Did The GOP Convention Lose Trump More Voters? Don't Ask The Facebook Propaganda Machine

On Friday night, Trump hosted another super-spreader event, this one in a crowded airport hanger in New Hampshire. In 2016, New Hampshire was essentially a 47-47% tie, although Hillary had a couple thousand more votes and won the states 4 electoral votes. Trump has always maintained he was ripped off and would win New Hampshire back in 2020. Polling doesn't indicate the race is even close in New Hampshire this year. Trump favorability is way underwater and the latest RealClearPolitics polling average shows Biden beating him by nearly ten points. The most recent poll from the University of New Hampshire shows Trump losing with 40% of the vote to Biden's 53%-- and with a 10% lead among independents. On Friday night in the hangar, while his supporters were giving each other COVID-- Trump blustered and projected ("If Biden wins, which I honestly can’t believe would happen, I will have lost to a low IQ individual") and threatened and raged, blasting "Democrat-run cities" ("We’re going to have an unbelievable year unless somebody stupid gets elected and raises your taxes").

Is it possible that the polls are all wrong-- again? I think it's more possible that the media is trying to make the election an exciting horserace but... there was that study by Cloud Research on who lies to pollsters. It shows that Republicans and independents are more likely to lie than Democrats. And they are twice as likely as Democrats to say they would not give their true opinion in a telephone poll question about their preference for president. What does that mean? Well, it raises the possibility that polls understate support for Señor Trumpanzee. Cloud Research reported that 11.7% of Republicans and 10.5% independents said they would not give their true opinion, as opposed to 5.4% of Democrats. "Shy voters" had 6 concerns:

• A lack of trust in phone polls as truly being anonymous.
• An apprehension to associate their phone numbers with recorded responses.
• Fear that their responses will become public in some manner.
• Fear of reprisal and related detrimental impact to their financial, social, and family lives should their political opinions become publicly known.
• A general dislike of phone polls.
• Malicious intent to mislead polls due to general distrust of media and political pundits (though a sentiment expressed only by a few “shy voters”). 

Slimeball by Nancy Ohanian

And then there's the Kevin Rouse OpEd in the New York Times that has gone viral, What If Facebook Is The Real Silent Majority? Nearly a dozen people sent it to me before noon on Saturday. I never got into Facebook. DWT posts get put up there and I'll occasionally answer requests I notice but I've never once, for example, looked to Facebook for news (or even opinion). I'm the opposite of Rouse, who wrote that since the 2016 election, he's "been obsessively tracking how partisan political content is performing on Facebook. I guess he takes Facebook a lot more seriously than I do. No offense, but I tend to think of people who use Facebook as a news source as being just slightly above brain-dead. But what do I know? I still blog all day. To me Facebook has always been a game I never played. To Rouse-- and I suspect, most people, Facebook is, as he wrote, "the world’s largest and arguably most influential media platform. Every morning, one of the first browser tabs I open is CrowdTangle-- a handy Facebook-owned data tool that offers a bird’s-eye view of what’s popular on the platform. I check which politicians and pundits are going viral. I geek out on trending topics. I browse the previous day’s stories to see which got the most reactions, shares and comments. Most days, the leader board looks roughly the same: conservative post after conservative post, with the occasional liberal interloper... It’s no secret that, despite Mr. Trump’s claims of Silicon Valley censorship, Facebook has been a boon to him and his allies, and hyperpartisan Facebook pages are nothing new. (In fact, my colleague John Herrman wrote about them four years ago this month.)

But what sticks out, when you dig in to the data, is just how dominant the Facebook right truly is. Pro-Trump political influencers have spent years building a well-oiled media machine that swarms around every major news story, creating a torrent of viral commentary that reliably drowns out both the mainstream media and the liberal opposition.

The result is a kind of parallel media universe that left-of-center Facebook users may never encounter, but that has been stunningly effective in shaping its own version of reality. Inside the right-wing Facebook bubble, President Trump’s response to Covid-19 has been strong and effective, Joe Biden is barely capable of forming sentences, and Black Lives Matter is a dangerous group of violent looters.

Mr. Trump and his supporters are betting that, despite being behind Mr. Biden in the polls, a “silent majority” will carry him to re-election. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest and most online son, made that argument himself at the Republican National Convention this week. And while I’m not a political analyst, I know enough about the modern media landscape to know that looking at people’s revealed preferences-- what they actually read, watch, and click on when nobody’s looking-- is often a better indicator of how they’ll act than interviewing them at diners, or listening to what they’re willing to say out loud to a pollster.

Maybe Mr. Trump’s “silent majority,” in other words, only seems silent because we’re not looking at their Facebook feeds.

“We live in two different countries right now,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist and digital director of Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign. Facebook’s media ecosystem, he said, is “a huge blind spot for people who are up to speed on what’s on the front page of The New York Times and what’s leading the hour on CNN.”

To be sure, Facebook is not the only medium where right-wing content thrives. Millions of Americans still get their news from cable news and talk radio, where conservative voices have dominated for years. Many pro-Trump Facebook influencers also have sizable presences on Twitter, YouTube and other social networks.

But the right’s dominance on Facebook, specifically, is something to behold. Here are just a few data points I pulled from CrowdTangle this week:

The conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has gotten 56 million total interactions on his Facebook page in the last 30 days. That’s more than the main pages of ABC News, NBC News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR combined. (Data from a different firm, NewsWhip, showed that Mr. Shapiro’s news outlet, the Daily Wire, was the No. 1 publisher on Facebook in July.)

