Howdying PolitiFact Tennessee

PolitiFact Tennessee -- Politifact’s 10th state-level project to check the facts -- had posted eight fact checks as of midday Jan. 25, 2012 including one touching on a PolitiFact Texas Truth-O-Meter regarding the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Its  initial ratings covered almost the entire Truth-O-Meter, though no statement had been rated Half True.

Sampling:

--Tennessee’s grocery tax is one of the highest in the nation, that state’s Democratic Party says. True. The sales tax on groceries is 5.5 percent.

--The National Corn Growers Association says Stephen Fincher of Tennessee is the only working farmer in the U.S. House. Not so, it turns out. Several other House members seem comfortable with manure on their work boots and do work farms when back home in their districts.

--U.S. Rep. Stephen Cohen, a Memphis Democrat, recently told an MSNBC interviewer that the "Republicans have never done anything really to balance the budget."

Ahem.

The first President Bush’s 1990 budget helped battle the deficit with the support of a few Republicans. And the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 cleared the Republican Congress before it was signed into law by the Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Cohen’s "never" claim is not just incorrect, it’s smoky. Pants on Fire!

--Republican U.S. House hopeful Charlotte Bergmann says on a billboard that the Rev. King was a Republican. False, PolitiFact Tennessee concluded. Its review includes research from our January 2011 look at a similar claim.

Poke through all of PolitiFact Tennessee starting here.