they were on Sunday.

On the Friday before McCarthy made this claim, the price of benchmark Brent crude fell below $66 a barrel. That is less than half of the all-time high of more than $147 a barrel in 2008. Further, Brent crude was well above $66 a barrel at various points in 2018 and 2019 under Trump, briefly exceeding $84.

At under $63, West Texas Intermediate crude, a US benchmark, was also going Friday for less than half of its 2008 peak and for less than it did on various days under Trump; it briefly topped $75 under Trump. (The prices of both Brent and West Texas Intermediate increased early this week, after McCarthy’s comments, but remained below their Trump-era highs, let alone their all-time highs.)

McCarthy could have correctly said that oil prices have spiked this year as global demand has rebounded from the pandemic lows of 2020. But he was plain incorrect to suggest that this year’s prices are unprecedented. And, regardless, it’s important to note that US presidents have a limited role in oil prices, which are governed by a complex global dance of supply and demand factors.

Tom Kloza, a longtime energy analyst with Oil Price Information Service, said that “nothing that President Biden has done has had much impact” on the current prices of either crude oil or gasoline. Kloza said this year’s prices have been affected by a combination of supply “discipline” from the OPEC+ group of producer countries and “the unprecedented recovery in world oil demand.”

Inflation

McCarthy claimed that there is now “inflation at a number we have not seen.” He then described the Biden era as “Jimmy Carter on steroids.”

Facts First : McCarthy was wrong again. While inflation was at a 13-year high in June and July , at a seasonally adjusted 5.3% on a year-over-year basis , it is not even close to the highest we have ever seen and not even close to the level of the late Carter era. Inflation was more than twice as high in every month of 1980 than it was in June and July of this year; its 1980 peak was 14.6% .

You don’t have to go as far back as the Carter presidency to find inflation as high as that of June and July of this year. Inflation hit a slightly higher level, 5.5%, in July 2008, under Bush.

Inflation has also exceeded the current level at other points outside the Carter era. For example, it was above 7% for the entirety of 1974 and 1975, under Carter’s Republican predecessors Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, peaking at 12.2% during that period.

It’s important to note that current inflation is being caused at least in part by pandemic-related factors that might not last. Businesses that cut prices or kept them flat during the crisis of 2020 are raising them to conventional levels; consumers helped by federal relief funds have money to spend and have strong demand for many products; businesses are facing supply pressures from production shortages and shipping problems.

Whether or not inflation is temporary, though, it definitely isn’t the highest we have seen.

Afghan prisoners

Speaking about congressional Democrats, McCarthy asked, “Why aren’t they protecting the border from those 5,000 prisoners who have just left Afghanistan and – have the hope of coming across our borders?”

Facts First : There is no basis for McCarthy’s claim that 5,000 former prisoners have “just left Afghanistan” with the hope of coming to the US. And McCarthy neglected to mention that it was President Donald Trump’s own 2020 deal with the Taliban – a deal McCarthy had positive words about at the time – in which the US agreed to let up to 5,000 Afghan prisoners go free .

Colin Clarke, senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, a nonprofit that studies global security issues, said that “US officials at the airport who are screening and vetting those leaving Afghanistan are obviously not allowing prisoners released through the US-Taliban deal and through various prison breaks to board planes coming to the United States.” Clarke said that he hasn’t heard “anyone” credibly suggest Taliban members are seeking to infiltrate the US through the Mexican border.

Anthony Cordesman, an Afghanistan expert and the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, called McCarthy’s claim “nonsense.” Cordesman added: “If they left Afghanistan: to where? Pakistan? Because I doubt very much that they’re in Canada, the Bahamas or Mexico.”

Because we can’t predict the future, we’ll add a caveat. It’s certainly possible that some former prisoners from Afghanistan will try to cross the US border at some point. But there’s still no basis for McCarthy’s suggestion of a current problem involving 5,000 former prisoners who “just left” the country and are presently trying to figure out how to get into the US.

McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for an explanation of this claim or any of the others we address in this article.

Democratic state legislators

After Bartiromo pressed McCarthy about making sure future elections are free and fair, and mentioned states that are changing their voting laws, McCarthy said, “We have watched state after state where Democrats have left the state. That is where the real difficulty lies. But now we have got them back into Texas.”

Facts First : It’s not true that Democrats have left “state after state” to prevent Republicans from passing changes to voting laws. Texas is the only state whose Democratic legislators left the state under Biden or Trump to deny Republicans the minimum attendance needed to pass elections legislation.

It’s possible that McCarthy was thinking of how dozens of Democratic lawmakers from other states came to Washington, DC this month to join the quorum-breaking Texas lawmakers. But those lawmakers, unlike the Texas group, didn’t cause Republicans “real difficulty” in passing voting laws. In fact, many of the lawmakers were from states were Republicans had already passed new voting laws.

There have been a small number of Democratic walkouts over Republican elections proposals in years past, though not all of them involved legislators leaving the state. Texas Democrats fled to Oklahoma in 2003 over a Republican redistricting proposal. In 2001, Oregon Democrats went into hiding to deny quorum over a Republican redistricting effort there.

Democrats and voter ID laws

McCarthy said Democrats’ new elections bill “would ban ID voting.” (McCarthy was more explicit on Twitter on Tuesday, tweeting that the Democratic agenda is to “ban voter ID in every state.”)