Facebook posts by Breitbart, the far-right news outlet, have been shared four million times in the past 30 days, roughly three times as many as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the U.S. Senate combined.

The most-shared Facebook post containing the term “Black Lives Matter” over the past six months is a June video by the right-wing commentators The Hodgetwins, which calls the racial justice movement a “damn lie.” The second most-shared Black Lives Matter post? A different viral video from The Hodgetwins, this one calling the movement a “leftist lie.” (The Hodgetwins also have the 4th, 6th, and 12th most shared posts.)

Terrence K. Williams, a conservative comedian and Trump supporter, has averaged 86,500 interactions per Facebook post in August, more than twice as many as Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, who has averaged 39,000 interactions per post. (Mr. Trump outdoes them both, naturally, with an average of 92,000 interactions per post.)

A few caveats, before my Democratic readers jump off the nearest pier.

These figures include only posts on public pages, in public groups, and by verified accounts, and they don’t include Facebook ads, where the Biden campaign has been outspending the Trump campaign in recent weeks. Counting Facebook interactions doesn’t tell you how someone felt about a post, so it’s possible some conservative posts are being hate-shared by liberals. And Facebook has argued that engagement isn’t the same thing as popularity.

“These points look mostly at how people engage with content, which should not be confused with how many people actually see it on Facebook,” Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman, said in a statement. Mr. Osborne added that “when you look at the content that gets the most reach across Facebook, it’s not at all as partisan as this reporting suggests.” (Facebook does not disclose this type of data publicly, except once in a while in response to my tweets.)

Democrats aren’t totally absent from Facebook’s upper echelon. Ridin’ With Biden, a pro-Biden page started in April by the founders of the liberal Facebook page Occupy Democrats, has quadrupled its following over the past three months, and routinely gets more engagement than Breitbart and other right-wing heavy-hitters. Individual posts by Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats have broken through in recent weeks.

And political campaigners have pointed out, correctly, that being popular on the internet isn’t a guarantee of electoral success. (“Retweets don’t vote,” as an experienced Democratic operative once told me.) In addition, Facebook’s older, more conservative user base may not reflect what’s happening on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which draw a younger crowd.

Still, the platform’s sheer scale makes it vital to understand. As of 2019, 70 percent of American adults used Facebook, and 43 percent of Americans got news on the platform, according to the Pew Research Center. (Those numbers may have increased because of the pandemic.) We know that the company’s product decisions can make or break political movements, move fringe ideas into the mainstream, or amplify partisan polarization. Registering four million voters before the November election, as Facebook has said it would do, could be a decisive force all on its own. (Typically, higher turnout benefits Democrats, but given what we know about the media diets of hyperactive Facebook users, who knows?)

The reason right-wing content performs so well on Facebook is no mystery. The platform is designed to amplify emotionally resonant posts, and conservative commentators are skilled at turning passionate grievances into powerful algorithm fodder. The company also appears willing to bend its rules for popular conservative influencers. Recent reports by BuzzFeed News and NBC News, based on leaked documents, found that Facebook executives had removed “strikes” from the accounts of several high-profile conservative pages that had shared viral misinformation in violation of the company’s rules.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to view my daily Facebook data-dive as a kind of early-warning system-- a rough gauge of what’s grabbing America’s attention on any given day, and which stories and perspectives will likely break through in the days to come.

And looking at Facebook’s lopsided political media ecosystem might be a useful reality check for Democrats who think Mr. Biden will coast to victory in November.

And on his own Facebook page, Michael Moore couldn't agree more: "Sorry to have to provide the reality check again, but when CNN polled registered voters in August in just the swing states, Biden and Trump were in a virtual tie. In Minnesota, it’s 47-47. In Michigan, where Biden had a big lead, Trump has closed the gap to 4 points. Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC to pull this off? The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states-- but not Michigan. Sound familiar? I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much. Don’t leave it to the Democrats to get rid of Trump. YOU have to get rid of Trump. WE have to wake up every day for the next 67 days and make sure each of us are going to get a hundred people out to vote. ACT NOW!"

I thought Moore was the voice of doom in 2016. His prediction that Hillary would lose turned out to be correct, even if she did actually get 2,868,686 more votes than Trump did (48.2% to 26.1%). Yesterday Jonathan Lemire reported for AP that "The GOP convention’s target audience, according to campaign officials, was mostly former Trump supporters, those Republicans or independents who may have backed him in 2016 but grew unhappy with his rhetoric or handling of the pandemic. The goal, by trying to humanize Trump and demonize Biden, was to set up a permission structure to make those voters feel comfortable enough to vote for Trump again, even if they cared for his policies far more than his personality. Officials believe they accomplished that over the four-day convention and are encouraged by internal numbers that show Trump had begun closing the gap on Biden even before the events of this week in Washington. The campaign’s theory of the election has long been to turn out Trump’s base-- a smaller set of the electorate than which backs Biden, but more enthusiastic-- while also trying to win over nonvoters and drive up negative impressions of Biden so that some of his possible backers stay home.

The president’s advisers privately acknowledge minefields lay ahead in the final nine weeks before Election Day.

Trump aides are warily watching the calendar as Labor Day approaches, concerned that the three-day weekend, traditionally marked by parties and sizable gatherings, could trigger a spike in infections just like they believe Memorial Day did at the other bookend of summer.

How Many Years Should Mark Zuckerberg Serve In Prison? And Who Runs Google?

