January 9, 2023 - "Russia's efforts to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election in Donald Trump's favor by influencing voters on Twitter had no discernible impact whatsoever, according to a new study by New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics. 'We find no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior,' wrote the study's authors....
"Just 1 percent of Twitter users absorbed about 70 percent of the so-called Russian disinformation, meaning that a tiny fraction of overall users encountered actual Russian trolls. These users were overwhelmingly partisan Republicans; there is no reason to think that masses of gullible swing voters who might have voted for Hillary Clinton were hoodwinked by Russia and opted for Trump instead.
"And this finding closely tracks previous research on the same subject. A 2019 review by Science magazine found that just 1 percent of Twitter users were exposed to 80 percent of the misinformation present, and these tended to be older, extremely partisan users —people who were already voting for Trump.... Another study by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that 94 percent of Twitter users never shared this kind of content.
"The NYU study also replicates a central finding of these earlier reviews of the research: namely, the amount of time, money, and effort Russia spent on influencing social media users was a drop in the bucket compared with the work being done by the Trump and Clinton campaigns themselves, as well as the attention being paid to the candidates by U.S. media outlets....
"The news probably came as a surprise to many readers; unfortunately, mainstream and liberal consumers of political news have been conditioned to believe that misinformation—often of foreign and Russian origin—is the source of countless modern maladies. But time and time again, data tell a different story.
"As I wrote in my 2021 book Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn't Fear Facebook and the Future, 'the fact that the professional pundit class are themselves excessively active on social media probably makes them especially susceptible' to the idea that everything is Twitter's fault."
July 20, 2022 - "Yesterday was Maryland's primary election day. The winner of the Republican gubernatorial primary was supported by both former President Donald Trump and the Democratic Governors Association.... For not the first time this election season, Democrats decided to put their collective thumbs on the scale to encourage Republican voters to pick the most extreme candidate. They believe that .. will ultimately help Democratic candidates once general elections roll around....
"Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan is term-limited and unable to run again.... Hogan endorsed Kelly Schulz, another moderate Republican and the former head of the state's respective labor and commerce departments. But on election night, Schulz was defeated soundly by Maryland Delegate Dan Cox....
"Earlier this month, the DGA spent $1.2 million on an ad targeting Cox, more than twice what Cox had raised to that point. The ad highlighted Trump's endorsement, and claimed Cox was 'fighting to end abortion in Maryland" and 'will protect the Second Amendment at all costs, refusing to support any federal restrictions on guns, even pushing to put armed guards in every school'.... While likely horrifying Democrats, the ad goosed Cox's prospects among Republicans: He ultimately beat Schulz by more than 15 percentage points.... Cox participated in the January 6 Capitol riot, busing people to Washington ahead of time and tweeting '[Vice President Mike] Pence is a traitor' after protesters had already breached the building....
"Democrats clearly see Cox as an easier opponent in the general election. They may be right:... Maryland leans Democratic by 26 points over the national average. But in an election year expected to be highly favorable to Republicans, it's worth wondering why Democrats would elevate a candidate that other Maryland Republicans call 'unstable,' 'unfit for office,' and 'a Q-anon whack job.'" Read more: https://reason.com/2022/07/20/why-do-democrats-keep-backing-the-trumpiest-candidate/
Aug. 1, 2022 - "Rep. Peter Meijer is a Republican congressman from Michigan. His district was previously represented by Justin Amash, the first Libertarian member of Congress.... He has often channeled Amash's independent streak, most notably by voting to impeach President Donald Trump for inciting the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Meijer's defiance of the Trump wing has earned him a primary challenger: John Gibbs, an ardent Trump loyalist who has backed the former president's stolen-election claims (while also spreading conspiracy theories about John Podesta and Democrats in general)....
"[T]he Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), an arm of the party that works to elect Democrats ... spent $435,000 on an ad campaign aimed at boosting Gibbs in the final days before the primary.... As Meijer pointed out in a recent article for Bari Weiss, it was far more money than Gibbs had raised on his own and 100 times as much money as Trump himself had donated to Gibbs....
"In his article for Weiss' Substack, Meijer pointed to several other examples [stress added - gd]:
It's not just my race in Michigan. While claiming the moral high ground, Democrats have been busy rewarding candidates like my opponent across the country:
Colorado: Democrats have spent $4 million on TV and digital ads to elevate January 6th attendee Ron Hanks over moderate businessman Joe O'Dea in the GOP Senate primary. Pennsylvania: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Josh Shapiro boosted the election-denying, January 6-attending GOP candidate Doug Mastriano in television ads, spending in one ad double what Mastriano had spent on his own campaign. Mastriano is now the gubernatorial nominee in a swing state. Maryland: The Democratic Governors Association spent hundreds of thousands of dollars boosting Dan Cox, who not only attended the rally on January 6 but called Mike Pence a traitor as the violence unfolded. Illinois: The Democratic Governors Association dropped $35 million on Super PAC ads targeting moderate Republican mayor of Aurora Richard Irvin and elevating his election-denying, Trump-endorsed opponent, Darren Bailey, who ultimately won the nomination.
