Advertisement

Fact Check Carly for America misleads on Clinton Foundation

|
Tuesday, June 23, 2015 4:39 PM

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina says that "so little" of the charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation "actually go to charitable works" - a figure Carly for America later put at about 6 percent of its annual revenues - but Fiorina is simply wrong.

Fiorina and others are referring only to the amount donated by the Clinton Foundation to outside charities, ignoring the fact that most of the Clinton Foundation's charitable work is performed in-house.

Daniel Borochoff, president and founder of CharityWatch, told FactCheck that its analysis of the finances of the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates found about 89 percent of the foundation budget is spent on programming (or "charity"), higher than the 75 percent considered the industry standard. CharityWatch, a project of the American Institute of Philanthropy, has given the Clinton Foundation an "A" rating. Simply put, despite its name, the Clinton Foundation is not a private foundation - which typically acts as a pass-through for private donations to other charitable organizations. Rather, it is a public charity. It conducts most of its charitable activities directly or by foreign subsidiaries on distributed earnings.

Trumping the facts

Real estate developer Donald Trump's speech announcing he is running for the Republican nomination for president contained a number of false and misleading statements on the economy, trade, health care and terrorism. Trump said:

Economic growth has "never" been below zero until last quarter's drop, which is far from true. It has been below zero 42 times since 1946.

"There are no jobs" to be had. In fact, there were 5.4 million job openings recorded at the end of April, the most in 15 years.

"Real" unemployment rate is "anywhere from 18 to 20 percent" and "maybe even 21 percent." FactCheck found no factual basis for this opinion.

He would have blocked new Ford plants in Mexico by threatening to impose a 35 percent tax on vehicles and parts made in Mexico and shipped to the U.S. But only Congress can impose taxes and such a tax would violate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The five Taliban leaders exchanged for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl "are now back on the battlefield trying to kill us." But all five remain in Qatar, where they continue to be monitored and are subject to a travel ban, according to the State Department.

Health care premium costs are going "up 29, 39, 49 and even 55 percent." He's talking about some proposed rate increases on the individual market that still need regulatory approval. There are also proposed rate decreases or single-digit increases that did not have to be submitted for review.

Words don't add up for Paul

Sen. Rand Paul used a recent speech to Maryland Republicans partly to address injustices in the legal system. But he botched one statistic and slightly exaggerated another one.

"In Ferguson, for every 100 black women, there's 60 black men. Because the other 40 we've incarcerated." But the New York Times article cited by Paul's campaign didn't say that. The Times reported: "Using census data, we estimated that about 625,000 prime-age black men were imprisoned, compared with 45,000 black women. This gap - of 580,000 - accounts for more than one-third of the overall gap."

"The arrests in Baltimore are 15-to-1 black to white for marijuana arrests." The ratio was closer to 11.6-to-1, according to a 2013 report based on 2010 FBI crime data. What's more, the arrest rate, which factors in the population, was actually 5.6-to-1.

Chip Tuthill lives in Mancos. Website used: www.factcheck.org

Advertisement