I hate Facebook's ad department so much that I just stopped dealing with them entirely. Blue America no longer uses them for ads. We switched out on-line ads to Google. I hate them nearly as much, although my experiences with them are mixed. It's entirely random and subjective if they green-light an ad or reject it. A couple of weeks ago Blue America was trying to buy an ad as part of our I.E. campaign for Eva Putzova. They turned it down and didn't tell us why. And, of course, there is no one to speak with. It's arbitrary and chillingly Kafkaesque. Somehow Jacquie found someone to scream at and-- boom-- the ad was running. I wish there was a way around them. I tried CNN.com, but they turned out to be so lame that no one ever even called back when I told an operator that we have a 6 figure budget for the year and would like to spend it on CNN.com.

I think a good case could be made for throwing Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Fidji Simo, David Fischer, David Wehner and the rest of Facebook's management upper echelon in prison for seriously damaging the country. Not because I don't like Facebook but because they are seriously damaging the country in the pursuit of profits without regard to the impact their poisonous decisions have on society. What am I talking about?

Yesterday I saw a piece by Craig Timber's and Andrew Ba Tran at the Washington Post, Facebook's Fact Checkers Have Ruled Claims In Trump Ads Are False-- But No One Is Telling Facebook's Users. How could it be otherwise? Lying and gaslighting are part of Trump's identity. It's who he is and always has been and always will be. But his ads go up anyway.

All 5 of the fact-checking agencies that Facebook used to assess Trump's new ad found it "false" and "deceptive." Facebook didn't tell their readers though. "That’s because the company specifically exempts politicians from its rules against deception. Ads containing the falsehoods continue to run freely on the platform, without any kind of warning or label."

Enabled by Facebook’s rules, Trump’s reelection campaign has shown versions of the false claim on Facebook at least 22.5 million times, in more than 1,400 ads costing between $350,000 and $553,000, a Washington Post analysis found based on data from Facebook’s Ad Library. The ads , bought by the campaign directly or in a partnership with the Republican National Committee, were targeted at Facebook users mainly in swing states such as Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

They weren’t the only times Trump’s campaign has taken advantage of Facebook’s policy allowing politicians to lie with impunity, something the company does not tolerate from non-political advertisers. Fact-checking organizations that partner with Facebook also have ruled that Trump ads have made untrue claims about Biden’s positions on school choice and health care for immigrants, as well as on the effectiveness of Trump’s response to the coronavirus, yet ads including these claims have been allowed to stay on the platform and carry no warning label, The Post’s review found.

Biden’s campaign has not taken similar advantage of Facebook’s leniency about political claims. Fact checkers working with Facebook have found far fewer misleading statements from him or his campaign, a review of their work since May found. Most concerned misstatements made in the candidate’s public remarks, typically in interviews or campaign events, such as when he said in June that covid-19 had killed 120 million Americans when the correct number was 120,000. No fact checker from Facebook’s network has recently taken issue with a Biden campaign ad that appeared on Facebook.

When Facebook’s fact checkers deem non-political ads false, the company removes them from its platform, though they remain in the publicly available Ad Library for research purposes. In the case of the Trump ads, the only public presentation of the factcheckers’ conclusions has been on their own websites-- where the organizations routinely run all their assessments.

“It’s crazy,” said Claire Wardle, U.S. director of First Draft, an organization dedicated to fighting misinformation that has a partnership with Facebook. “Because Facebook has decided not to actively fact check political ads, you have this perverse situation where these fact-checks of problematic ads sit on the fact-checking websites, but there is no mechanism for their work to impact Facebook or their users.”

...Critics particularly warned that the ability of political advertisers to narrowly target demographic slices undermined transparency and created the opportunity to rapidly and strategically push falsehoods far more easily than in broadcast ads, which typically are seen by everyone in a particular area-- allowing obviously misleading statements to be challenged.

...Biden campaign spokesman Matt Hill said, “Facebook has chosen to sell the Trump campaign the tools to target specific voters with false advertisements… A company that values American democracy would reconsider this indefensible practice.”

Worries about a 2016 repeat

Concern about falsehoods in Facebook advertising stems from the rampant lies, distortions and disinformation that flooded the platform in 2016, including by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which used rubles to buy ads in which the operatives pretended to be American political activists. U.S. intelligence officials later determined that Russia’s goal was to divide Americans along racial, social, religious and other political fault lines, and to help elect Trump.

But Trump’s routine use of false and misleading claims during his presidency, along with his heavy and sophisticated use of social media, has fueled concern that unchecked disinformation on would be a problem during the 2020 election season.

The Post’s fact-checking team-- which does not work with Facebook but on July 14 ruled Trump’s claims about Biden wanting to “defund” police forces merited “Four Pinocchios,” the worst possible rating of veracity-- has detailed more than 20,000 lies, falsehoods and misleading comments by Trump since he took office, for an average of 12 each day.

Facebook’s network of independent fact checkers has catalogued a similarly robust stream of untruths by Trump, his campaign, cabinet members, Vice President Pence and numerous campaign surrogates on a wide range of subjects. The rate of falsehoods far outpaces those documented from Biden or his campaign.

The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning [right-of-center, corporately-funded] think tank, said it had found nine different Trump ads on Facebook whose central claims against Biden or Democrats generally had been ruled false by fact checkers that were part of the company’s network. Those ads have appeared at least 140 million times on the platform, at a cost of between $2.2 million and $3.7 million. (Facebook’s Ad Library, which is the source of such data, gives ranges, not precise amounts).

“This is something that is not hypothetical. It is real, and it’s going to get a lot worse,” said Adam Conner, vice president for technology at the Center for American Progress. He previously worked on elections and policy issues for Facebook before leaving the company in 2014.

