SciCheck Digest

A viral video features a doctor making dubious claims about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments at a forum hosted by Idaho’s lieutenant governor. Dr. Ryan Cole claims mRNA vaccines cause cancer and autoimmune diseases, but the lead author of the paper on which Cole based that claim told us there is no evidence mRNA vaccines cause those ailments.

How do we know vaccines are safe?

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Update, Aug. 27, 2021: The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which was previously authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use, received full approval from the agency on Aug. 23 for people 16 years of age and older.

Update, Feb. 10, 2022: The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine received full approval from the FDA on Jan. 31 for individuals 18 years of age and older. 

More than 565,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S., but two effective mRNA vaccines are now available. Some treatments for certain patients, such as those hospitalized or receiving oxygen, have also been approved or authorized by federal agencies, and they continue to be studied.

Since the pandemic began, however, politicized social media posts have featured doctors, some looking authoritative in white coats, spreading dubious claims about both vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. The most recent example in this misinformation niche is Dr. Ryan Cole, who owns a medical lab in Idaho.

Cole is featured in a video that has amassed more than a million views. He makes a variety of claims, some of which we’ve addressed before.

The video was recorded while he spoke at a forum on March 4 hosted by Idaho’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, a Republican, and it was posted by a Libertarian organization called the Idaho Freedom Foundation.

McGeachin was featured in an October post by that group, posing with a Bible and a gun in a video that advocated against public health measures related to the pandemic and asked viewers to sign a statement saying that “any order issued in the future will be ignored.”

Cole said in an interview with FactCheck.org that he’s “not affiliated with any political party, group or organization.” According to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office, Cole is registered as a Republican.

In the March 4 video, Cole makes claims suggesting that federal agencies have acted nefariously, as well as claims that undermine vaccines and promise miracle treatments.

We’ll address his four main claims.

• Although there is no evidence to support this, Cole suggested that some of the COVID-19 vaccines could cause cancer or autoimmune diseases.
• Again, without evidence, Cole suggested that the federal government withheld a treatment for COVID-19 in order to “vend” a vaccine.
• Studies haven’t proved that ivermectin is effective in treating COVID-19, but Cole claimed that federal agencies “have suppressed this life-saving medication.”
• Cole said public health officials should encourage people to take vitamin D supplements rather than wear masks or stay physically distant from others.

Vaccine Safety

Two of the COVID-19 vaccines available in the U.S. use messenger RNA, or mRNA, to train recipients’ immune systems to make antibodies that fight the virus that causes COVID-19. (See SciCheck’s articles on those vaccines: “A Guide to Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine“ and “A Guide to Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine.”)

These are the first vaccines using mRNA technology authorized in the U.S., but scientists have been developing and testing mRNA vaccines for years, including in people during clinical trials. Still, misinformation exploiting fears of this new technology has been common online.

To those bogus claims, Cole has now added: “mRNA trials in mammals have led to odd cancers. mRNA trials on mammals have led to autoimmune diseases — not right away, six, nine, 12 months later.”

We asked Cole to provide support for those claims, and he referred us to a 2018 paper published in the journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery that reviewed trials and studies of various, earlier mRNA vaccines.

But that paper doesn’t support his statement.

Norbert Pardi, a research assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, was the lead author of the paper. He told us in an email, “No publications demonstrate that mRNA vaccines cause cancer or autoimmune diseases.”

Pardi’s 19-page paper does make one passing reference to autoimmune diseases, which is what Cole highlighted to us.

The paper says: “A possible concern could be that some mRNA-based vaccine platforms induce potent type I interferon responses, which have been associated not only with inflammation but also potentially with autoimmunity. Thus, identification of individuals at an increased risk of autoimmune reactions before mRNA vaccination may allow reasonable precautions to be taken.”

But, Pardi explained, he and the other researchers included that passage because they wanted to note some potential concerns. However, he emphasized that “no scientific evidence has confirmed that these concerns are real.”

It’s also worth noting that the paper predated the COVID-19 pandemic by two years, so it doesn’t include any information specifically about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Simply put, “there is no scientific evidence that shows that mRNA vaccines cause autoimmune diseases,” Pardi said. “Multiple clinical trials have been performed with mRNA vaccines in the past 10 years and none of them found that mRNA vaccination caused autoimmune diseases. Further, we are not aware of any studies showing an autoimmune disease appearing many months after vaccination as Dr. Cole inaccurately suggests.”

Likewise, Dr. Roger Shapiro, associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told us in an email that he was unaware of any study that would support Cole’s claim that the vaccines are carcinogenic.

“There is nothing in the science of mRNA vaccines that would suggest carcinogenicity, and they have been tested in humans for other diseases before COVID-19,” Shapiro said. “mRNA rapidly breaks down in the body, and probably does not last long enough to act as a carcinogen.”

“Regarding autoimmunity,” he said, “this is always a concern with any medical product, but there is no evidence to date suggesting it, and it does not seem any more likely than with other vaccines. mRNA is made all the time in our bodies, and delivering it by vaccine should not be different.”

Dr. Dean Winslow, an infectious disease physician at Stanford Health Care, concurred with the other experts with whom we spoke. In a phone interview, he characterized Cole’s claims about cancer as “fearmongering” and said, “There’s just no scientific basis for that.”

“We’re talking about these very small fragments of messenger RNA that don’t hang around for long at all,” he said, noting that the mRNA vaccines have been in use for almost six months and have been “very safe, very well-tolerated vaccines.”

Winslow recognized that some people are concerned that the mRNA from the vaccine might persist in their bodies and somehow change their genetics or cause long-term effects. So he emphasized that the vaccines have small fragments of RNA, which survive only briefly and carry information about the virus that causes COVID-19.

Similarly, Pardi told us, “COVID-19 mRNA vaccines do not alter our DNA and they get rapidly degraded so they do not promote cancer formation.”

Treatments, Vaccines Can Both Be Approved

Cole also suggested in the video that the federal government had suppressed a treatment for COVID-19 in order to “vend” a vaccine. (We’ll address his claims about the supposed treatment in the next section.)

“If there’s a treatment for a disease, the federal government cannot approve a vaccine by law, by rule,” Cole falsely claimed, suggesting that federal agencies were withholding access to a treatment for COVID-19 so that they could instead profit from vaccines.

“So, the NIH, who, you know, is involved in approving medications, they co-hold the patent on the ‘vaccine’ with Moderna,” Cole said, referring to the National Institutes of Health, an agency that does not approve medications. “If the fox is not guarding the henhouse there, I don’t know who is. That also is insanity to have the government in bed with a private company vending a product that they want to give to everybody.”

There are several problems with this statement.

First, there is no law barring vaccines if treatments are available for a given disease, said Jorge Contreras, a professor in the College of Law at the University of Utah who specializes in intellectual property and genetics and the law. He asked, “Why would there be such a law?”

Clearly there isn’t, Contreras pointed out, since the Food and Drug Administration authorizes a flu vaccine every year while Tamiflu, an antiviral drug used to treat the flu, has been available since the FDA approved it in 1999.

“It’s certainly true that many diseases that we vaccinate for, there is no known cure for,” he said, noting that this is often the case with viral diseases, which are hard to treat.

“But that’s not a legal requirement. That’s a scientific reality,” he said.

As for Cole’s claim about the NIH, that agency conducts and funds research. It doesn’t approve drugs, medical devices or vaccines — that’s a function of the FDA.