"This strategy has backfired spectacularly on Democrats in the past. It was an open secret that the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign was actively rooting for Trump to win the Republican presidential primary campaign; Clinton staffers reasoned that Trump would be easier for her to beat than the other candidates. We all know how that turned out.
"Expecting political figures to be more forthright is obviously a hopeless endeavor. But there's something particularly craven about a political party cynically donating nearly half a million dollars to a stop-the-steal extremist ... — all while that party's members are collectively weeping at democracy's supposed grave." Read more: https://reason.com/2022/08/01/peter-meijer-john-gibbs-primary-michigan-trump-election-pelosi-dccc/
May 20, 2022 - "Nina Jankowicz, who was tapped to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Disinformation Governance Board, insists that national security is at risk because of 'childish behavior' now that the panel has been put on hold. During an interview on CBS News on Thursday, Jankowicz said, 'I would say that the Disinformation Governance Board was the victim of disinformation.'
"'Disinformation is false information spread with malign intent. And clearly, there was a malign intent on some actors in the media and in politics who just really stood up to the formation of this board because it would be confronting disinformation,' she continued. 'They completely mischaracterized its mission. And frankly, this childish behavior is endangering our national security now. This board was set up to counter real disinformation that makes Americans less safe.... So those who stand in opposition to the board — which as the secretary said was just an internal coordinating mechanism something to make sure we were efficient and using best practices — are standing in the way of our national security,' she insisted." Read more: https://ijr.com/jankowicz-childish-behavior-disinformation-board-put-ice/
May 18,2022 The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has placed a 'pause' on the newly-minted Disinformation Governance Board; its first executive director, Nina Jankowicz, has resigned.... It's unclear whether plans for the board will be un-paused in the future; Jankowicz had initially decided to resign, reconsidered when she was told the pause might be temporary, and then ultimately left anyway....
"This news comes from an exclusive report by The Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz, whose scoop is buried underneath layers of pro-government verbiage. For WaPo, the story is not that DHS shuttered the Disinformation Governance Board — the real story is that right-wing 'coordinated online attacks' achieved this outcome after subjecting Jankowicz to an 'unrelenting barrage of harassment'....
Jankowicz's experience is a prime example of how the right-wing Internet apparatus operates, where far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them.... Experts say that right-wing disinformation and smear campaigns regularly follow the same playbook and that it's crucial that the public and leaders of institutions, especially in the government, the media and educational bodies, understand more fully how these cycles operate....
"Yet there is good reason to be skeptical of both the Disinformation Governance Board and Jankowicz's fitness to run it. Informal efforts to police disinformation on social media are beset with serious challenges, as moderators and fact-checkers routinely make odious mistakes: Just today, Facebook dubiously censored a recipe for homemade baby formula. The social media site's fact-checkers have previously flagged Reason articles as spreading false information, only to later admit the articles in question were accurate. John Stossel, host of Stossel TV and a contributor to Reason, is currently suing Facebook for characterizing his videos as misleading, even though fact-checkers eventually conceded he was right.
"Government disinformation cops are no better; time and time again, public health officials circulated false information about COVID-19, and suppressed perfectly legitimate discussion of the theory that the virus originated from a lab leak. And when The New York Post reported on the salacious contents of Hunter Biden's laptop just weeks before the election, the story was widely dismissed by so-called disinformation experts and government security experts on grounds that they presumed it to be Russian malfeasance. "Hunter Biden Story Is Russian Disinfo, Dozens of Former Intel Officials Say," reported Politico back in October 2020.
"Jankowicz repeatedly made public statements indicating that she held this view, too.She shared national security officials' 'high confidence' that the Hunter Biden story was part of a Russian influence campaign. She described the idea that the laptop had been left behind at a repair shop as 'a fairy tale.' This was a critical test of whether disinformation experts could check their innate tendency to ascribe everything unfavorable to the Democratic Party as Russian nefariousness, and they utterly failed. Jankowicz failed as well."
April 8, 2022 - "In what should serve as a major blow to the credibility of federal law enforcement agents, a district court jury acquitted two men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The jury deadlocked on the charges against two other defendants, and it's not clear whether prosecutors will seek to retry them, according to The New York Times....
"This is an embarrassing outcome for both the FBI — which had relied on a vast network of informants that were extensively involved in planning and even encouraging the plot — as well as Whitmer herself, who treated the plot with utter seriousness....
"In reality, Whitmer was never in actual danger; 'Big Dan,' the ringleader of the alleged plot, contacted law enforcement early on, and the FBI paid him $54,000 to conduct six months of surveillance on a loose network of militia members who were upset with Whitmer's aggressive COVID-19 lockdown policies. When the group staked out Whitmer's house, it was Big Dan leading the effort — with the FBI's foreknowledge and encouragement.
"At the same time, Big Dan's FBI handler, a man named Jayson Chambers, was attempting to start a side business as a security consultant; he thus had every incentive to construct a major domestic terrorism bust that he could take credit for foiling.