“I did not imagine that these would be tools that harm democracy rather than strengthen it,” Conner said.

Several key members of Facebook’s network began their work before social media was a major vehicle for delivering political falsehoods, but the emergence of Facebook’s operation has provided them with resources to more effectively monitor deception on the platform.

FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, started in 2003. It received $324,000 from Facebook in the most recent fiscal year to check facts on the platform, allowing it to add staff to conduct more fact checks. Project director Eugene Kiely said he would like to see its work at least linked below advertisements it has evaluated.

“The policy should be that you provide Facebook users with as much information as you can to make good decisions. That’s why we’re here,” said Kiely. “I don’t see how you can argue against giving Facebook users more information.”

Politifact, part of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, also has had combating political lies at the core of institutional mission since its founding in 2007. Editor-in-Chief Angie Drobnic Holan said that the claims of politicians should get more scrutiny, not less, though she praised Facebook for having a fact-checking system that goes beyond what other platforms do. (She declined to disclose how much Facebook pays Politifact to participate in its fact-checking program.)

“I feel like they’re giving politicians a privilege they don’t give to ordinary people, and why would they do that?” said Holan. “The politician’s exemption, from a fact-checking point of view, doesn’t make a lot of sense. They’re giving a break to power.”

And if anyone figures out who runs Google... that crew belongs in prison too. For now I'll pass on pronouncing judgement on CNN.com.

Total coincidence-- after writing the post above, I saw this: State attorneys general blast Facebook’s civil rights record, blaming social media for rise in hate crimes and discrimination, perhaps a glimmer of hope that Zuckerberg actually will wind up in prison. But they don't put politically-connected billionaires in prison in this country, do they? Elizabeth Dwoskin reported that "Nearly two dozen state attorneys general demanded Facebook do more to stop the spread of disinformation, discrimination and hate in an open letter on Wednesday, the latest volley in a growing campaign targeting the company’s civil rights record. Citing a rise in hate crimes and online harassment, the attorneys general asked Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to step up enforcement of the social media company’s hate speech policies. They also asked the company to allow independent audits of the hateful content on the site and of Facebook’s measures to eliminate it. And they called for the company to improve its responsiveness to victims of hate-filled attacks. Their requests add to a growing chorus of demands by civil rights advocates, advertisers, politicians and others that the company improve its handling of some of the most charged and divisive issues involving free speech and harm in U.S. society. Facebook is facing a boycott of 1,000 advertisers, including Disney and Verizon, over its civil rights record. While the boycott failed to make a dent in the company’s bottom line when the company reported earnings last week, the pressure from the attorneys general is significant because they have the power to sue Facebook if their requests are not met. Democrats from states including New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois and California signed the letter."

And then, finally...

Trump And His Enablers Are Making Everything Worse-- And Now It E

5-Watt Bulb by Nancy Ohanian

Getting COVID-19 can be extremely serious to your health, even if you don't die. NPR rerouted yesterday that as the pandemic continues, we're learning more about what it means to survive the disease. "For many patients who fall seriously ill, the virus' impact does not end upon discharge from the hospital. Some are struggling with a host of residual symptoms and challenges... Even two to three months after leaving the hospital... many patients who were seriously ill have only recovered a fraction of their former strength. Some suffer from daunting neurological challenges as well."

What we don't know is where this leads for these people. Obviously no one knows what happens a year or ten years from now. Will people recover over time? But we do know this: "The amount of inflammatory response that [the virus] creates that causes significant damage in various organs of our body is unprecedented."

That said, the last thing we need is untrustworthy politicians consumed with their own careers, making decisions for society. Public health experts should be making these calls, not slime like Trump or, in California, Gavin Newsom. This week, the L.A, Times reported that 77% of Californians worry that they could come down with the disease and that a significant number of residents believe Newsom reopened the state's economy too early. Here in L.A., as the surge of cases started rising, it became harder and harder to get tested. Last month was a breeze. I don't know if it's Mayor Eric Garcetti or Newsom pulling the strings, but now it's virtually impossible.

Neo-liberals behaving like Republicans is pretty depressing-- although not something that should surprise anyone who knows anything about Newsom besides that fact that in the gayest city in America he was pro-LGBTQ. Yesterday Bloomberg News reported how another always disappointing neo-liberal, Joe Biden "will call for a moderate approach toward reviving the U.S. economy if elected president that includes spurring manufacturing and encouraging innovation, shelving for now the more ambitious proposals pushed by progressive Democrats." Wow-- and the same day the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces submitted recommendations to the DNC Platform Committee and to Biden directly on working together on key economic policies. No one can ever say DWT didn't warn you from day-one that the only sack of putrid shit worse than Biden was Trump.

And meanwhile, California is bracing for a spike in coronavirus deaths, which is what inevitably follows big increases in infection rates. On Tuesday, California reported another 8,631 confirmed new cases (7,277 cases per million Californians). Wednesday it was another 8,561 (7,493 cases per million). Today another 7,248 cases (7,677 per million residents). Or, as the L.A. Times put it, "New coronavirus cases roughly doubled in California over the last month. Hospitalizations have soared 88%, filling some medical centers close to capacity. Now, public health officials are bracing for the grimmest phase of the cycle: a spike in COVID-19 fatalities... Experts say it can take three to four weeks after exposure to the virus for infected people to become sick enough to be hospitalized, and four to five weeks after exposure for some of the most vulnerable patients to die from the disease.

More younger people are also testing positive for the virus, a trend that has become apparent as the economy has reopened and working-age adults returned to jobs and resumed social gatherings.