The NIH did collaborate with Moderna on the development of its COVID-19 vaccine. As we’ve explained, government researchers had previously been working with scientists at Moderna on an investigational vaccine to protect against MERS, another disease caused by a coronavirus. The team was able to apply that knowledge to design a COVID-19 vaccine.

Since the NIH does research, it also files and receives patents, many of which it licenses to pharmaceutical companies. So, Contreras said, NIH’s patents stemming from research on mRNA vaccines are to be expected, and use of those patents by pharmaceutical companies is also to be expected. Similarly, scientists from government-funded labs sometimes share credit on patents with scientists from privately funded labs. That’s normal, too, Contreras said.

Generally, he explained, there are two reasons that the NIH licenses its patents to companies. First, the NIH is a taxpayer-funded institution, and it can recoup some of its investment in research by lending out the use of its discoveries. Second, the clinical trials required to bring a drug or vaccine to market are risky and expensive, so, theoretically, making its discoveries available to companies can encourage the private sector to take the risk and create products.

So, Cole mischaracterizes the relationship between the NIH and the vaccine manufacturers when he says that it’s a “conflict of interest” to have the “federal government in bed with a vaccine company.”

It’s actually normal to have pharmaceutical companies use government-owned patents.

And he’s wrong when he says of federal agencies, “they don’t want a therapy to work because then they can vend their vaccine.”

There’s nothing that would prohibit the use of vaccines if there were an effective treatment for COVID-19.

Not Enough Data on Ivermectin

Neither the World Health Organization nor the National Institutes of Health has recommended the use of ivermectin — a common anti-parasitic medication — in the treatment of COVID-19.

Merck, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures ivermectin, has similarly noted that there is “[n]o scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies; No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and; A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.”

But Cole claimed in the video that ivermectin is a “treatment” for COVID-19.

He suggested that federal agencies have stifled its use so that they could profit from vaccines, as we explained above.

“We’re in farm country, horse country — you know, you give it to your dogs, your cats, your horses,” Cole said in the video, addressing an audience in Idaho.

Ivermectin is used to treat parasites in animals, but crossover use in humans can be dangerous. While Cole may have only been emphasizing the ubiquity of the drug, not suggesting that people should take veterinary medicine, the FDA has said that patients have been hospitalized after taking ivermectin intended for horses as interest in the drug as treatment for COVID-19 has grown.

Ivermectin does have antiviral properties, but the FDA hasn’t approved it to treat any viral infections. It is being studied with regard to COVID-19, though, according to both the WHO and NIH.

“Treating COVID-19 with Ivermectin is still being evaluated in clinical trials, but at present there is not enough evidence to support its use,” said Shapiro, the Harvard professor. “My understanding is that the inhibitory dose needed for it to work is extremely high and trying to take enough to suppress the virus could lead to other problems.”

The trials so far have “showed no benefit or worsening disease, some showed shorter time to disease resolution or viral clearance, and some did show a possible mortality benefit; but there were problems with most of these trials that include small sample size and different outcome measures and other possible biases,” he said.

Winslow, from Stanford, cautioned that “there have been many claims for miracle cures” over the course of the pandemic and said that ivermectin would need more rigorous study before we know how useful it would be in treating COVID-19.

“Ivermectin truly is a wonder drug for parasitic diseases,” he said, “but my suspicion is that it will be a lot like hydroxychloroquine.”

Hydroxychloroquine is an antimalarial drug that was touted by former President Donald Trump as a treatment for COVID-19, although studies found that it wasn’t an effective treatment and may cause serious side effects in some patients, as we’ve explained before.

The problem with drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which are promoted as having broad-spectrum antiviral properties, is that the quantity of inhibitor required to effectively kill off the virus also sickens the host cells, Winslow said.

Even potent versions, like remdesivir, which Winslow referred to as the “gold standard” of specific antiviral therapy in COVID-19 treatments, only accelerates the time to recovery, but doesn’t significantly reduce death rates or mortality from COVID-19. Remdesivir is the only drug approved by the FDA to treat COVID-19; the approval is for patients requiring hospitalization.

So, Cole’s claim that “there is blood on the hands of bureaucrats in Washington who have suppressed this life-saving medication,” is unfounded. Ivermectin hasn’t been proved to be effective.

Overstating Effect of Vitamin D

Another of the major points that Cole emphasized in the video is the role vitamin D could have in fighting COVID-19.

“If you do not supplement with vitamin D in the wintertime, you are immune suppressed. Most insurance companies in Idaho and northern states do not pay for a vitamin D test, unfortunately,” said Cole, whose lab offers several vitamin D tests.

After eschewing public health guidelines that recommend staying six feet apart and wearing masks to slow the spread of the virus, Cole said, “What should public health message number one, two, and three be? Vitamin D, vitamin D, vitamin D.”

It’s true that vitamin D, which is mostly associated with bone health, plays a part in the immune system. But that doesn’t mean it’s a panacea for COVID-19, as we’ve explained before.

While a lot of basic research points to vitamin D having a role in the immune system, it is less clear if these mechanisms are applicable in clinical practice and to what degree they would benefit COVID-19 patients, as we’ve written. Studies assessing whether vitamin D can treat or prevent infectious diseases have generally been inconsistent.

A recent article from NPR looked at the research on vitamin D with respect to COVID-19 over the last year and found, essentially, the same thing. It also noted that some studies have shown that low vitamin D levels are associated with a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 or with becoming seriously ill.

“While these studies raised hopes among some researchers, others are skeptical, noting that most of these are observational studies, not the gold-standard randomized, controlled trials,” the story said.

“Much of the available evidence only shows association — not causation — and even those results are mixed,” Walter Willett, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told NPR.

In September, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an Instagram Live interview that for those who are deficient in vitamin D, “I would not mind recommending, and I do it myself, taking vitamin D supplements.” But, as we wrote before, excessive doses should not be used.

Sources

Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. Coronavirus Resource Center. Accessed 16 Apr 2021.

Harvard Health Publishing. “Treatments for COVID-19.” Harvard Medical School. Updated 5 Apr 2021.

Fichera, Angelo. FactCheck.org. “Texas Doctor Spreads False Claims About COVID-19 Vaccines.” 26 Mar 2021.

Hale Spencer, Saranac. FactCheck.org. “Video Uses Bogus Claims to Stoke Race-Based Fears of COVID-19 Vaccine.” 2 Feb 2021.

Idaho Secretary of State’s Office. Email to FactCheck.org. 9 Apr 2021.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Understanding mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines.” CDC.gov. Updated 4 Mar 2021.

McDonald, Jessica. FactCheck.org. “A Guide to Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine.” Updated 9 Apr 2021.

McDonald, Jessica. FactCheck.org. “A Guide to Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine.” Updated 9 Apr 2021.

Jaramillo, Catalina. FactCheck.org. “No Evidence Vaccines Impact Fertility.” Updated 3 Mar 2021.

Pardi, Norbert, et al. “mRNA vaccines — a new era in vaccinology.” Nature Reviews. 12 Jan 2018.

Pardi, Norbert. Research assistant professor of medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Email exchange with FactCheck.org. 12 Apr 2021.

Shapiro, Roger. Associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases, T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University. Emailed responses to FactCheck.org. 8 Apr 2021.