As The Times reported:
No attack ever took place and no final date for an abduction was set, testimony showed, and the details of the alleged plan sometimes differed from witness to witness. The F.B.I. informant, Dan Chappel, said he believed the group planned to kill Ms. Whitmer.... Ty Garbin, the man who earlier pleaded guilty in the case, said he thought the group of men might abandon the governor in a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan. Another man who pleaded guilty, Kaleb Franks, said he had hoped to die in a shootout with the governor's security detail.
"'There was no plan to kidnap the governor, and there was no agreement between these four men,' Joshua Blanchard, a lawyer for Mr. Croft, said in closing arguments. He said the government tried to conjure up a conspiracy by using a network of informants and undercover agents, and that 'without a plan, the snitches needed to make it look like' there was movement toward a plan.
"The FBI ... has a long history of engaging in entrapment: i.e., inducing people to plan crimes that they had no intention of carrying out. The victims of these prosecutions have often been Muslims, though right-wing groups are also a common target.... It appears that the jury possessed reasonable and well-justified doubt that the there was ever any actual plot to kidnap Whitmer, despite the FBI's attempts to manufacture one."
January 26, 2022 - "The militia members who allegedly plotted to kidnap Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer because of her COVID-19 lockdown policies will go to trial in just a few weeks. Six were charged in connection with the plot, and one of them has already pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against the rest. State authorities charged eight others with aiding a terrorist plot.
"But the government's case against these 14 alleged extremists relies on work done by at least a dozen government informants and undercover FBI agents whose extensive involvement in the plot calls into question whether it would have moved forward at all without the government's prodding. Some of these government actors took lead roles in organizing the supposed plot — one of the informants was even paid $54,000 by the FBI. Taken together, these and other details raise the strong possibility that the militia members were victims of entrapment....
On a rainy night in northern Michigan in September 2020, a group of armed men divided among three cars surveyed the landscape around the vacation cottage of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, considering how to kidnap her as payback for her Covid-19 lockdown measures.... Later, after team members returned to the rural camp where they had already conducted military-style training exercises, a man identified as "Big Dan" in government documents asked the assembled group, "Everybody down with what's going on?" Another man responded, "If you are not down with the thought of kidnapping, don't sit here." Of the dozen men on that nighttime surveillance mission, four of them including "Big Dan" were either government informants or undercover F.B.I. agents, according to court documents.
"'Big Dan' was no passive spectator: After initially alerting the authorities that he was involved in a Facebook group for militia members in which violence against police officers had been discussed, he agreed to become an informant. The government paid him $54,000 for six months' work. When the militia group surveilled Whitmer's vacation home, it was Big Dan leading the charge. According to the group's defense attorneys, Big Dan — an Iraq War veteran — took charge of training the other men in military tactics....
"Big Dan's FBI handler, Jayson Chambers, ... was attempting to build a security consulting business in the midst of the investigation.... BuzzFeed obtained a resume that Chambers had shared with prospective clients, and in that document, he took credit for using 'online undercover techniques' to investigate terrorist groups. According to BuzzFeed, Chambers has a long history of participating in FBI investigations of Muslim youths who were enticed by law enforcement to become involved in wholly theoretical violent plots, according to their defense attorneys. Chambers is no longer slated to participate in the trial. Another government asset, Stephen Robeson, worked as an informant during the investigation, but is no longer involved after pleading guilty to various felonies. And the government's star witness, FBI Agent Robert Trask, was fired by the agency after beating his wife....
"The court may determine that none of this matters.... Historically, victims of entrapment have had a tough time prevailing, no matter how duplicitously the FBI behaved. But in any case, it is now clear that Whitmer was in no real danger. At all stages of the alleged plot, the FBI was aware of every facet: Their agents and informants were intimately involved — not just surveilling the militia members, but actively offering guidance on how to pull off the kidnapping....
"Many conservatives have become committed to the idea that the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was not the work of Trump supporters, but rather, elements of the so-called Deep State.... The Whitmer kidnapping plot ... was extensively directed and encouraged by agents of the government. It's a much, much, much, much more persuasive case of Deep State nefariousness."
November 16, 2021 - "Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser will finally relax the city's mask mandate, she announced on Tuesday. On Monday, November 22, many indoor spaces will once again be allowed to forgo masks for customers, visitors, employees, and residents. Notable exceptions include public schools, public transportation, and government buildings....
"Bowser previously rescinded the mask mandate, then brought it back in July when COVID-19 cases began to increase.... Unlike the actions of local officials in nearby counties, including in Montgomery County, Maryland, who linked the mandate to a certain case threshold, Bowser never gave any indication what metrics would be used to determine when to relax the mandate. And while the delta wave did cause an increase in COVID-19 cases in Washington, it had no effect whatsoever on D.C.'s death rate. The city's seven-day death average has hovered at one or below the entire time that delta has been a serious issue. (It was last above one on May 24, 2021.)
"It would be hard to argue that the mask mandate was what kept delta deaths at bay, since all those masks failed to prevent cases from increasing. Widespread vaccination — which dramatically reduces severe disease and death — is the public health initiative that's working well, not the mask mandate.
"Yet Bowser's administration leaned hard on mask mandates as a pandemic prevention tool, even prioritizing them over vaccination in some curious cases. When D.C. gyms petitioned the city government to allow them to require their customers to be vaccinated rather than masked, for example, city health officials said no.