Early in the pandemic, in March, about half of California’s new infections were identified among people ages 18 to 49, a Times data analysis found. In June, as the number of new cases began to climb sharply, that share increased to nearly 62%. So far in July, roughly 65% of new infections have been diagnosed among those 18 to 49. That’s despite the fact that just 45% of Californians fall into that age range.

“These are individuals who tend not to be as likely to get serious disease or require either hospitalization or to die from COVID-19,” said Timothy Brewer, professor of medicine and epidemiology at UCLA. “So particularly the 18- to 50-year-old age group is a group that has relatively low mortality rates, but there has been a big surge in infections.”

These kids today! Judd Legum's PopularInformation explained how Facebook and YouTube have been masking reality. Despite all the scientific proof that masks are the only viable option we have to slow down the pandemic, both platforms keep disseminating false information about masks being useless or even harmful. After all, the Republican Party has spent 2 decades and countless amounts of money persuading people with low IQs that science is their enemy and not to be trusted. Now they think some moron with a MAGA hat on YouTube is a better person to get medical advise from than a professional or, God forbid-- expert. Only 65% of Americans say they were masks "most of the time" when inside a business.

"How," asked Legum, "did so many Americans become misinformed about the efficacy of masks? Some of the confusion is driven by Trump, who has refused to wear a mask publicly and questioned their efficacy. He has also resisted calls to impose a national mask mandate. Another factor is that false information about masks is proliferating on social media. Facebook and YouTube announced strong policies banning misinformation about COVID-19 transmission and prevention. The platforms recognize this kind of misinformation puts lives at risk. But these policies are not being effectively enforced, exposing millions to false and dangerous information.

[O]n June 30, Ohio State Representative Nino Vitale posted a lengthy rant on Facebook that claimed masks "drop oxygen below danger levels in 5 seconds." The post was tagged #masksdoharm and #masksdonotwork. In just a few days, the post was shared more than 13,000 times across Facebook.  The claim that masks interfere with your ability to get enough oxygen is false. Christopher Labos, a doctor affiliated with McGill University, explains:

There are actually only two ways to develop low oxygen levels in the blood. One is to deliver less oxygen into the lungs, and the other is to impair the lungs’ ability to allow oxygen to diffuse into the bloodstream. A mask will obviously not impair gas exchange within the lungs, and the cloth face coverings advocated by public health experts do not provide an airtight seal that would impair oxygen delivery into the airways. Furthermore, masks are designed to filter out large particles, like water droplets, and cannot stop tiny molecules like oxygen that can infiltrate between the weave of any fabric...It is frankly implausible to think that wearing a mask is dangerous. Think of all the surgeons, nurses, anesthetists, and perfusionists that have worn masks during long operations and suffered no ill effects.

In response to a request for comment by Popular Information, Facebook removed Vitale's post and two others with similar claims. “We removed several of these posts for violating our policies against making false claims about COVID-19 that could lead to imminent physical harm, including the suggestion that wearing a mask can make you sick," a Facebook spokesman told Popular Information.

But the fact that these kinds of posts were able to make dangerously false claims about masks-- and rack up more than 13,000 shares-- suggests that Facebook's enforcement of its policy is ineffective. Moreover, Facebook left up two posts by Vitale that also claimed masks are dangerous, including a post from July 3, claiming "there is overwhelming scientific evidence showing masks actually do harm."

A Facebook spokesperson said this post did not make a specific enough claim about the harms of masks to be removed.

YouTube has been full of insane videos by Vitale and other Trumpist Death Cult freaks. When Legum complains, YouTube removes them, but when he doesn't catch them in time, hundreds of thousand of morons view them. Vitale is upper reelection in November, but the geniuses who called themselves the Ohio Democratic Party are probably the ones who admire Vitale's videos and screeds; they aren't bothering to run anyone against him. (They didn't even run someone against him in 2016 when the GOP refused to endorse him! Fed up, a high school student finally ran against him in 2018.) He's the chair of the Ohio House's Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Over 90% of his district (HD-85)-- Champaign County and portions of Logan and Shelby counties-- is white. The closest thing to a city is Champaign's county seat, Urbana (pop- 11,400); Gym Jordan was born there. Since 1856, when it was established, Champaign Co. has only voted for 3 Democratic presidential candidates, once for Woodrow Wilson (1912), once for FDR (1932) and once for LBJ (1964). Trump beat Hillary 69.2% to 25.2% and that should give you an idea about why someone like Vitale is in public office.

Vitale says he refuses to wear a mask in the Ohio House because it interferes with his religious beliefs. "This is the greatest nation on earth founded on Judeo-Christian Principles. One of those principles is that we are all created in the image and likeness of God. That image is seen the most by our face. I will not wear a mask." Outside of his own district, most people consider him certifiably insane and more than a few people think also criminally insane, since he seems to delight in endangering the health of everyone he comes into contact with.

Ohio had another 1,250 confirmed new cases yesterday and 1,114 more today-- 5,247 cases per Ohioan. Vitale doesn't appear to give it a second thought, other than how to use it to boost his own career with far right extremists and GOP morons by whining about his liberty... liberty to spread the contagion far and wide with no constraints from society. This is a video he posted as part of his absurdist war against the Ohio Republican establishment.