Winslow, Dean. Infectious disease physician, Stanford Health Care. Telephone interview with FactCheck.org. 12 Apr 2021.

Contreras, Jorge. Professor, college of law, University of Utah. Telephone interview with FactCheck.org. 15 Apr 2021.

U.S. Food & Drug Administration. “FDA’s Critical Role in Ensuring Supply of Influenza Vaccine.” FDA.gov. 28 Sep 2020.

U.S. Food & Drug Administration. “Tamiflu: Consumer Questions and Answers.” FDA.gov. 14 Nov 2017.

U.S. Food & Drug Administration. Drug Approval Package — Tamiflu. FDA.gov. Approval date 27 Oct 1999.

National Institutes of Health. About the NIH. NIH.gov. 7 Jul 2015.

National Institutes of Health. “How are drugs approved for use in the United States?” NIH.gov. 1 Dec 2016.

World Health Organization. “WHO advises that ivermectin only be used to treat COVID-19 within clinical trials.” WHO.int. 31 Mar 2021.

National Institutes of Health. COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines — ivermectin. NIH.gov. 11 Feb 2021.

Merck & Co. “Merck Statement on Ivermectin use During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Merck.com. 4 Feb 2021.

U.S. Food & Drug Administration. “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.” FDA.gov. 5 Mar 2021.

McDonald, Jessica and Eugene Kiely. FactCheck.org. “Azar, Trump Mislead on FDA’s Hydroxychloroquine Decision.” 18 Jun 2020.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Things to Know about the COVID-19 Pandemic. CDC.gov. 17 Mar 2021.

McDonald, Jessica. FactCheck.org. “Does Vitamin D Protect Against COVID-19?” 8 Jun 2020.

Stone, Will. NPR. “A Year In, Here’s What We Know About Vitamin D For Preventing COVID.” 14 Apr 2021.

Miller, Korin. Prevention. “Can Vitamin D Reduce Your Risk of COVID-19? Doctors Say the Answer Isn’t Simple.” 15 Sep 2020.

The post Idaho Doctor Makes Baseless Claims About Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Quick Take

A tweet, shared by President Donald Trump, mischaracterizes a video that purports to show “Americans being ARRESTED for holding outdoor church services.” The video actually shows a demonstration in Idaho against a public health order regarding COVID-19 requirements held by a church in a city hall parking lot.

Full Story

A church protest against a local public health order in Moscow, Idaho (population: 25,702), has gotten national attention since President Donald Trump retweeted a video from the event with a claim that falsely suggested it showed “Americans being ARRESTED for holding outdoor church services.”

The president added his own comment to his retweet, saying, “DEMS WANT TO SHUT YOUR CHURCHES DOWN, PERMANENTLY. HOPE YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING. VOTE NOW!”

Neither the original claim nor the president’s comment is true.

We’ll start with the video.

Trump retweeted a post from Cliff Maloney, the president of a Texas-based libertarian group, that included a video of a man being handcuffed in a parking lot while a group sings in the background.

Maloney wrote: “If you would have told me in 2019 that we were just 1 year away from Americans being ARRESTED for holding outdoor church services, I would have thought you to be insane. This is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. Pray for America.”

But that misrepresents what the video actually shows.

The event was not an outdoor church service. It was a demonstration against a local order requiring people to wear face masks or stay six feet apart in public to slow the spread of COVID-19.

On Sept. 21, Moscow’s city council had voted unanimously to extend that order until Jan. 5. Latah County, where Moscow is located, is at “minimal risk” for COVID-19, according to the public health district in north central Idaho. But average daily cases in the county rose from about 3 at the beginning of September to about 23 at the beginning of October.

Two days after the council vote, on Sept. 23, Christ Church in Moscow posted on its Facebook page an invitation to gather at city hall for a “flash psalm sing.” The invitation said, “We are asking folks to please not wear a mask.”

Before the demonstration, city workers drew marks on the pavement that were six feet apart so that singers could safely participate.

“The city had tried to provide an avenue for this event to take place,” Moscow Police Chief James Fry told FactCheck.org in a phone interview.

Also, before the event began, officers told the organizer that police would enforce the public health order, he said, and the organizer repeated that warning to participants.

“As soon as he said it, everybody actually moved closer together,” Fry said.

Police issued tickets to five people for violating the city’s ordinance, Fry said, and they charged two of those people for resisting arrest when those people refused to identify themselves.

Among those ticketed was Gabriel Rench, co-host of a political Christian podcast and a Republican candidate for a county office. Rench is the man being arrested in the viral video.

Two days after the incident, Rench was a guest on Glenn Beck’s radio show, where he described the event as a “protest, as kind of a worshipful protest” to the public health order.

Still, the falsehood that the video shows “Americans being ARRESTED for holding outdoor church services” continues to spread on social media.

As for Trump’s claim that “DEMS WANT TO SHUT YOUR CHURCHES DOWN, PERMANENTLY,” that’s not true, either.

The Democratic Party platform for 2020 includes a section on “supporting faith and service,” which says: “Religious freedom is a core American value and a core value of the Democratic Party. Democrats will protect the rights of each American for the free exercise of his or her own religion. It will be the policy of the Democratic Administration to advocate for religious freedom throughout the world.”

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.

This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here for more.

Sources

Maloney, Cliff (@LibertyCliff). “If you would have told me in 2019 that we were just 1 year away from Americans being ARRESTED for holding outdoor church services, I would have thought you to be insane. This is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. Pray for America.” Twitter. 24 Sep 2020.

Trump, Donald (@realDonaldTrump). “DEMS WANT TO SHUT YOUR CHURCHES DOWN, PERMANENTLY. HOPE YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING. VOTE NOW!” Twitter. 7 Oct 2020.

City of Moscow. AMENDED PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY ORDER No. 20.03 FACE COVERINGS AND 6 FOOT SOCIAL/PHYSICAL DISTANCING. 1 Jul 2020.

Public Health – Idaho North Central District. Monitoring and Tracking of Coronavirus. Accessed 9 Oct 2020.

Fry, James. Moscow Police Chief. Telephone interview. 9 Oct 2020.

City of Moscow. Press release. “Moscow, Idaho Arrests & Citations of September 23.” 24 Sep 2020.

Democratic Party. 2020 Democratic Party Platform. 18 Aug 2020.

The post Video Shows Arrest at a Protest, Not a Church Service appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Q: Did climate change cause the wildfires out West?

A: Scientists say a hot and dry summer — conditions more likely in a warmer world — caused widespread wildfires in Western states. But land use changes also have played a role.

FULL ANSWER

As of early October, the National Interagency Fire Center reported that roughly 8.4 million acres — an area larger than Maryland — have burned across the U.S. this year. Just five Western states — Montana, Nevada, California, Idaho and Oregon — made up more than half of that acreage. Alaska and Texas, the country’s two largest states, also contributed hefty sums.

That does not include the tens of thousands of acres that have been lost this week in Northern California, where ongoing wildfires so far have killed 10 people and destroyed 1,500 structures.

One of our readers wrote to us about the wildfires in Oregon, saying that they are “NOT due to ‘climate change,’” but rather “directly caused by the ending of good sustainable timber harvests.” So, we thought we would lay out the evidence behind the cause of the fires in the West. Is climate change to blame? Or land management practices, such as timber harvesting? The answer is: It’s complicated.