"Bowser's decision to keep the mask mandate in place for schools is a perfect example of the government's incoherent thinking about COVID-19 risks. While many school-aged children remain unvaccinated, they are at very low risk of a negative coronavirus health outcome — whether they are vaccinated or not. Elderly Americans who are vaccinated have much more to fear from COVID-19 than kids do, so it makes little sense to link the withdrawal of mask mandates to the degree of vaccination among the kinds of people who congregate in a given location.
"It is long past time to accept that COVID-19 is endemic and that there will always be some level of risk associated with it. People can drastically reduce their risk by getting vaccinated, getting booster shots, or even practicing greater caution if they so choose. It is not the government's responsibility to assign the correct level of risk to each individual American, and local officials like Bowser should not get to reimpose mask mandates just because they feel like it."
As readers know, the blog is interested in possible treatments for Covid19. I do not think, like some, that vaccines make those unnecessary; even if it were true (which it is not) that vaccines provided complete protection against catching covid, they would still be useless for those who have already caught it. Plenty of people are still catching it these days, many of whom had no access to a vaccine anyway (either because it was not available, or due to government restrictions). So Covid medicines and treatments should concern us.
One of the medicines I have blogged about is ivermectin (IVM); some of those stories have been encouraging, but the truth is still out there. We are a long way from having all the data we need on the drug's efficacy, or possibly (despite its 40 years of approved use as a human medicine) even on its safety. That is why this weekend's news from Oklahoma was so alarming. I have seen plenty of stories about ivermectin poisoning before, but those usually concluded, like this recent report from Mississippi, that "No one has been hospitalized" from ingesting it. The news out of Oklahoma was different.
The rise in people using ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug usually reserved for deworming horses or livestock, as a treatment or preventative for Covid-19 has emergency rooms “so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting” access to health facilities, an emergency room doctor in Oklahoma said.
This week, Dr. Jason McElyea told KFOR the overdoses are causing backlogs in rural hospitals, leaving both beds and ambulance services scarce.
“The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated,” McElyea said.
“All of their ambulances are stuck at the hospital waiting for a bed to open so they can take the patient in and they don’t have any, that’s it,” said McElyea. “If there’s no ambulance to take the call, there’s no ambulance to come to the call.”
The doctor added that IVM OD victims "have arrived at hospitals with negative reactions like nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, and cramping — or even loss of sight. 'The scariest one that I’ve heard of and seen is people coming in with vision loss,' the doctor said."
The one thing that amazed me was that there was no attempt to corroborate Dr. McElyea's report, or to factcheck it either; it was reported as a factual account requiring no independent support. Rolling Stone did cite a story in Tulsa World, which reported that "a rural emergency room physician, had a gunshot victim in his facility whom for hours he was unable to transfer to a higher level of care because no one had space." However, (1) the gist of that article was that a surge in patients suffering from Covid (not IVM overdoses, which were not mentioned) was causing the problem; and (2) the physician in question turned out to be Dr. McElyea himself.
Not one of the media outlets running the story bothered to pick up a telephone, or get onto the internet, and check with a single Oklahoma hospital. Only one source, BBC News, bothered even to speak with Dr. McElyea to verify his quotes. What McElyea told the BBC, though, was only that "a 'handful' of people overdosing on [IVM] were putting further strain on hospital staff already stretched by a surge in Covid cases." Oklahoma hospitals were being overwhelmed, but by Covid cases, not by "horse dewormer overdoses."
After reading the BBC story, I began thinking that McElyea's original remarks had been either misunderstood, or misrepresented for the sake of a better story, by the KFOR reporter, Katelynn Ogle. Meanswhile, over at Reason magazine, Robby Soave had reached a similar conclusion:
One might be tempted to blame McElyea for embellishing his story.... But a closer look at the KFOR story reveals something quite startling: At no point did McElyea actually come out and say that ivermectin overdoses were straining hospitals.... McElyea clearly states that ivermectin overdoses have been a problem, and he claims that some hospitals are dealing with strain. But he never actually connects these two issues. It was the journalist, Ogle, who added that framing. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Although Dr. Jason McElyea is not an employee of NHS Sequoyah, he is affiliated with a medical staffing group that provides coverage for our emergency room. With that said, Dr. McElyea has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over 2 months. NHS Sequoyah has not treated any patients due to complications related to taking ivermectin. This includes not treating any patients for ivermectin overdose. All patients who have visited our emergency room have received medical attention as appropriate. Our hospital has not had to turn away any patients seeking emergency care.
Once again, no hospitalizations due to use of IVM. But that was not the end of the story. A day later, a second hospital had issued its own statement, which confirmed Dr. McElyea's claims about IVM overdoses. However, the same statement also noted that the doctor had repudiated the KFOR story:
Jason McElyea, D.O. ... has privileges at INTEGRIS Grove Hospital. He also works in several other emergency departments in rural Oklahoma. There is a lot of media attention surrounding remarks reportedly made by Dr. McElyea. While we do not speak on his behalf, he has publicly said his comments were misconstrued and taken out of context. What we can confirm is that we have seen a handful of ivermectin patients in our emergency rooms.... And ... while our hospitals are not filled with people who have taken ivermectin, such patients are adding to the congestion already caused by COVID-19 and other emergencies.
