I am a senior at Bayfield High School and in my U.S. government class, we are exploring some statements that the candidates running for president of the United States have made. I was astounded to see how swayed some of these statements were. Some of these so-called, “statistics” were absolutely ridiculous when compared to the real facts. Factcheck.org and Politicheck.com were the sites that made it so easy to notices these mistakes. These sites had videos of interviews with all of the candidates and then statements pointing out what was said and the actual facts. One example of this is when candidate Ted Cruz said, “We have 80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year.” That’s wrong. Justice Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in 1988, an election year.
Another statement made by Hillary Clinton was, “You are three times more likely to be able to get a mortgage if you’re a white applicant than if you’re black or Hispanic, even if you have the same credentials.” A Zillow study of federal data said, “The 2014 data showed somewhat lower denial rates across the board – 9.4 percent for whites, 18.8 percent for Hispanics, and 23.5 percent for African-Americans.” These are denial rates, not acceptance rates. The problem is she said, “even if you have the same credentials.” Her argument was not far off, statistically speaking: Whites do get accepted for more mortgages. But this study was done without any background checks, credit history or other factors that could impact a person’s ability to be accepted for a mortgage. So, where this candidate was stretching the truth was saying that a race factor was being calculated into whether someone gets accepted for a mortgage and that is incorrect.
All of the candidates have been found using faulty facts or stretching the truth to make their statements more directly hit the hearts of middleclass Americans in an attempt to gain as many votes as possible.
Zane Phelps
Bayfield