Climate influences the occurrence of wildfires and so do land management decisions. But when it comes to the latter, it’s less about timber harvesting specifically and more about broad-scale land use changes that has occurred over the past two centuries.

Is This Fire Season Particularly Bad?

First, it’s worth putting this season into the context of the past. Kari Cobb, a spokesperson for the National Interagency Fire Center, told us by email that there are a few different ways to assess the severity of a particular fire season, such as acres burned or homes lost. The NIFC is a partnership of nine different federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. 

Different regions experience their fire seasons at different times of the year. The fire season starts earliest in the Southwest, around March or April, while the Northwest’s fire season starts around July. In the “latter part of the year,” Southern California along with Georgia and Alabama may still see fires, she added. For example, in addition to the Northern California fires, thousands of homes have been evacuated and acres consumed as a result of fires this week in parts of Southern California.

When it comes to homes lost, Cobb said that as of the morning of Oct. 10, 4,619 structures have been lost to wildfires. That includes 3,240 homes, 155 commercial structures and 1,224 other minor structures, such as sheds or garages. But wildfires consumed 5,775 structures in 2003 — the most in one year since 2001, the first year for which Cobb had this data.

As for the most acres consumed by wildfires, 2017 doesn’t top the list, but it does make the top 10 — coming in 7th place so far, according to data dating back to 1960 (see chart below). Since 1960, the top 10 worst fire seasons by acreage all occurred in the 21st century with 2015 topping the list at just over 10.1 million acres burned.

However, data prior to 1983 aren’t as solid as data after that year. For that reason, data before that year shouldn’t be compared with data after it, the NIFC says. Still, the trend since 1983 shows a general increase in acres burned per year.

But a different picture unfolds when forest fires of recent years are put into the context of the past three millennia.

In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012, Jennifer Marlon, a scientist at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and colleagues, looked at charcoal accumulation in sedimentary rocks, among other data, to understand the impact of fires in the West over the past 3,000 years.

The “lowest levels” of Western fires occurred in the 20th century and between 1400 and 1700, while “[p]rominent peaks in forest fires” took place between 950 and 1250 and during the 1800s, the paper found. The researchers add that the 21st century rate of burning “is not unusual” based on patterns over the past 3,000 years.

Marlon and her group also found that the Western United States has actually experienced “a slight decline in burning over the past” 3,000 years, leading to what they call a “fire deficit.”

What’s a fire deficit? Without fire some ecosystems can be “unhealthy,” explains the U.S. Forest Service. For example, fire reduces “the spread of pest insects and disease” and “[r]ecycles nutrients back to the soil,” which “[p]romotes the growth of trees, wildflowers, and other plants.”

Even with the increase in fires since the 1980s, the fire deficit continues to grow.

Update, Oct. 11: This story has been updated to include data for the number of structures that have been lost to wildfires this year, as of Oct. 10.

What Sparks and Fuels Wildfires

There’s a difference between what sparks fires initially and what factors make them more likely to occur and grow. If we’re talking about what initially sparked the wildfires out West, the answer is humans and lightning.

In Montana — the state that’s seen the most burning by acreage — lightning has sparked more than 90 percent of the fires to date. In Oregon, Nevada and Idaho, lightning was also to blame for the majority of wildfires. But in California, humans sparked slightly more fires than lightning did to date, Cobb told us.

Lightning and humans pose less of a threat to Western forests when the region experiences a wet and mild summer. That was hardly the case this year.

“The United States is [in] the middle of an unfortunate spate of natural disasters,” wrote NASA on Aug. 28. “In Texas the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey is causing widespread flooding, and in the western United States just the opposite — dry conditions and extreme heat — are causing widespread forest fires.”

Cobb emphasized that it was the combination of “a very wet winter and a very wet spring” followed by a dry and hot summer that did the West in.

The wet winter and spring led to “an increase in fuel loading,” or more plant growth, she said. “Once the spring precipitation ceased, temperatures increased at a very steady rate, causing all that fuel to dry out relatively quickly,” she added. “With such dense, dry fuels, much of it was easily ignitable” by humans or lightning.  

John Abatzoglou, an associate professor at the University of Idaho who studies wildfires, also told us by email: “Timber groups and foresters have suggested that the current fire problem may be related to the decline in western U.S. timber cultivation,” which our reader mentioned when emailing us. The argument is that if more trees are cut down, there is less fuel to burn in a wildfire. 

But Abatzoglou said that a decline in timber harvesting isn’t always followed by a rise in wildfires. In fact, a 2009 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says timber harvesting can, in some cases, increase fire risk. The report explains that when big, spread out trees are cut down for timber, smaller, densely packed trees can crop up in their place, which can actually lead to more fuel for fires.

Still, “a decline in timber harvest on federal lands … may contribute to a bit more ‘fuel’ in spots,” Abatzoglou acknowledged.

Timber harvesting on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest has declined since at least 1990, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the northern spotted owl as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, according to a 2005 USDA report. The listing led to the protection of large areas of forest for the bird’s habitat. Additional environmental protections imposed after 1990 also reduced timber harvesting.

The Role of Climate Change

Apart from sparking wildfires with cigarettes and campfires, humans can affect the occurrence and spread of wildfires in a few other ways. For one, the way we use and manage the land can impact the prevalence of fires.

Human activity also has led to changes in the climate, as we’ve written, and scientists say climate has historically been the primary control knob for fires in the West, write Marlon and colleagues in their PNAS paper. Let’s take a look at the climate’s role first.

In their 2012 study, the researchers found that changes in climate accounted for roughly 80 percent of variations in biomass burning in the West from at least 500 to 1800, at least when it comes to changes over multiple decades and centuries (not individual years). Temperature accounted for about half of the total variance in burning, while drought was responsible for about a third. Marlon and her group chose this specific period because data prior to 500 weren’t sufficient. After 1800, human settlement in the West complicated the picture, which we’ll get into later.

However, humans haven’t been responsible for changes in the climate until relatively recently in the planet’s history. According to the 2013 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, it’s “extremely likely” (95 percent to 100 percent confident) that more than half of the observed temperature increase since 1950 is due to human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels. Natural phenomena, such as solar activity and volcanoes, can also affect the global climate.

When we asked Cobb what role climate change plays in the severity and length of the fire season, she pointed to “longer summers, higher temperatures, decreased precipitation, and longer episodes of drought.” She added, “The combination of these changes has increased the availability of dry fuels and the ease at which fire ignites and spreads.” 

Abatzoglou similarly told us, “Climate change plays a role in increasing the rate at which vegetation dries out and becomes receptive to igniting and carrying fire.” 

This year is a good example of that: With more precipitation in the spring than in the summer, vegetation dried out fast and turned into fire fuel. We mentioned this general shift from steady summer rain to spring storms in August, when we wrote about the impact of climate change on agriculture.

But as we’ve also written previously, researchers have varying degrees of confidence when attributing warming to different types of extreme events, such as hurricanes, drought, extreme heat and wildfires. They examine the relationship between global warming and extreme events from three different angles: observation, theory and modeling.

Scientists have the highest confidence saying that warming exacerbated a particular kind of phenomenon when there’s solid data from the past, physical principles to explain the link between the event and warming and models to reproduce that relationship.

According to a 2016 report by the National Academies of the Sciences, this is the case for extreme heat, one phenomenon that exacerbates wildfires. Solid historical data suggest there will be more extreme heat in a warmer world. Models also show a link between extreme heat and global warming, and there’s theory to support the link, too.