That looks like the end of the story. Dr. McElyea had told KFOR-TV about this "handful" of IVM overdoses (the same word the BBC quoted him as using), some of which might have led to hospitalization (though the hospital does not confirm that any did). KFOR-TV selectively used the good doctor's recorded comments to construct a piece of fake news, and thereby spread misinformation.
Updated, September 8, 2021
One more thing needs to be said on the subject. While the above story was pure misinformation, there was a real problem throughout the summer, not just in Oklahoma, with some people eating horse dewormer paste, and other livestock medications containing IVM, and accidentally overdosing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found it necessary to issue an advisory warning:
Never use medications intended for animals on yourself or other people. Animal ivermectin products are very different from those approved for humans. Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans is dangerous.... animal drugs are often highly concentrated because they are used for large animals like horses and cows, which weigh a lot more than we do — a ton or more. Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans. Moreover, the FDA reviews drugs not just for safety and effectiveness of the active ingredients, but also for the inactive ingredients. Many inactive ingredients found in products for animals aren’t evaluated for use in people.
While the FDA considers both human- and animal-formulated IVM to be ineffective, it calls only "Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans" dangerous. IVM for humans is formulated in a dosage safe for humans, and uses only ingredients that the FDA has approved for use in humans. So why were so many people taking animal-formulated products like horse dewormer paste instead?
The answer is simple: The FDA has approved the over-the-counter (OTC) sale of horse dewormer paste; but it has not allowed the OTC sale of IVM formulated for humans. To get the latter, those wishing to try the medicine need a doctor's prescription, which creates a high (in some cases impassable) barrier to access. If Americans could buy ivermectin for humans OTC, there would have been no reason for them to eat horse dewormer paste instead. That the horse dewormer epidemic happened at all was solely due to the FDA's own regulations; any increased danger to Americans caused by it was danger caused by the FDA itself.
(It is theoretically possible to overdose on human-formulated IVM. However, the chance of that is extremely improbable; not only is the dosage fully controlled, but the labelling and the pharmacist are both available to instruct users on how to safely use it.)
In the above video, Dr. McElyea says: "There’s a reason you have to have a doctor to get a prescription for this stuff because it can be dangerous.' However, in this case it looks like the doctor reversed causation. Ivermectin was only dangerous, in this instance, because Americans were taking an unsafe formulation; and they were taking an unsafe formulation because without a doctor's approval they could not take a safe one.
August 25, 2021 - "As businesses grapple with the tradeoffs of requiring employees and customers to get vaccinated, some Republican officials have decided to take this choice out of their hands. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), for instance, has prohibited both public and private entities from requiring proof of vaccination, creating conflict with several industries — including cruise lines — that would like to mandate vaccines. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) has done the same in his state.
"Two Republican state legislators in South Dakota have proposed a similar ban on private vaccine mandates. The COVID-19 Vaccine Freedom of Conscious Act, authored by Reps. Jon Hansen and Scott Odenbach, would effectively stop all businesses from requiring vaccination. But unlike DeSantis and Gianforte, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) is opposing the ban on private vaccine passports on grounds that the government does not and should not have the right to bully businesses.
"'I don't have the authority as governor to tell them what to do,' said Noem. 'Since the start of this pandemic, I have remained focused on what my authorities are and what they are not. Now South Dakota is in a strong position because I didn't overstep my authority. I didn't trample on the rights of our people, and I'm not going to start now.'
"Noem's stance will probably attract derision from some on the vaccine-skeptical populist right; indeed, Noem has a history of being painted as insufficiently conservative because she was unwilling to use state power to enforce a conservative cultural agenda when she thought it wouldn't hold up in court. But the governor is absolutely right to stick to her guns here — and in fact, it's the Republican officials racing to prohibit private vaccine mandates who are violating clear-cut conservative principles. Noem explained this quite aptly in a brief speech outlining her position.
"'When leaders overstep their authority, that is how we break this country, and if government starts acting unconstitutionally, even if it's doing something that we like, that's a dangerous path to walk down,' she said. 'It is not conservative to grow government and to tell businesses what to do and how to treat their employees.'
"Noem also noted that South Dakota was the only state to never order a church to close due to the pandemic. Her stance is consistent and consistently conservative: It is wrong for the government to tell individuals, private associations, and businesses what to do. If they want to require vaccination, it's really no concern of the state.
"The rise of Trump-era conservative populism (which has more disdain for economic and social libertarianism than the GOP of yesteryears), and the pandemic (which has allowed the state to claim expansive new powers for itself) have both moved the Republican and Democratic parties in a direction of increased hostility toward freedom of association.... It's increasingly rare for a political figure to loudly proclaim the principled libertarian position, which holds that such restrictions should be neither mandated nor prohibited. Good on Noem for articulating it so clearly."
July 20, 2021 - "The federal government is stepping up its war on Facebook: President Joe Biden has accused Mark Zuckerberg's social media platform of failing to purge anti-vaccine content, thus contributing to vaccine hesitancy and 'killing people,' said the president.