Earlier today, CNN reported that Nino is at it again-- on Facebook, trying his damn best to cause more death and destruction in Ohio. Nino Vitale is a plague Ohioans brought on themselves. Facebook hasn't removed the series of memes yet, like these two:

The second is the kind of misleading pandemic news that Facebook has pledged to remove. What set nutty-Nino off this time was DeWine's new announcement of a mask mandate. "This is what happens when people go crazy and get tested. STOP GETTING TESTED!," Vitale shrieked. "It is giving the government an excuse to claim something is happening that is not happening at the magnitude they say it is happening." People will die in Ohio because of Nino Vitale and his sick brain. Voters in his district should take responsibility for defeating him in November by writing in someone else's name.

Judd Legum Forced Facebook To Remove 1,000 False Ads-- Can He Force Restaurants And Grocery Stores To Give Employees Sick Leave?

Trump-- Not Out Of The Woods Yet

In April, 2009, Blue America endorsed attorney and blogger Judd Legum for the Maryland state Assembly. He didn't win. More recently he's been writing a fantastic, compelling newsletter, Popular Information. A few weeks ago, Judd went after Facebook's policy of allowing deceptive paid ads, a practice television and radio would lose their licenses for doing. His stellar independent journalism forced Facebook to remove over 1,000 of these deceptive ads. Then last week he started taking aim at companies not giving their employees sick leave. He started with Olive Garden. "Before you drown your anxiety about the coronavirus in a bowl of Never Ending Pasta," he wrote, "consider this: in most states, the staff at Olive Garden does not receive paid sick leave. That means if anyone working at the restaurant feels sick, they could be forced to choose between staying home and paying their rent."

The Olive Garden is one of the restaurant brands operated by Darden. The company employs about 170,000 hourly restaurant employees across 1779 restaurants in the United States, making it one of the largest full-service restaurant operators in the country. Except where required by law, Darden does not provide any of its restaurant employees with paid sick leave. Currently, just 11 states and DC-- along with a handful of cities-- require employers to provide paid sick leave.

The Center for Disease Control's coronavirus guidelines recommends employers “actively encourage sick employees to stay home” and "ensure that your sick leave policies are flexible."

A manager at the Olive Garden in Falls Church, Virginia, told Popular Information that, despite the coronavirus outbreak, the company would not pay employees who call out sick for work. The manager instructed a server not to "engage in a conversation" with this reporter about Olive Garden's policy.

None of Darden's media representatives responded to an email from Popular Information. But Darden employees around the country were willing to share their experiences.

A server at the Indianapolis Yard House, another Darden restaurant chain, told Popular Information that restaurant staff "do not get paid sick leave" and get "written up" if they fail to call in sick at least two hours in advance. According to the Indianapolis-based server, since the coronavirus outbreak, the company sent out a message encouraging sick employees to stay home. But it has not offered to pay these employees for missing time. The server has observed many coworkers reporting to work sick because they could not afford to miss a shift.

An Olive Garden server reports that, at a North Dakota location, employees are "not allowed to stay home sick" unless they can find someone to cover their shift or produce a doctor's note. But many of the workers lack insurance to see a doctor. In December, the server says, several members of the staff worked with a persistent cough.

A former Olive Garden server in Arizona, who recently quit, also said there was no pay for missed shifts. Did the server observe people coming into work sick as a result?

All of the time. If you couldn't get your shift covered and called in sick, they would typically try to get you to come in anyways, and if you stayed home, you would lose shifts in the future.

An employee who worked in Kentucky at Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, another Darden restaurant chain had a similar experience. "I remember times when people came in with flu, strep, common colds. Many times people wouldn’t go to the doctor because most of us didn’t have health insurance," the former employee said.

Lobbying to keep sick workers from getting paid

The lack of mandatory paid sick leave in the United States makes the country particularly vulnerable to disease outbreaks like coronavirus. "Studies show contagion can really be contained with paid sick leave. People cannot stay at home and self-isolate if they are going to risk their jobs by doing so,” Sherry Leiwant, co-president of A Better Balance, said.

A 2012 study found "the lack of workplace policies such as paid sick leave led to 5 [million] extra flu-like illnesses during the H1N1 swine flu outbreak of 2009." A 2018 study found that, in cities that implement mandatory paid sick leave, flu rates plummet by nearly 50%.

According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 55% of workers in the "accommodation and food services" industry have no paid sick leave.

One reason why so many restaurant workers lack paid sick leave is that companies like Darden are spending millions to prevent the passage of paid sick leave laws. Even as the coronavirus spreads in the United States, Darden, Outback Steakhouse, McDonald's, and other large employers are lobbying for a Florida law that would block cities from implementing their own paid sick leave requirements.

In 2016, Darden, McDonald's and the National Restaurant Association successfully lobbied for a law that prevented cities in North Carolina from passing mandatory sick leave legislation.

The danger of short-term thinking

Darden's refusal to pay its employees for sick leave saves the company a few dollars in the short-term but could backfire. The company's own SEC filings cite "health concerns arising from food-related pandemics, outbreaks of flu viruses or other diseases" as a major risk factor for its business. 

If a virus is transmitted by human contact, our employees or guests could become infected, or could choose, or be advised, to avoid gathering in public places, any of which could adversely affect our restaurant guest traffic and our ability to adequately staff our restaurants, receive deliveries on a timely basis or perform functions at the corporate level…  Additionally, jurisdictions in which we have restaurants may impose mandatory closures, seek voluntary closures or impose restrictions on operations. Even if such measures are not implemented and a virus or other disease does not spread significantly, the perceived risk of infection or significant health risk may adversely affect our Business.

The financial risk is not theoretical. The company was forced to pay out a substantial settlement in 2011 when a worker with Hepatitis A allegedly exposed thousands of customers.