However, scientists have medium confidence that warming exacerbates drought — another wildfire aggravator — because their models, theory and observational record backing the link are somewhat less solid than those linking extreme heat and warming.

To be clear, warming doesn’t cause wildfires. But it can bring about the conditions that make wildfires more likely to occur and spread, such as heat and drought. We explained this distinction back in August, when we wrote about the relationship between hurricanes and climate change in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

As with wildfires, scientists have more confidence linking warming to the phenomena that are known to exacerbate hurricanes — such as warmer ocean waters — than to hurricanes themselves.

Still, scientists especially struggle with linking warming to wildfires because so many factors contribute to their occurrence, the NAS report says. Among these factors are land use change and management.

The Role of Land Use Changes

We mentioned that human settlement post-1800 complicated the picture when it comes to understanding trends in wildfires in the West. Marlon and her colleagues elaborate on why this is in their 2012 paper.

After 1800, many people began settling in the West, which led to the burning and clearing of large swaths of forest for agriculture and development. Humans also brought with them many invasive species, which “had major impacts on a host of ecological processes that affect fire, including forest composition and structure, nutrient cycling, soils” and other processes, the researchers explain.

With more humans, there were also more accidental fires. For example, “the development of steam power and railroads … created sparks leading to large numbers of wildfires until the early 1900s (when the railroads were required to start clearing woodlands within 100 feet of tracks to prevent fires),” Marlon and her group write.

All of these actions threw wildfire activity out of sync with the climate, an equilibrium that had been in place for thousands of years prior to human settlement. Actions in the 1900s have also contributed to this imbalance.

By the late 1800s, wildfires began to decline, also “largely due to human activities,” the researchers add. For one, “Hundreds of thousands of livestock were introduced to pine forests and grasslands in western states,” which led to reduced fuel for fires, they explain. Road building also “created fire breaks that limited the natural spread of fires,” they write.

Several large and deadly fires also changed people’s attitudes about fire policies, they explain. This paradigm shift led to the creation of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905, which had the “primary mission of suppressing all fires that occurred on reserved lands,” they add.

Abatzoglou told us this fire suppression policy still largely remains in place today. However, “There have been policies implemented over the last 30 years to occasionally let fires burn for natural benefit in certain areas that are not at risk (e.g., unpopulated, away from sensitive ecosystems), but those represent a fairly small sample of fires,” he said.

Some prescribed fires also have been used as of late, he said. According to the U.S. National Park Service, “Prescribed fire is one of the most important tools used to manage fire today.” The rationale is that burning forest fuel under optimal and controllable conditions reduces the chance of catastrophic wildfires. But, in some cases, these controlled burns are “politically unpopular,” Abatzoglou said, because prescribed fires, like all fires, create smoke that’s toxic to humans.

Compared with previous centuries, Western forests were “fundamentally changed in the 1800 and 1900s,” Marlon and her group conclude in their 2012 paper. These land use and management changes have thrown the once strong link between climate and wildfires out of equilibrium, they add.

Where does that leave us in the 21st century?

The combination of the land use changes that occurred during the 1800s, the fire deficit that grew in the 1900s and the current projections for temperature increase into the 21st century has put us on an “unsustainable” path, write Marlon and colleagues. Meaning, the situation isn’t getting any better.

Modest temperature increase will have a substantial impact, but “[m]ore dramatic increases in temperature or drought are likely to produce a response in fire regimes that are beyond those observed during the past 3,000” years, the researchers say.

However, Abatzoglou pointed out that, given the fire suppression that has occurred since the early 1900s, we do still have a fire deficit. “Warmer conditions and drier fuels aided by climate change” have begun to address this deficit, he said, “but it’s a new ballgame with a completely different landscape and a population living in the West today that is figuring out how to live with fire.”

In fact, Cobb said that what made a lot of the fires in Oregon, Washington, California, Montana and Texas bad this year was their proximity to communities. People continue to move to the regions close to natural areas that are prone to burning, which makes it “harder … to carryout fuel treatments on the landscape,” she said. “Instead of being able to let some areas burn for resource benefit, firefighters have to directly or indirectly attack the fire in order to prevent the fire from affecting homes and commercial buildings.” 

So whether it’s human-caused warming or land use changes, we are primarily responsible for putting wildfire activity out West on an unsustainable path.

Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation. 

Sources

National Interagency Fire Center. Fire Report. Accessed 6 Oct 2017.

U.S. Census Bureau. State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.

Northern Rockies Coordination Center. 2017 Year-to-Date Fires and Acres. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.

Great Basin Coordination Center. 2017 Year-to-Date Fires and Acres. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.

Northwest Coordination Center. Situation Report. 5 Oct 2017.

Alaska Interagency Coordination Center. Situation Report. 29 Sep 2017.

Wong, Julia Carrie and Gee, Alastair. “California fires: at least 10 killed in ‘unprecedented’ wine country blaze.” The Guardian. 10 Oct 2017.

Anh Do et al. “More than 5,000 homes evacuated as O.C. fire grows to 6,000 acres, destroying 24 structures.” Los Angeles Times. 9 Oct 2017.

National Interagency Fire Center. Total Wildland Fires and Acres (1960-2016). Accessed 10 Oct 2017.

Marlon, Jennifer R. et al. “Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA.” Proceedings of the National Academies of the Sciences. 10 Jan 2012.

U.S. Forest Service. Prescribed Fire. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.

NASA. “Dozens of Wildfires in Western United States.” 28 Aug 2017.

Daniels, Jean M. “The Rise and Fall of the Pacific Northwest Log Export Market.” USDA. Feb 2005.

U.S. National Park Service. “Wildfire Causes.” Accessed 10 Oct 2017.

Schipani, Vanessa. “Precision in Climate Science.” FactCheck.org. 3 Mar 2017.

IPCC. Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2013.

Schipani, Vanessa. “Pruitt on Climate Change, Again.” FactCheck.org. 9 Mar 2017.

Schipani, Vanessa. “CO2: Friend or Foe to Agriculture?” FactCheck.org. 10 Aug 2017.

NAS. Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change. 2016.

Schipani, Vanessa. Hurricane Harvey and Climate Change. FactCheck.org. 30 Aug 2017.

U.S. National Park Service. Prescribed Fire. Accessed 10 Oct 2017.

USDA. “Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and Preparing for Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface.” Jan 2013.

The post Warming to Blame for Western Wildfires? appeared first on FactCheck.org.

A hard-hitting TV ad from Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho goes a little too far in its attacks on challenger Bryan Smith’s debt collection business:

• The ad says Smith’s business “targeted veterans and the disabled.” The Simpson campaign provides a detailed example of a disabled vet who was sued for default. But there is no evidence the firm specifically “targeted” those groups, and leaves the misleading impression that it does.
• The ad also says a state judge called Smith’s business “excessive” and “unconscionable.” The judge was talking about a case where the interest was allowed to compound over many years to the point where it was more than four times the outstanding principal. But the original lender set the rate and allowed it to compound. Court records show Smith’s firm purchased the debt at a discount and filed suit to collect it, but did not continue to charge interest.

The Simpson-Smith race has attracted national attention. The May 20 primary features an incumbent Republican backed by the Chamber of Commerce against a tea party challenger backed by Club for Growth. Simpson is an eight-term congressman. Smith is an attorney at the firm Smith, Driscoll & Associates.