"Now the White House is considering methods of tinkering with Section 230, the federal statute that immunizes internet platforms from legal liability, in order to punish Facebook for failing to do everything the government wants. 'We're reviewing that, and certainly they should be held accountable,' said Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, in response to a question about Section 230 posed by Morning Joe's Mika Brzezinski.
"Biden has long supported getting rid of Section 230, though it would take an act of Congress to do so. Ironically, Section 230 is equally unpopular with many Republicans — including former President Donald Trump, who has called for its total repeal — because they consider it a sort of special perk enjoyed by tech companies that are purportedly hostile to conservative users. But the Biden administration's latest threats should disabuse Republicans of their anti-230 notions once and for all. The White House wants Facebook to proactively censor more content, and views Section 230 as an obstacle.... Democrats in the federal government want to repeal Section 230 so that tech companies have no choice but to ban more content.
"Anti-Facebook Republicans are making a tactical error; the Biden White House, on the other hand, is just plain wrong about the degree to which social media is responsible for vaccine hesitancy. By focusing on the perceived harms of too much anti-vax content on Facebook, the administration is neglecting a dozen other strategies it could pursue to boost countrywide vaccination.
"For one, it's far from clear that social media — or Facebook in particular — is predominantly responsible for vaccine hesitancy, a problem that predates the internet. Facebook users are actually more likely to be vaccinated than the average U.S. citizen, according to the company's data. 'The data shows that 85 percent of Facebook users in the U.S. have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19,' wrote Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity. 'President Biden's goal was for 70 percent of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.'
"Misinformation exists on every medium and in every form of communication from radio to television to word of mouth. The government itself has spread misinformation about COVID-19, from early (bad) guidance on masks to coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci's deliberate misstatements about herd immunity.... It's naive to presume that social media is the primary driver of vaccine hesitancy.... Even the focus on Facebook, as opposed to other sites like YouTube—where anti-vaccine content is probably more widespread — betrays the government's limited understanding of the scope of these issues. It seems that many Democrats still incorrectly attribute Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss to Facebook malfeasance: They have updated their grievances but retained the same target....
"If the White House wants to promote vaccination — a worthy goal! — it should stop being so obsessed with what's happening on Facebook, and social media more broadly. Instead, Biden should push the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to, you know, actually approve the vaccines, which are currently available under emergency use authorization. Despite the global pandemic, federal regulators are proceeding as if there's no reason to rush: Full authorization of the Pfizer vaccine is not expected until January. If the government wants to ease reluctant people's trepidation that the vaccines are in some sense experimental, moving faster on this front would do more good than heckling Mark Zuckerberg."
Facebook is caught between two political parties, both of which want to control it and tell it whom to platform; and however it responds will only increase anger at it.
July 15, 2021 - "The federal government is stepping up its effort to purge the internet of COVID-19 'misinformation.' On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki singled out a dozen specific anti-vaccine Facebook accounts and called on the platform to ban them....
"The federal government is not explicitly ordering tech platforms to take down content. These dictates are essentially strongly-worded suggestions. But you're forgiven if you think Psaki's summary of the report sounded like a command. 'Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts,' she said. 'Posts that would be within their policy for removal often remain up for days, and that's too long. The information spreads too quickly.'
"Psaki was alluding to anti-vaccine content, though the report itself impugns 'medical misinformation' more broadly. Of course, the government itself has spread plenty of 'medical misinformation,' from the early bad guidance on masks to White House coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci's deliberate misstatements about the herd immunity threshold. For months, government health officials treated the lab leak theory of COVID-19's origins as a wild conspiracy theory, and Facebook followed suit: It vigorously censored content that promoted the lab leak theory. That policy was not revised until June.
"Efforts by the government and tech platforms to suppress misinformation have undeniably resulted sometimes in the suppression of information that is ... or could plausibly turn out to be factual. (This has been the case outside the realm of pandemic-related content as well.) New initiatives undertaken by the federal government that would encourage Facebook to be even more heavy-handed with potential misinformation should be met with skepticism: The track record is just not very encouraging.
"The White House's targeting of Facebook should make critics a little sympathetic to Mark Zuckerberg's position. Prominent legislators from both political parties — as well as the current and former presidents — want to aggressively regulate his company if not break it apart entirely. Facebook's CEO must feel tremendous pressure to give federal health bureacrats exactly what they're asking for, or else.
"Instead of defending the rights of private companies to set their own moderation policies independent of whatever the government would like them to do, Republicans are taking this opportunity to further erode Facebook's autonomy. Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) even suggested that the site's submission to the feds renders it an agent of the state.... Hawley is essentially saying that a private company complying with the government becomes a state actor, and thus should be bound to the same restrictions as any other public agency. But Hawley and others are also attempting to punish these same private companies for not doing what [they want]. (In Hawley's case, he wants Facebook to suppress fewer posts.) That's quite a Catch-22: Facebook is in trouble either way."
