The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Trump’s large crowd of union workers at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania were given an ultimatum: attend the rally or lose a day of pay.
The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.
“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch but without lunch — would be paid.
“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote.
Workers who did not show lost $700.
The contractor’s talking points, preparing his workers for the event read:
“No yelling, shouting, protesting or anything viewed as resistance will be tolerated at the event. An underlying theme of the event is to promote good will from the unions. Your building trades leaders and jobs stewards have agreed to this.”
The unions went along with it.
The president also called out union leadership, which Shell had requested to be in attendance.
“I’m going to speak to some of your union leaders to say, ‘I hope you’re going to support Trump.’ OK?” he said. “And if they don’t, vote them the hell out of office because they’re not doing their job.”
More than a dozen unions work at the Shell site, the largest construction project in the state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The ONLY good that will come from this is that some union workers will resent being treated in this manner by their contractors. Having to be told to wait in line at an early hour might be a turn off. Hopefully, inside many of them will be seething with anger at having been dictated to on how they must act. [Will they hate their union leaders for going along with this? Why not?]
Of course, there probably are Trump supporters who think this is the grandest thing that could ever happen. Getting paid and shouting for the truly right cause is worth having a day off….MAGA! forever.
Trump should soak up all the glory in having people “mandated” to hear him speak.
Several union leaders said they were not consulted about the arrangement before it was sent out. Shell’s list, however, suggested they had green lit it.
Yes, the unions gave their approval to compel members to listen to Trump.
I would believe that several Unions were not consulted. I might also believe that a sizable number of members wanted to be at the rally. What might also be true is that sentiment among the leadership and large portions of the membership is moving away from dealing with Trump. I am seeing more and more members who despise Putin’s Puppet.
The National Building and Construction Trades Council actually supported Clinton in 2016 . Of course up to 70% of the membership voted for Trump.
In fact the Union I retired from led the opposition to Trump in the Building Trades having dealt with him in NYC.
But it gets real complicated. His appeal to the Blue Color Union membership was on the immigration and trade issues. In the aggregate both Trade and Immigration have been good for the American people. As I heard a minister of the European Commission say last spring. “We forgot that people are not aggregates ”
So you would be hard pressed trying to tell a manufacturing worker that lost his job from the mid 90s on that trade was not the cause. It was automation in the seventies that cost jobs(ask Billy Joel and Springsteen ). Automation in the future will take jobs. Trade took those manufacturing jobs in the late 90s and early 2000s. And as Springsteen says ” they won’t be coming back”. .
Nor would you want to try to tell a NYC Union Construction worker that immigrants are not taking his job. The answer to both issues are improvement in Labor laws and Trade agreements that are written to protect ALL workers and consumers. Not just Wall Street and Corporate America. .
This is of course is where Trump falls short. He has no intention of depriving employers of low cost labor nor of squeezing the profits of corporations who have outsourced production to China.
The leadership of the building trades knew this in 2017 when they sat with Trump and sold their souls for the potential of Pipeline and infrastructure Jobs. But right from the start Trump would not endorse an infrastructure plan that included Davis Bacon, Prevailing Wage.He wrote an executive order that banned Project labor Agreements, where unions made wage concessions to insure the jobs go all union. And his infrastructure proposal was Privatization which would have killed the Union trades as it was not covered by Davis Bacon a 1929 law that says Federal contracts should not undermine local wage standards.
Finally now the Trump Labor Department is writing new regulations that will totally undermine Union Apprentice training Programs, allowing employers to write their own standards. A back door pathway to undermining Union wages on Prevailing wage Jobs. Not to mention all of the other anti union rulings from the NLRB and the courts. I suspect there is no love lost between the Trades leadership and Trump. And that they will not be endorsing him. Although Individual locals do as they like.
But it is a standard practice in the Construction Trades, that if you don’t show up for a regular shift you can not work an overtime shift. So assuming the Union was contacted by the employer, contractually there was little more they could say other than. You want the men to sit on their butts for 7-8 hours you are paying the tab.
Which is not to say that some Union leaders did not run down to see the creep.
Thank you, Joel, for this superb update.
Teacher unions are guilty of much of the same thing, at least in Utah. They cozy up to legislators, get the most egregious bashing of teachers to stop, and then allow whatever Trojan Horse the legislators had in mind in the first place, pass. Then tell we rank and file members that, “It could have been worse.” I’m truly sick of that. Unions are supposed to be democratic They’re supposed to listen to workers. And some do, but at least in my neck of the woods, teacher’s unions do very little.