In the ad “Collection,” the Simpson campaign takes aim at Smith’s debt collection businesses, Diversified Equity Systems and Medical Recovery Services. Also, his law firm, Smith Driscoll & Associates, provides legal representation for DES. When we contacted the Smith campaign, it did not dispute that Smith has a financial stake in the businesses, but it did take issue with some of the ad’s claims, as we will see.

The ad starts by saying “Excessive. Unconscionable. That’s how one Idaho judge described Bryan Smith’s debt collection business.” In a 30-page document on Smith’s business dealings, the Simpson campaign cites the comments of state Judge Patricia Young during a July 3, 2013 hearing with lawyer Bryan Zollinger of Smith, Driscoll & Associates. The Simpson campaign notes that it got the information from a summary of the hearing, which was held via the telephone, not from a court transcript.

The Smith campaign provided us with audio of the hearing, and took issue with the claim that the judge was referring to Smith’s business when she used the words “excessive” and “unconscionable.” We reviewed the transcript and listened to the audio, and agree with the Smith campaign that the evidence does not show that the judge was referring to Smith’s debt collection business.

In the hearing, the judge handled two cases: Diversity Equity Systems v. Esther Garcia and Diversity Equity Systems v. Michael Kelly. In discussing the Kelly case, Young tells Zollinger: “I find this particular amount in this particular case exceedingly excessive based upon the original amount that was borrowed.” Young goes on to question why legal action wasn’t taken much earlier to avoid the interest from mounting so high for such a long time. She says in her experience it is common to file suit after three months or so. In this case, the judge said, Kelly made his last payment in 2008. The suit wasn’t filed until March 8, 2013.

The lawsuit shows the outstanding principal was $2,431.99 and the interest was $10,132 for a total due of $12,563.99. The final default judgment approved by the judge was for $13,349.99, including $600 in legal fees and $186 in court fees. No additional interest was charged after the suit was filed in March until it was settled in July.

Zollinger tells the judge that he files lawsuits as soon as he gets the cases. He said generally his client, Diversity Equity Systems, buys the debt “and it is already four to five years old and that is why they get a discount buying the debt.” The judge asks, “So, the original lender is what you are suggesting is holding onto them?” Zollinger responds by saying, “That is what I would assume. They are trying to get payment and they finally give up after a few years. That is when my client buys them and they are already at this point.”

Young doesn’t let Zollinger off the hook. She tells him, “But during the whole time interest was compounding, there were late payments, there were insufficient checks that kind of thing, but a lot was paid and I just — I just don’t get these from anybody else except you.” Moments later she says, “I just ask that you really look at these, Mr. Zollinger, because I really do think they are unconscionable.”

So, the judge is talking about the high interest rates charged by the original lender and allowed to compound for years by the original lender when she uses the words “unconscionable” and “excessive.” She does note, though, that she handles a lot of cases and “I just don’t get these from anybody else except you.”

Sarah Nelson, an adviser to the Simpson campaign, says the company bears some responsibility because it bought the outstanding loans and had the ability to waive the outstanding interest charges. “We believe it’s fair to state that they have a responsibility in the amounts being ‘exceeding[ly] excessive,'” she said. But that’s her opinion and it’s not what the judge said and not what the ad claimed.

The ad claimed that the judge called Smith’s business “excessive” and “unconscionable.” She didn’t.  It would be accurate, however, for the Simpson campaign to say that Smith’s business sued to collect “excessive” and “unconscionable” debt payments.

The ad goes on to say that Smith’s business “targeted veterans and the disabled who’ve struggled to pay medical bills.” That suggests that the business was singling out veterans and the disabled, but the evidence suggests that the firm was targeting people who had an outstanding debt — regardless of veteran status or disability.

The Simpson campaign says Diversity Equity Systems and Medical Recovery Services filed thousands of suits, but the 30-page document it provided listed just two involving veterans. When we asked the Simpson campaign whether it had evidence that veterans and disabled people were being targeted, it sent back details on the case of Medical Recovery Services v. Billy M. Carnes, which involved a counterclaim filed by the defendant that Smith’s law firm “unlawfully” took $1,640. But that’s just one case out of thousands. Nelson, Simpson’s campaign adviser, says that on that day Carnes was “targeted.” Yes, but the Simpson campaign presented no evidence that veterans and the disabled were targeted as a group.

The Smith campaign also took issue with the claim in that Smith’s business “charged interest rates as high as 99 percent.” Carrie Brown, a spokeswoman for the Smith campaign, says “DES does not charge any interest on the loans.” She points to the discussion between Young and Zollinger about the Kelly case, where DES bought the debt, sued in court for default and did not charge any additional interest on the loan after the suit was filed. “They are discussing the interest on the loan that was already agreed to by the lender. The attorney also notes that if the debtor pays the principle on the loan, DES forgives the interest that was added by the lender,” Brown said.

That’s all accurate. But the Simpson campaign is referring to a different case.

The Simpson campaign points to Diversified Equity Systems v. Jack Riggs. In that case, Riggs signed a contract with a lender called CashCall that included an agreement to pay a prejudgment interest rate of 99.24 percent. (Prejudgment interest is “a component of general damages, to compensate for the time that the plaintiff was denied use of the money or property in dispute.”) DES bought the debt from CashCall (although it’s not clear when) and filed suit on May 21, 2012, for default. Smith, Driscoll & Associates filed a motion Nov. 1, 2012, on behalf of DES to seek payment not only for the outstanding debt and interest but also to enforce the prejudgment interest agreement from June 1, 2008 to Oct. 29, 2012 — five months after DES filed suit and at least five months after DES bought the debt. On Nov. 23, 2012, the court agreed and awarded a total default judgment of $18,268.99 — including $11,054 in prejudgment interest and $4,526 in legal fees. The outstanding principal was only $2,523.72.

So, yes, the 99.24 prejudgment interest rate was set by the original lender and agreed to by Riggs. But DES won court approval to continue to charge the high rate months after buying the debt and filing suit.

Smith doubly benefited from such settlements, because of his financial stake in the law firm. On his personal financial disclosure statement required of all congressional candidates, Smith reported that he earned $208,480 from Jan. 1, 2012, to June 5, 2013, including a little more than $52,000 from DES.

We take no position on Smith’s business practices. That’s up to voters to decide. But the characterization in the ad of some of his business deals is not entirely accurate. It’s incorrect to say Smith’s debt collection business specifically “targeted veterans and the disabled,” and a state judge did not call Smith’s business practices “excessive” and “unconscionable.”

— Eugene Kiely

The post Stretching the Facts in Idaho appeared first on FactCheck.org.

A slate of new ads from the 60 Plus Association evoke a well-worn conservative punching bag — “Obamacare” — to attack seven senators for supporting a lesser-known plan to overhaul the housing finance market. But the group stretches the analogy to absurd lengths to make the case that a Senate proposal amounts to a “takeover of the mortgage industry.”

In fact, the bipartisan legislation in question is an attempt to roll back the government’s involvement in the insurance industry.

The ads also overplay an emotional appeal, warning that under the mortgage proposal “ordinary investors – teachers, police officers, firefighters – could lose retirement savings.” It’s true that many large state pension funds lost millions invested in the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock after those stocks tanked and then fell further after the companies were put in government conservatorship in 2008. But those losses were written off by the nation’s largest pension funds years ago, and represented only a tiny fraction of the pension fund investments at the time. In other words, public pensions are not in serious jeopardy due to the proposed law.