October 2, 2018 - "The midterm elections, a little more than a month away, are a national drama -- with voters deciding whether Republican control of the House and Senate will give way to Democrats, who have been hankering for a chance to challenge the priorities and actions of President Donald Trump. But they are also an intensely local story as voters get ready to make their choices in 435 House and 35 Senate races and in 36 gubernatorial contests. We asked commentators to tell us which race they are watching most closely and why. The views expressed are solely their own....
"Robby Soave: New Mexico Senate race:
"Those who aren't on board with President Donald Trump's agenda but just can't bring themselves to support the Democrats have a sliver of hope in New Mexico, where former Gov. Gary Johnson, a libertarian, has entered a three-way race for a US Senate seat.
"As the Libertarian Party's candidate for president in the 2016 election, Johnson earned 3% of the vote, the best finish for a national third-party candidate in 20 years. Still, the outcome was something of a disappointment for Johnson, who had hoped to capitalize on historic levels of dissatisfaction with the two main party candidates, but instead became a punchline after a series of gaffes. (Remember, "what is Aleppo?") Afterward, he swore he was done with politics.
"But now Johnson is mounting an unlikely but far from impossible challenge to incumbent Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich. A former Republican governor of the typically blue state, Johnson is still popular in New Mexico: A recent poll showed Heinrich leading the race at 39%, with 21% for Johnson and 11% for Republican Mike Rich. Some 30% are still undecided.
"Johnson is an economic conservative known for vetoing hundreds of bills during his first term in office. But he's also a social liberal who supports abortion rights, immigration and drug legalization. And he's no fan of the President; in fact, he said Trump's election 'could be the end of the republic as we know it.' A good showing for Johnson would be a win for the Libertarian Party, while also proving that centrist liberals, independents and Never Trump Republicans can find a compromise candidate.
"Robby Soave writes for the libertarian magazine Reason. Follow him on Twitter"
August 21, 2018: "Paul Welch is ... a liberal who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary, and for Hillary Clinton in the general election. On August 4, he attended a far-right rally in Portland, Oregon, as a counterdemonstrator intent on signaling his opposition to the 'tacitly fascist event,' he told The Oregonian....
"The right and certainly a lot of smaller groups like Patriot Prayer might rush to things like the flag and try to take it up as, 'This is our symbol exclusively,'" [Welch] said. "Part of my thinking was to take it back."
Aside from a few odd looks, Welch did not encounter any problems when he joined hundreds of other counter-protesters who gathered at City Hall late that morning.
In fact, Welch said, he saw several other people with American flags sprinkled among the group of progressives, union members and social justice activists.
"But then, two members of Antifa confronted him and demanded he hand over the flag, which they characterized as a 'fascist symbol.' When Welch resisted, they attacked him. The concussion landed him in the hospital for two days.
"It was, of course, wrong to attack Welch regardless of his political views. Even if Welch had been a Trump-worshipping alt-right troll, the masked man still had no right to try to take Welch's flag and club him over the head when he resisted. This was an ill-founded and immoral initiation of violence, full stop.
"But it's also a good reminder of why Antifa's resistance strategy, punch Nazis in the streets, wherever and whenever they appear, is deeply misguided. Not everybody who attends a protest is a Nazi. Not everyone who waves an American flag is a fascist.... A broad endorsement of violence as a resistance tactic is certain to result in innocent people getting hurt, and to turn the moderate masses away from whatever it is Antifa supposedly represents. As a general matter, civil resistance works and violent protests backfire."
October 16, 2017 - "Today California Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed Senate Bill 169, which would have codified the Obama-era Education Department's guidance for how college campuses should deal with sexual misconduct.
"What's more, he vetoed the bill on explicit due-process grounds. Accused students, guilty or not, 'must be treated fairly and with the presumption of innocence until the facts speak otherwise,' he wrote in a statement.
"Brown's veto comes at a time when the new Education Department, led by Betsy DeVos, is revising the guidance.... The California legislature tried to ensure that schools keep doing things the old way. But as Brown noted:
Thoughtful legal minds have increasingly questioned whether federal and state actions to prevent and redress sexual harassment and assault — well-intentioned as they are — have also unintentionally resulted in some colleges' failure to uphold due process for accused students. Depriving any student of higher education opportunities should not be done lightly, or out of fear of losing state or federal funding.
Given the strong state of our laws already, I am not prepared to codify additional requirements in reaction to a shifting federal landscape, when we haven't yet ascertained the full impact of what we recently enacted. We have no insight into how many formal investigations result in expulsion, what circumstances lead to expulsion, or whether there is disproportionate impact on race or ethnicity.
"Brown isn't wrong to suggest that the softening of due process protections for accused students might have disproportionately affected students of color. As Emily Yoffe discussed in a thoroughly reported series for The Atlantic, there are good reasons to think minority students are much more likely to run afoul of the campus anti-rape bureaucracy.
"I'm pleasantly surprised that Brown vetoed this bill and released such a strong statement reaffirming the importance of due process ... a brave stance that makes him an outlier within the Democratic Party, whose leaders have been far more likely to condemn DeVos for trying to tamper with the system."