[A] server in a Fayetteville, North Carolina, Olive Garden worked while ill with Hepatitis A, potentially exposing thousands of customers. With Darden’s policy of not providing earned sick leave, and with the minimum wage for servers in North Carolina being $2.13, the server likely could not afford to take a day off despite her illness. The Cumberland County Health Department called in thousands of area diners to be tested for Hepatitis A. After several thousand of these consumers filed a class-action lawsuit, Darden settled the case by creating a $375,000 fund to compensate the consumers.

The company could certainly afford to provide its employees with paid sick leave. It already does so in 11 states and DC. In fiscal year 2019, the company brought in $8.5 billion in revenue. It had a total profit of over $782 million before taxes.

Darden did not have an issue improving the compensation and benefits of its CEO, Gene Lee. In 2018, Lee made $15.7 million, more than twice his 2017 salary. The deal included "a $1 million base salary, $2 million in bonuses and more than $12.3 million in stock option grants." Lee benefits package alone is worth $430,000 and includes "a company car, an executive physical, insurance, and reimbursements for financial counseling."

Lee's compensation was 871 times the median compensation for a Darden employee, which was $18,097.

Taking action

Not all companies are leaving their paid sick leave policies unchanged during the coronavirus outbreak. Trader Joe's, which already offers employees paid leave, says managers will have the ability to authorize additional sick leave for any worker with a respiratory illness. (A union seeking to organize Trader Joe's says the new policy doesn't go far enough.)

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) has proposed a more comprehensive solution. On Friday, she introduced legislation requiring "all employers" to "let workers earn 7 days of paid sick leave a year, and give them 14 paid sick days immediately in the event of a health emergency."

Yesterday, Legum went further, this time taking on "Kroger-- the country's largest supermarket chain-- continues to maintain sick leave policies that incentivize workers to show up ill. The company operates over 2700 supermarkets under a variety of brands, including Harris Teeter, Dillons, and Ralphs, and employs 453,000 people. Popular Information spoke to numerous Kroger employees around the country. Policies vary by location, but many Kroger employees report receiving no paid sick leave at all. Other employees are offered sick leave, but with significant restrictions that limit its availability. The policies of grocery stores are particularly important because, no matter how severe the coronavirus outbreak becomes in the United States, they cannot close. And people cannot avoid close proximity to grocery store employees."

An assistant front end department leader, who works in Kroger's Delta Division, which includes West Tennessee, parts of Arkansas, and Mississippi, told Popular Information that the job does not include sick leave. The Kroger employee has been working with the company for two decades. The employee does receive vacation days but, per the terms of the union contract, vacation days must be booked in advance and therefore, cannot be used to receive pay for sick time. There have been no adjustments to this policy since the outbreak of the coronavirus.

Another Kroger employee has been working full-time in Tennessee for less than two months. The employee will eventually be eligible for a week of paid sick leave-- but not until working for Kroger for a full year. Until then, there is no pay for time missed due to illness.

A Kroger employee in Colorado, who works for the company's King Soopers brand, said that paid sick leave is available after a year of employment but, even after that, the company does not pay employees until "the second full sick day." This policy is spelled out in the union contract, which the employee shared with Popular Information.

A Kroger employee in Seattle, who has worked for the company for about six weeks, was not feeling well and, as a precaution, stayed home last week. The employee shared his experience with the company.

I work at a Kroger grocery store north of Seattle...[I]t’s been nuts. I came down with a cold last week, self-isolated and asked if they would pay me for the time I was scheduled. Nope. I hadn’t earned enough hours and people come into work sick all the time, per a manager...Saw [doctor] this morning. [I] still have cold (not Covid) and he told me to self-isolate until I was better. But if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. It’s a [minimum] wage cashier job.

This employee, who is living "paycheck to paycheck," will eventually be eligible for sick leave, but not until working for Kroger for 90 days.

Many part-time employees at Kroger told Popular Information they are not offered any paid sick leave. A Kroger employee in Idaho, who has worked part-time at the deli counter since July 2019, does not receive paid sick leave. A Kroger employee in North Carolina, who has been working part-time as a cashier five years, does not receive paid sick leave. (The North Carolina employee reports that the vast majority of employees at the store are part-time.) A Kroger employee in Georgia, who works part-time as a cashier, does not receive paid sick leave.

Media contacts for Kroger and more than a dozen subsidiary brands did not respond to a request for comment.

But on Sunday, three days after Popular Information's first inquiry, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen revealed that two employees had tested positive for COVID-19. The employees worked at a King Soopers store in Colorado and at a Fred Meyer in Washington. Both stores remained open.

McMullen will still not provide all employees with sick leave. But he did activate Kroger's "Emergency Leave Guidelines," which will provide two weeks of paid time off for employees that test positive for COVID-19 or are placed under "mandatory quarantine" by a health care provider or public health official.

Neither of these measures is sufficient to protect staff and the public. There are few coronavirus tests available-- the most accurate figures available show less than 30,000 have been conducted nationwide. And, as the world faces a pandemic, few people will be able to be evaluated by a doctor and formally placed under quarantine. In other words, it is not a substitute for giving people the ability to stay home if they feel sick.

Emergency sick leave legislation exempts Kroger and other large employers

On Friday, the House of Representatives passed emergency legislation to address the coronavirus pandemic. The legislation immediately grants some workers the right to ten working days of paid sick leave. Workers can also use the leave, reimbursed at two-thirds of their wage rate, to take care of children whose schools have closed. Under the legislation, part-time workers are entitled to the same leave for the number of hours they typically work in a two-week period.