The ads also claim “the federal government will seize all profits” from Fannie and Freddie. It’s true that the government is currently absorbing all Fannie and Freddie profits, and the proposed bill says that arrangement “shall not be amended, restated, or otherwise changed.” But the bill’s authors say the federal courts will ultimately decide whether private investors will see some of those profits, too.

The $1.6 million TV and radio ad campaign from the 60 Plus Association, a self-styled conservative alternative to the AARP that has received millions in funding from organizations connected to the Koch brothers, targets Democrats and Republicans alike who supported a Senate bill that would wind down mortgage finance giants Fannie and Freddie. The targeted senators: Democrats Joe Manchin, Mark Warner and Kay Hagan, and Republicans Mike Crapo, Dean Heller, Jerry Moran and Mark Kirk.

Here’s the text of the ad running against Kay Hagan; other ads substitute the names of the other senators listed above:

Narrator: First it was Obamacare. Millions of Americans saw their health plans canceled. Now Kay Hagan is teaming up with Barack Obama to take over the mortgage industry. Millions of Americans invested their pension and retirement funds in mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Under the plan supported by Hagan and Obama, ordinary investors – teachers, police officers, firefighters – could lose retirement savings. The federal government will seize all profits. Tell Hagan: Don’t bring Obamacare to the mortgage industry.

By way of background, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored entities that buy home loans from lenders and sell them to investors, who are guaranteed by the government to be repaid. The two entities ran into trouble after the housing bubble burst and it was discovered they had underwritten too many risky home mortgages to buyers who were unable to repay them. In September 2008, the U.S. government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, putting them into a conservatorship overseen by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The government took ownership of 80 percent of their stock and infused $187 billion of taxpayer money to keep them afloat.

At issue in the ad campaign is a bipartisan effort to restructure the housing finance market and wind down Fannie and Freddie. The latest version of that plan was unveiled by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson and the panel’s top Republican, Mike Crapo, on March 16. It expands on a similar bipartisan proposal introduced last year by Sens. Bob Corker and Mark Warner and co-sponsored by many of the senators targeted in the ads.

The latest plan, supported by the White House, would replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a new agency, the Federal Mortgage Insurance Corp. The idea is for the FMIC to function similarly to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., with the new agency acting as a backstop guaranteeing mortgages, but requiring that the first 10 percent of losses is absorbed by private capital.

Does that amount to a government “takeover” of the mortgage industry? Not compared to the way things work today.

As Politico put it in an article cited in small print in the ad, the Johnson/Crapo plan “represents a centrist approach in which the government will still play a role in supporting the mortgage market but less of one than it does today.”

David Stevens, president and chief executive officer of the Mortgage Bankers Association, told us in a phone interview: “It’s a very conservative proposal with extraordinary capital requirements that puts a huge buffer” between government guarantees and private capital.

Added Kevin Hall, a spokesman for Sen. Warner, in an email to us: “Since 2008, taxpayers have had to contribute $180 billion to keep Fannie and Freddie afloat. In the event of another crisis, this proposal ensures that private capital will absorb significant initial losses before the taxpayers are asked to pay for another bailout.”

Between the conservatorship of Fannie and Freddie and home loans insured by federal agencies, the government has, in recent years, backed about 90 percent of all new mortgage loans. As a result, it’s “hardly honest” to call the Senate bill a government takeover the mortgage industry, Jeb Mason, a Treasury policy adviser in the Bush administration, told the Wall Street Journal.

“The point of reform would be to try to bring private capital back into the mortgage industry, not the opposite,” said Mason, who is now a partner at Cypress Group, a financial-services consultancy.

We agree. Under the Senate plan, the private sector will play a larger role in the mortgage market, absorbing the first 10 percent of losses. To call that a “takeover” of the mortgage industry akin to the Affordable Care Act is a huge stretch.

Destroying Firefighter, Police and Teacher Pensions?

To get to the bottom of the 60 Plus ads’ claims that under the senators’ plan “teachers, police officers, firefighters – could lose retirement savings” and that the “federal government will seize all profits,” we’ll have to wade a bit deeper into the mortgage industry weeds.

As we stated earlier, the federal government placed Fannie and Freddie into a conservatorship and sank $187 billion of taxpayer money into the companies to keep them afloat. In return, the Washington Post explained, the companies issued “senior preferred” shares to the government that paid a 10 percent dividend, and the government also acquired rights to 80 percent of the companies’ common shares. With the companies losing money, the government in 2012 required that all profits be sent to the Treasury in the form of dividends. Now, Fannie and Freddie are turning a profit — so much so that they have repaid the $187 billion, and then some. But as long as the companies remain in conservatorship,  profits are continuing to go to the government.

One of several lawsuits filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on behalf of Fannie and Freddie shareholders claims the government takeover in 2008 “while beneficial to the economic welfare of the nation, destroyed the value of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s common and preferred stock and trampled the private ownership rights” of shareholders, Bloomberg reported. The 60 Plus Association wants the legislation to compensate investors, but the senators want that to be decided by the courts.

In a press release announcing the ad campaign, 60 Plus Chairman Jim Martin said, “Millions of retirees and other Americans will lose their savings from this broad government overreach built into the Johnson-Crapo legislation. We’re asking these Senators to not bring Obamacare to the mortgage industry and to allow Fannie and Freddie shareholders to recoup the investments that are lawfully theirs.”

But are the retirement savings of firefighters, police officers and teachers really in such grave danger? Not really.

As backup for its claim, a spokesman for 60 Plus directed us to a 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal that reported some of the largest public pension funds — including those for public employees in California, New York and Florida — held millions of shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The article noted, for example, that the Florida Retirement System pension fund, one of the largest pension funds in the country, held nearly 4 million shares of Fannie and Freddie in 2008, and that the stock’s plummet had resulted in $214 million in unrealized loss. But by way of context, the Florida pension’s investment portfolio at the time was valued at $124 billion. So the losses amounted to a little less than 0.2 percent of its asset value that year.

The Florida Retirement System has since dumped all of its Fannie and Freddie stock, a spokesman for the pension fund told us. In other words, those losses were long ago written off. As of the end of last year, the Florida pension fund held a higher level of assets than ever before in its history.

Keith Brainard, a research director for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, told us via email that “speculative investors” – not public pension funds – have more to gain from the lawsuits that seek a share of Freddie and Fannie’s recent profits.

“Holdings in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac comprised a very small portion of public pension funds’ portfolios,” he said. “Although the precipitous decline in the value of these companies was surely disruptive to those companies and perhaps to some of their shareholders, the effect of their decline on public pension funds did not come close to endangering the ability of public pension funds to pay the retirement benefits of retired state and local government workers.”

As was the case in Florida, most institutional investors sold off their shares in Fannie and Freddie after they tanked in the late 2000s, Brainard said. Based on news reports, Brainard said, the recent run-up in share values “appears to be a result of speculative investors — likely hedge funds — scooping them up.” Those are the people with the most at stake when it comes to the issue of sharing the companies’ recent profits with shareholders.

Stevens, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said anyone swayed by the ad is simply buying into an emotional appeal on behalf of “well-financed hedge fund” speculators. “This [ad]  is nothing more than an inflammatory exercise to pull on the emotions of people who don’t know what the bill is truly about,” he said.