September 19, 2016 - "Paul Krugman ... a one-dimensional partisan operative still somehow masquerading as the in-house economist for The New York Times' op-ed pages — excoriates young voters as not merely reckless, but actively dangerous, given their penchant for supporting third-party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. Especially Gary Johnson.
"Krugman rejects the idea that these voters could possibly like Johnson because they agree with his views, or consider him the most honest and forthright option. According to Krugman, ... if their goal is register a protest vote again Clinton, they are acting immaturely by helping to elect Donald Trump....
"Unsurprisingly, Krugman's column makes some unfair and likely incorrect logical leaps. He begins by asserting that Johnson and Stein's high favorability among young people hurts Clinton. But, as Bleeding Heart Libertarians blogger Jacob T. Levy explains, Johnson's overall base is pulling slightly more voters from the Trump camp than the Clinton camp....
"Krugman ... just doesn't understand how they could possibly support the nominee of the Libertarian Party — the party that wants to 'eliminate environmental regulation, abolish the income tax, do away with public schools, and dismantle Social Security and Medicare.'
Of course, those are generic libertarian policy positions, not Johnson's positions. For example, Johnson doesn't want to 'dismantle' Social Security and Medicare — he told CBS News explicitly that he wants to reform these programs, rather than eliminate them.
"Krugman has mischaracterized Johnson's views on a host of issues. But the issues Krugman ignores are even more telling. The average millennial isn't just going to vote for the candidate offering the most robust welfare state. They care about things like reforming drug laws and staying out of pointless wars, too. And on these issues, even Krugman would likely have to admit that Johnson is clearly more palatable. That's why he omits these issues....
"Lastly, Krugman demonstrates impressively un-economic thinking when he asserts ... that each voter must treat his or her vote as if it's the deciding one. In reality, an individual voter has effectively zero chance of influencing the outcome of a national election, so everybody might as well vote for the candidate they like best, if they vote at all. For an impressive number of millennials — who do not feel bound to obey the two-party duopoly that produces horribly flawed candidates year after year — that person is Johnson."
October 29, 2014 - "Is the libertarian message winning?... Congressman Justin Amash certainly thinks so—even if Washington, D.C. isn't listening yet.
"The libertarian Republican, who hails from a right-leaning district in western Michigan, ... already passed the real test: a significant primary challenge from a well-funded opponent backed by neoconservative and corporatist critics of Amash's views. The challenger, Brian Ellis, stooped as low as he could go, releasing an ad that accused Amash of being 'al-Qaida's best friend in Congress' due to the representative's opposition to NSA spying and unauthorized wars.
"The ad backfired. District voters preferred Amash's brand of skeptical anti-government conservatism to Ellis's Bush-era demagoguery.
"'It felt great to get a big win,' Amash told Reason in an interview. 'The people of the district came out and said they like what I am offering, which is independent conservative representation, libertarian representation… My challenger was offering run of the mill, establishment big government Republicanism. People are tired of that.'
"Amash is optimistic that what's true for his district is true for the country at large. A growing cross-partisan swath of the electorate is concerned about issues near and dear to the hearts of libertarians, including police brutality, spying, and drone warfare....
"'Congress is delayed by five or 10 years,' said Amash. 'But I'm hopeful some of that will start to change. The public is more libertarian, the public is saying we want people who are going to be independent and not bow to leadership in either of the major parties.'"
July 14, 2014 - "In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Bill Gates insisted that his support for the Common Core education standards was purely philosophical — he was offended by the notion that anyone would suspect him of pushing a policy that helps his own bottom line. He has no reason to peddle Common Core, he said, except that he cares deeply about the state of education in the U.S. and sincerely thinks expensive new curriculum standards and rigorous standardized testing will improve U.S. schools....
"But wait a minute — doesn't Gates work for a pretty big computer company, or something? Oh, and doesn't the testing component of Common Core require schools to upgrade their computer software? Who wants to bet that Core-aligned standardized testing requires Windows 8?
"It does! As The Post's Valerie Strauss points out, a Windows web page actually recommends that schools hurry up and buy the latest Windows software in order to enjoy a smoother transition to tech-heavy standardized testing required by Common Core....
"As Strauss writes, this fact does not make Gates a liar. It seems likely he does indeed think that imposing a set of uniform standards on the states will improve students' educational outcomes. But it should underscore that massive, expensive public policy changes — even well-intentioned ones — carry ramifications for rent-seekers. (Indeed, many states only agreed to the standards because the Obama administration promised them federal grant money in exchange.)
"I have already noted that Common Core looks like corporate welfare for textbook giants, since Pearson — the largest textbook company in the world — won a non-competitive government contract to design tests for half the states. It may also be crony capitalism for computer companies."
February 18, 2013 - "A leader of a libertarian student organization challenged Glenn Beck’s self-described libertarianism at an annual gathering of pro-liberty students in Washington, D.C. on Friday.
"In his remarks to conference attendees, Students for Liberty President Alexander McCobin criticized Beck for trying to co-opt the word 'libertarian'....
"'I am fine with Glenn Beck becoming a libertarian, but you can’t just apply that term to yourself and expect it to be accurate unless you have the right stances that agree with libertarianism,' said McCobin, president of Students for Liberty, in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation."
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