Same thing in Illinois.
They have to resort to bribing workers to pretend to support them. Sad. Bigly sad.
Trump rallies are now featuring groups of old white men holding up “Latinos for Trump” signs.
It used to be old White Women holding up Blacks for Trump signs.
Grotesque!
US union workers in effect paid $700 each to crowd fill and (Mis)Represent.
And told, vote union leaders who don’t support Trump out of office for not doing their jobs,
meaning part of US union leaders JOBS is supporting Trump.
That’s alternative reality for you.
This is 2019? Really?
The future, if we don’t get our act together.
Oh my Lord, Steve. That comment really sent a chill up me. Yes. It could well be.
Boy, if all of this is true, then the union members need to file some grievances here.
To whom would they file? The union that’s sold out to the company? The company that sold out to Trump? The government currently controlled by Trump?
This union must have a lousy contract if the leadership can decide something like this with no recourse.
Trump must have seen the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” That means Colonel Saito has to be on his shortlist of role models and heroes like Hitler, Putin, and Kim in North Korea.
“Be happy in your work,” Colonel Saito told the British POW’s working, starving and dying building a railroad for Japan’s military to use to conquer more territory in South East Asia.
The war on unions never ends in this country. We are down to an overall 10% unionization rate but that’s not low enough for the union haters, they want 0000.00000% and below. In 1983, the union membership rate was 20.1%. The working class non union people have swallowed the multi-million dollar anti-union movement (funded by the corporations and the billionaires) propaganda that union people are lazy violent thugs. I hear this over and over again from working stiffs who would actually benefit from unions. These folk say that unions are obsolete, there’s no need for unions and that, oh yeah, unions are for losers, the lazy and the incompetent who are protected by the evil unions. It’s really disheartening.
I think it’s hard for working stiffs to take unions seriously when this is what they get – forced to go to a political rally in order to get their pay, fully backed by the union. Like when the teachers unions go and support charter schools.
The employer pays the wage. If he wants to pay you to sit so be it. You could respectfully turn your back.
Um, no, there’s something called a job description. Employees are exactly that, not slaves. Just because an employer pays you does not give them carte blanche to tell you what to do outside the job description. Otherwise, things like personal errands, sexual favors, etc. could all be demanded – after all, the employer pays the wage….
dienne77
Tell me the Job description I can’t seem to find it in my contract. I have attended whole day productivity, safety and diversity training session. And more than a few topping off or ribbon cutting events where Politicians attended.
There are issues worth fighting an employer over. This would not be one of them. And with the Building Trades now at war with Trumps Labor department for many of these Business Managers this was not an endorsement.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/16/trump-jobs-construction-workers-1653450
“The Building Trades know how to mobilize their members and move votes,” he added. “And their opposition to Trump can have a ripple effect beyond their members and their families to other voters in the communities where their members live and work.”
I hope that union members are working to get rid of Trump and the destruction that he is imposing on this country. Hopefully rural farmers will also learn. it amazes me that farmers are loosing their farms but still support Trump. How much does it take for a Trump supporter to realize he’s been screwed?
carolmalaysia
Actually when I first read that quote I nearly spit my coffee out. There was a time that the statement was true. The trades have not been able to reliably deliver the votes of their members since Reagan.
The trades backed Clinton in the 2016 election. My Union actually led the opposition to Trump. Yet 70% of Building Trades members voted for the Dumpster. For decades the members have been told that elections matter. That God,Gays and Guns don’t put food on your table, to no avail.
Labor has not been able to deliver the vote they did in the 30s-60s and that has resulted in them being paid lip service by Democrats. Yet Democrats have through policy participated in the assault on the American Worker. Clinton and Obama joined with Republicans in pushing trade deals that decimated Union workers. Arguably those 2-3 million Manufacturing Jobs lost and up to 12 million total jobs lost in a simple velocity of money effect, caused by reduced demand in those communities; put pressure on Jobs and wages through out the economy.
In NY, California, and several other states , disgruntled workers can point to exploited immigrants putting pressure on Union Construction Jobs. Of course if our labor laws made it easy to organize, they would not be exploitable. Immigration is not the case in the upper Midwest where there are hardly any immigrants as compared to the coasts. Those unemployed factory workers are the exploitable workforce. (Of course they still blame the immigrant).