The Senate mortgage plan states that as Fannie and Freddie are wound down, the 2012 policy decision that directed all dividend payments go to the federal government “shall not be amended, restated or otherwise changed.” But Sen. Crapo said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on March 13 that the intent is to leave the issue of how shareholders are to be treated  up to the courts.

Crapo, March 13:  Well, you know, the answer to that question is going to come in court rather than in Congress. They have filed suit right now in order to challenge the way that the current conservatorship is managing the current profitability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And we are not necessarily going to dictate the outcome of that. That will be a decision that’s made in the courts.

We take no position, of course, on how the courts ought to decide or whether shareholders are entitled to some of Fannie and Freddie’s profits.

Clarification, April 7:  This story was amended to make clear that the proposed Senate bill would codify the 2012 policy decision to have all Fannie and Freddie profits directed to the government via dividends  — a policy that is being challenged by private shareholders in federal court.

— Robert Farley

The post Obamacare for the Mortgage Industry? appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Rep. Mike Simpson falsely says in a TV ad that he voted to “repeal the Wall Street bailout and repay taxpayers.” It’s true that Simpson – who voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program in 2008 — supported efforts to block the issuance of the second half of the $700 billion authorized for the program. But there was never a vote to “repeal” the law that created the program or the first half of the funding that was handed out.

And the banks did repay taxpayers. The government got back the money it provided to banks with interest, according to congressional budget experts.

Simpson, a Republican representing Idaho’s 2nd District, is seeking his ninth term in Congress. His campaign released the ad, called “Defense,” on March 13, in response to claims made by Bryan Smith, his tea party-backed opponent in the May 20 GOP primary.

Simpson was one of 263 House members who voted for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that President Bush signed on Oct. 3, 2008. It created a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program designed to prevent the further decline of the U.S. economy by allowing the Treasury Department to buy or insure the assets of failing banks.

At the time of his vote, Simpson called the legislation a “necessary evil”:

Rep. Mike Simpson, Oct. 3, 2008: No one is happy about this legislation, but I am convinced that action is a necessary evil in order to keep small businesses afloat, keep retirees from losing their life savings and help end the growing credit crisis we now face. Senator Larry Craig carefully examined the legislation pertaining to the situation our country faces and came to the same conclusion: We cannot, in good conscience, allow ordinary Americans to suffer the consequences of the excesses of Wall Street.

And Simpson continued to defend his vote in 2010, during a town hall meeting and a televised debate. But now, in response to criticism from Smith and the conservative Club for Growth that he voted for the “taxpayer bailout of Wall Street,” the Simpson campaign is claiming that he actually voted to “repeal the Wall Street bailout and repay taxpayers.”

A statement announcing the ad cites a procedural vote Simpson cast on H.R. 384, the TARP Reform and Accountability Act of 2009. Simpson voted against final passage of that bill. But before that, he voted in favor of a motion to have the bill amended to terminate the program’s remaining $350 billion in funding, and also require the Treasury Department secretary to develop a repayment plan for all disbursed TARP funds. (He also voted for a nonbinding House resolution disapproving the release of the remaining TARP funds.)

But neither vote amounts to a full “repeal” of TARP, as the ad says. And taxpayers will be repaid for the money lent to banks, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

In a May 2013 update, CBO said it expected TARP to lose $21 billion of the $428 billion that was awarded. But CBO attributed the net loss to TARP spending other than the money given to financial institutions, which it expects to turn a profit for the government:

CBO, May 23, 2013: To provide support for financial institutions, the federal government disbursed $313 billion, most of which has already been repaid (see Table 2). CBO estimates a net gain to the government of $10 billion from those transactions — a net gain of about $25 billion from assistance to banks and other lending institutions, partially offset by a cost of $15 billion for assistance to AIG (see Table 3).

Simpson can fairly claim that he later voted to deny additional funding for TARP after becoming “disgusted” with how the money was originally handled. But that doesn’t change the fact that he voted for TARP before he began voting against it.

— D’Angelo Gore

Update, April 14: The Club for Growth Action released a TV ad attacking Simpson for claiming that he voted to “repeal the Wall Street bailout.” The ad cites this article and says: “Mike Simpson says he voted to repeal the Wall Street bailout. Fact-checkers call that ‘false.’ ” We did call Simpson’s claim false. However, the Club for Growth also incorrectly referred to Simpson’s procedural vote to amend H.R. 384 as a vote to “Repeal & Repay TARP” on its 2009 congressional scorecard. Simpson voted in line with the Club for Growth then, but, as we said, the vote did not amount to a full “repeal” of TARP.

The post Simpson’s TARP Turnabout appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Political leanings:

Spending target: Unknown

Club for Growth Action, the super PAC of the conservative Club for Growth, formed in August 2010. It was created after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, and it can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals and corporations. On its website, the organization declares it is “dedicated to a single mission: beating big government politicians” of both parties.

The group targets mostly Republicans in primaries and Democrats in general elections. In the 2012 cycle, it spent $16.6 million on ads — with almost $5 million going to help defeat Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the state’s GOP primary for the U.S. Senate.

As of June 16, Club for Growth Action has raised more than $5.5 million and spent almost $5.4 million on independent expenditures in the 2014 election cycle. Over $731,000 has been spent trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who is being challenged by Republican Rep. Tom Cotton. The group, which has endorsed Cotton, aired TV ads attacking Pryor for voting against “defunding Obamacare” and for supporting “trillions in debt, including wasting our money on Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere.” (FactCheck.org wrote about the second ad.) In Republican primaries, Club for Growth Action has spent nearly $3.1 million to help Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel, a tea party challenger to GOP Sen. Thad Cochran. And it spent nearly $500,000 to defeat Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, who ended up beating attorney Bryan Smith with 62 percent of the vote.

Barney Keller, a spokesman for the super PAC, declined to state how much the group hoped to raise and spend in total this cycle. He told us the group would raise and spend “as much as we need to in order to be effective.” Most of the super PAC’s money comes from wealthy Republican donors, though it does receive a small portion of its funding from Club for Growth.

Its largest donor in 2012 was Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, who gave three separate donations totaling $2 million. In that election cycle, Thiel was the ninth largest individual donor to outside spending groups — contributing an additional $2.7 million to Endorse Liberty and Revolution PAC, two libertarian groups.

Other top donors include investing guru Robert Arnott of Newport, Calif., and private equity investor John Childs. Arnott, the founder and chairman of Research Affiliates, donated $750,000 in the 2012 cycle and has given $250,000 for 2014. Childs, the chairman and CEO of the Boston-based J.W. Childs Associates, contributed more than $1.1 million in 2012 and $100,000, so far, in 2014.

Richard Gaby, a Georgia real estate mogul, contributed $200,000 to Club for Growth Action in 2012, as well. Gaby and his wife, Barbara Van Andel-Gaby, who serves on the board of the conservative Heritage Foundation, have donated more than $1.6 million to conservative groups and Republican parties and candidates since 2009.

Virginia James, an investor in New Jersey, has given the largest donation, thus far, for 2014 — $1,500,000. She has contributed nearly $3.1 million to Club for Growth Action since it launched.

Fact-checking Club for Growth Action:

Arkansas Race Off to Misleading Start, Aug. 9, 2013

Same Tactic, Different Candidate in Nebraska, May 9

Exaggerated Claims of ‘Corporate Welfare’, July 11

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