Facts First : It’s not true that Democrats’ elections bill would ban voter ID. Specifically, the Democratic bill would not prohibit states from having voter identification laws and would not prohibit states from checking the IDs of in-person voters. Rather, it would require states to give voters an alternative to showing the ID the states normally demand – specifically, to allow voters who do not show that ID to instead submit signed statements under penalty of perjury attesting to their identity and eligibility to vote.

Critics are entitled to argue that this provision of the Democratic bill would weaken or undermine the voter ID laws of states with strict current requirements. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has said, for example, that the bill would mean a “neutering” of voter ID laws.

But it’s just not accurate to claim the bill is a total “ban” on voter ID laws. The staunchly Republican state of Idaho allows voters who aren’t able to present one of its required forms ID to cast a ballot after signing an affidavit attesting to their identity. Nobody could credibly argue that voter ID is banned in Idaho.

For absentee ballot applications in particular, the Democratic bill says that states can’t require any form of identification except for a signature or “similar affirmation.” It says, though, that this policy has “no effect” on ID requirements for first-time voters registering by mail. And as the National Conference of State Legislatures notes on its website, state voter ID requirements generally don’t apply to mail-in or absentee ballots anyway.

2 Likes
#67

No, the Taliban did not seize $83 billion of U.S. weapons

We don’t normally pay much attention to claims made by the former president, as he mostly just riffs golden oldies. But this is a new claim. A version of this claim also circulates widely on right-leaning social media — that somehow the Taliban has ended up with $83 billion in U.S. weaponry. (Trump, as usual, rounds the number up.)

The $83 billion number is not invented out of whole cloth. But it reflects all the money spent to train, equip and house the Afghan military and police — so weapons are just a part of that. At this point, no one really knows the value of the equipment that was seized by the Taliban.

The Facts

The $83 billion figure — technically, $82.9 billion — comes from an estimate in the July 30 quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) for all spending on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund since the U.S. invasion in 2001.

In recent years, the spending has decreased. For fiscal 2021, about $3 billion was spent on security forces, which was similar to 2020.

Separately, the U.S. government spent about $36 billion on shoring up the Afghan government. The total bill for the Afghan project added up to more than $144 billion.

In any case, the $83 billion spent on the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) goes back two decades, including almost $19 billion spent between 2002 and 2009.

A 2017 Government Accountability Office report estimated that about 29 percent of the funds spent on the Afghan security forces between 2005 and 2016 went to equipment and transportation. (The transportation costs related to transporting equipment and for contracted pilots and airplanes for transporting officials to meetings. There appears to be no way to segregate transportation spending.)

Using that same percentage, that would mean the equipment provided to Afghan forces amounted to $24 billion over 20 years. The GAO said approximately 70 percent of the equipment went to the Afghan military and the rest went to the national police (part of the Interior Ministry).

That’s certainly a lot of money. Between 2005 and 2016, U.S. taxpayers paid for 76,000 vehicles (such as 43,000 Ford Ranger pickup trucks, 22,000 Humvees and 900 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles known as MRAPs), 600,000 weapons and more than 200 aircraft, according to GAO.

Of course, some of this equipment may be obsolete or destroyed — or soon may not be usable.

The SIGAR report shows that 167 aircraft out of an inventory of 211 were usable — but the Afghan Air Force (AAF) still lacked enough qualified pilots. One issue was that the Taliban targeted pilots for assassination.

Even more problematic, there were not enough maintenance crews to maintain the aircraft. “Without continued contractor support, none of the AAF’s airframes can be sustained as combat effective for more than a few months, depending on the stock of equipment parts in-country, the maintenance capability on each airframe, and the timing of contractor support withdrawal,” the report said.

With great fanfare, the Taliban has seized a number of Black Hawk helicopters, including ones that the United States had just shipped this year at the request of former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. But only the first crew of Black Hawk mechanics had been trained, so the military “can field no more than one UH-60 per night for helicopter missions,” SIGAR said.

Meanwhile, as the U.S. military wound down its mission, it turned over facilities and equipment to the Afghan security forces — which may have added to the total seized by the Taliban. But Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., head of U.S. Central Command, said that before leaving Kabul airport on Aug. 30, the military “demilitarized” 70 MRAPs, 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft. “Those aircraft will never fly again,” he said. “They’ll never be able to be operated by anyone.” (Demilitarized is a term that means damaging in place, sometimes with explosives.)

“No one has any accounting of exactly what survived the last weeks of the collapse and fell into Taliban hands, and even before the collapse, SIGAR had publicly reported no accounting was possible in many districts,” said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “In rough terms, however, if the ANDSF could not sustain it without foreign contractors, the Taliban will have very serious problems in operating it. That covers most aircraft and many electronics and heavier weapons.”

“One also has to be careful here,” Cordesman added. “The fact that Taliban fighters or cells of fighters get U.S. equipment does not mean it is pooled or shared. Factionalism and hoarding are the rule in Afghanistan, not the exception.”

The Pinocchio Test

U.S. military equipment was given to Afghan security forces over two decades. Tanks, vehicles, helicopters and other gear fell into the hands of the Taliban when the U.S.-trained force quickly collapsed. The value of these assets is unclear, but if the Taliban is unable to obtain spare parts, it may not be able to maintain them.

But the value of the equipment is not more than $80 billion. That’s the figure for all of the money spent on training and sustaining the Afghan military over 20 years. The equipment portion of that total is about $24 billion — certainly not small change — but the actual value of the equipment in the Taliban’s hands is probably much less than even that amount.

image
image799×99 39.4 KB

3 Likes