But employers with more than 500 employees are exempt. (Employers with less than 50 employees can also apply for an exemption.)

The original legislation, introduced by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), would have required "all employers to provide... 14 days of paid sick leave, available immediately at the beginning of a public health emergency, including the current coronavirus crisis." But those provisions were stripped out at the insistence of the White House, which negotiated a "deal" with Congressional Democrats. Now, around 80% of American workers are not covered by the paid sick leave guarantee.

It's unclear why large employers are exempted. The small to medium-sized businesses that are required to provide paid sick leave will receive tax credits to defray the costs. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted that she doesn't "support U.S. taxpayer money subsidizing corporations to provide benefits to workers that they should already be providing." But the legislation could have required large employers to provide paid sick leave without a government subsidy. (The bill has not yet passed the Senate because Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) inexplicably recessed the body until Monday evening.)

After a report in Popular Information last week, Darden, the parent company of Olive Garden and other large restaurant chains, announced it would provide paid sick leave to all 170,000 of its restaurant employees.

There appears to be the assumption that large employers already provide or will begin to provide substantial paid sick leave. But, as Kroger illustrates, that is not true. And Kroger is not an isolated case.

Luxury retail with a bargain-basement sick leave policy

In an email to customers, luxury retailer Neiman Marcus said that its top priority is safety, and emphasized the company's "love" for staff and shoppers:

Love for our customers and associates is at the heart of everything we do. Your safety, comfort, and well-being are our highest priorities.

In accordance with the guidelines from the CDC, we've asked all associates to remain vigilant in following proper hygiene. We've also asked associates who feel ill, are sick, are experiencing any coronavirus-related symptom, or who need to care for a family member experiencing symptoms to stay home and seek appropriate medical attention. 

What Neiman Marcus doesn't mention is that, while the company does offer paid sick leave, it does not pay its workers for the first day of missed work-- except in states where such a delay is prohibited by law. Popular Information learned of the policy from three Neiman Marcus employees who work in different areas of the country, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and California. (The policy is not in place in California because state law prohibits it.)

Neiman Marcus has over 14,000 employees across 42 locations.

How Dangerous Do You Think Facebook Is To Democracies?

On Monday, the Financial Times published a letter from George Soros calling for Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sanderberg to be removed from controlling Facebook:

Mark Zuckerberg should stop obfuscating the facts by piously arguing for government regulation ("We need more regulation of Big Tech," February 17).

Mr Zuckerberg appears to be engaged in some kind of mutual assistance arrangement with Donald Trump that will help him to get re-elected. Facebook does not need to wait for government regulations to stop accepting any political advertising in 2020 until after the elections on November 4. If there is any doubt whether an ad is political, it should err on the side of caution and refuse to publish. It is unlikely that Facebook will follow this course.

Therefore, I repeat my proposal, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg should be removed from control of Facebook. (It goes without saying that I support government regulation of social media platforms.)

I hope that works-- before the election. Watch this video interview with a former Trump campaign executive that was posted by the BBC in 2017 that explains how the Trump campaign used Facebook to worm his way into the White House.

Q: What were Facebook and Google and YouTube people actually doing here; why were they here? (at Trump's digital campaign headquarters)

A: They were helping us... They were basically our hands-on partners as far as being able to utilize the platform as effectively as possible... When you're pumping in millions and millions of dollars to these social platforms, you're going to get white glove treatment. So, they would send people to the Project Alamo to ensure that all of our needs were being met. Without Facebook, we wouldn't;'t have won. Facebook really and truly put us over the edge. Facebook was the medium that proved most successful for this campaign.

Last month, a Facebook executive, Andrew Bosworth, made a similar claim, namely that Facebook out Trump in the White House.

Bosworth, a close friend of the firm's chief Mark Zuckerberg, made the remark in an internal memo last week.

Mr Bosworth said Mr Trump was not elected because of "misinformation," but "because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I've ever seen from any advertiser. Period."

...Bosworth's note discussed many of Facebook's high-profile scandals, including alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Mr Bosworth told staff that it was not foreign interference that helped Mr Trump get elected, but his well-planned campaign.

"So was Facebook responsible for Donald Trump getting elected?" questioned the long-time employee. "I think the answer is yes, but not for the reasons anyone thinks."

Political manipulation through Facebook is probably here to stay and by "here," I mean the planet earth. ZDNet Tuesday: "Facebook has called out the Singapore government for its use of the country's Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act to block access to a page on the social networking platform. The move goes against an earlier pledge that the legislation will not be used to censor voices, says the US internet giant. Singapore's Ministry of Communications and Information on Monday instructed Facebook to block access to the States Times Review page, after the latter repeatedly refused to comply with previous directives issued under POFMA. The 'disabling' order, outlined under Section 34 of the Act, requires Facebook to disable access for local users. The order came two days after the ministry served a directive for the STR page on Facebook to be tagged a 'Declared Online Location.' This required the author of the page, Alex Tan, to publish a notice on the page stating it had 'a history of communicating falsehoods.' The order, which was to take effect from February 16, was not complied with, prompting the directive for Facebook to block access to the page. The page is no longer accessible in Singapore... In defending the decision to issue the disabling order against the STR page, Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran said the government needed to 'act swiftly' against falsehoods amidst the coronavirus outbreak. 'Because if we don't, then these falsehoods can cause anxiety, fear, and even panic,' the minister said Tuesday during a media doorstop."

Republican oligarch Michael Bloomberg has been spending a million dollars per day on manipulative Facebook ads that seem to be working very well for him.