The rift between Labor and Democrats goes back to the 72 election when Meany all but endorsed Nixon with his constant attacks on McGovern who had a 97% voting record with Labor. Then in 84 after an orgy of Union busting Mondale who arguably was the most pro labor Senator ever is not endorsed by the Teamsters and large segments of the members of organized Labor.
That set up a pattern that led to . ” Democrats for Education Reform “.
So how many times should I repeat that oxymoron which translates to Democrats and right wing Billionaires attacking Americas largest Unions (teachers) to blame them for the failures of an economy that has massively shifted wealth to those Billionaires.
Leaving decimated communities many of them communities of color mired in poverty with out the industry that enabled earlier ethnic groups a way to the Middle class. Arguably Blacks did not escape slavery till the civil rights acts of the 60s as the pathways to prosperity start closing.
But no longer can we accept the “Party of the People” giving platitudes rather than policy. It is tough to defend them and I try daily. Being better than Republicans does not move workers in mass.
The situation is not as simple as I describe and there is a fundamental flaw in the American Union movement that date back over a century. Had Debs and not Gompers won the battle to carry the mantle for labor we would be in a far different place. Since the 20s Unions have been willing to battle between themselves and other workers for table scraps never failing to sell the others out to obtain a piece of the pie. That was on display when those 17 Building trades Presidents met with Trump in early January of 17. Fortunately he screwed them and continues to do so. Which may not move one right wing Tradesman but there is one hell of a backlash developing in the large group who may not have voted. The Trumpanzees who once dominated the conversation are now being shouted down.
Thank you, Joe!!!! It truly is astonishing how effective the anti-union propaganda has been among blue-collar workers. I’m continually taken aback by this. It is disheartening.
I don’t believe the popular media narrative about the Obama to Trump voter. Most of those voters were there since the Civil rights act was passed 7 percent more voters in Michigan claim to have voted for Obama than he received votes in 2012. And conversely for Romney. . The theme these workers always fall for is some one is looking to take what you have and race has always been the go to card. In this case the Trump argument is that they are not just taking your dollars for the “Welfare Queen”. But are literally taking your Nation. Whiteness being the key to defining “your”.
So the go to answer I get when I point out the damage that Trump and Republicans are doing to construction unions in particular, is ” American values”,Whiteness. However as he attacks the Building trades with policy (they could care less about other Unions) it gets harder for them to support him.
What we do have to acknowledge is that neo liberal Democrats with policy that hurts unions have not helped. Their failure to deliver EFCA when given the opportunity stands in contrast to Republicans who have resisted gun control and delivered the tax cuts to their wealthy donors. The fact that Republicans obstructed EFCA. gets lost. Tough to pass something when you need every vote.
Obama promising to ram TPP down the throat of a working class still reeling from NAFTA and normalization of trade with China, in the lame duck. Pass it with overwhelming Republican support, did not help to inspire the base to turn out. The Republicans invented the concept that both parties are corrupt and the same. As Lofgren states when you can’t stand Government and government is seen to be failing, It is a win win. The lower congressional approval ratings go,
the better Republicans do as voters stay home. They don’t run on progress for the American people but social issues that have no affect on the corporate bottom line.
This comment was left at the website.
2400 workers at $700. Are they going to report this as a $1M campaign contribution?
My calculator says the amount is $1.68 million
I listened to the opening of Trump’s campaign speech in New Hampshire. For a while I turned off the sound and watched his performance. I finally bailed out. Don the Con was on stage.
Some cults are voluntary — at least at first —
Other cult leaders have to pay for sects …
LMAO!!! Well said, Jon!
Would a cult leader who pays for sects be a user of philosopstitutes?
lol
IDK, but I’ll bet he keeps a proselyactic on hand, just in case.
I believe there maybe some good news in this. If Trump has to rely on these kinds of episodes he must be getting scared. I sure hope so.
On PBS Newshour the other night a leading “Evangelical stated the believed that
Evangelicals did not necessarily vote for Trump but against Clinton and that a or maybe he said the reason most did was for the abortion issue.
If true, for me a VERY sad commentary on the rights of women. In Catholic Ireland very recently they voted against the abortion laws after so many women died, unnecessarily in childbirth because of the laws. I personally expect that to happen here after Conservatives get their hills passed.and like Prohibition what people thought they were getting was not what they got.
So afdter Walmart we boycott Shell?
I never buy gas at Shell, mainly because there is no station near me. Boycotting this company sounds good to me. I think this article was written by someone at Shell. Deepwater operations are at risk of destroying the environment through leaks and unprotected drilling practices that want profit over safety controls.
…………….
SHELL STARTS PRODUCTION AT APPOMATTOX IN THE GULF OF MEXICO
May 23, 2019
Royal Dutch Shell plc, through its subsidiary Shell Offshore Inc (Shell) announces today that production has started at the Shell-operated Appomattox floating production system months ahead of schedule, opening a new frontier in the deep-water US Gulf of Mexico.
Appomattox, which currently has an expected production of 175,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d), is the first commercial discovery now brought into production in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico Norphlet formation.
“That Appomattox was safely brought online ahead of schedule and far under budget is a testament to our ongoing commitment to drive down costs through efficiency improvements during execution,” said Andy Brown, Upstream Director, Royal Dutch Shell. “Appomattox creates a core long-term hub for Shell in the Norphlet through which we can tie back several already discovered fields as well as future discoveries.”
Appomattox is a story of efficiency through innovation. By way of optimised development planning, better designs and fabrication, and expert drilling execution, Appomattox has realised cost reductions of more than 40% since taking final investment decision in 2015. The start of production at Appomattox is only just the beginning of further maximising the flow of resources in the prolific Norphlet surrounding Appomattox.
Shell’s global deep-water business has a strong funnel of development and exploration opportunities in Brazil, the US, Mexico, Nigeria, Malaysia, Mauritania, and the Western Black Sea. Production worldwide is on track to reach more than 900,000 boe/d by 2020 from already discovered, established reservoirs. The company continues to be one of the largest leaseholders in the US deep water and remains one of the most prolific offshore producers of oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell designs and operates its deep-water projects to be competitive and, since 2014, has reduced its unit development costs and unit operating costs by about 45%.
Re: “got a businessman’s common sense approach to most things”
(sp) conman’s sense
Well, here’s a list of Trump supporters in big business. Boycott, I don’t know. Be aware, and beware.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/stephen-ross-isnt-trumps-only-supporter-here-are-other-business-leaders-who-have-backed-trump-121324870.html
Home Depot, check,
PayPal, check
LLBean, check.
In defense of Home Depot, there is this:
“Facing a backlash, Home Depot sought to distance itself from billionaire co-founder Bernie Marcus after he pledged to back President Trump’s bid for re-election in 2020. …
Home Depot spokeswoman Margaret Smith said in a statement to NPR that Marcus retired more than a decade ago and is not speaking on behalf of the company. “In fact, as a standard practice, the company does not endorse Presidential candidates,” she said.
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/10/740173176/home-depot-responds-to-calls-for-boycott-over-co-founders-support-for-trump
I don’t know about the other two on your short list.
Ah, good, so then I can buy that screwdriver set for my kids.
Do you have a Harbor Freight nearby – the prices are usually much better if you can find what you want.
Lloyd Lofthouse: In his interview with the Journal-Constitution, Marcus said that while Trump “sucks” at communication, the president has “got a businessman’s common sense approach to most things.”
How can an honest businessman say such nonsense? Trump is working to bankrupt the country while giving everything to the wealthy. Guess that IS a businessman’s approach.
That quote should have said, “The president has a gangster’s violent, threat filled, approach to everything.”
I canceled my account with LL BEAN in 2016. After 40 years as a customer.
Shell workers are getting an ‘inspirational message’ from Trump? “Paid training day”?
………………………………………………………………..
On Friday, a Shell spokesman insisted that Tuesday’s event wasn’t propaganda fodder for Trump, it was simply a “paid training day with a guest speaker who happened to be the President.”
“It’s not uncommon for us to shut down the site for quarterly visits from VIPs — popular sports figures like Rocky Bleier and Franco Harris have visited the site to engage with workers and to share inspirational messages. Shell/Penske NASCAR driver, Joey Logano was another guest at the site,” (Shell spokesman Ray) Fisher said.
Which by the way as I pointed out to dienne77 is true. I have spent quite a few days on show case projects in a similar manner. This does not constitute an endorsement by Trade Union leadership . Nor does it constitute a rejection which may be in the works. Trump’s Labor department is about to redesign apprentice programs in a manner that will decimate the Union construction trades. I am certain there are some in leadership who saw this as holding their fire until a decision is made.
I may not agree with the tactic and I may see it as a complete failure that leads to the demise of labor. But I am not responsible for the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of active and retired members.
But as I have stated, it would help if Democrats delivered when given the opportunity. And that applies to governors in blue states who have had the opportunity to contrast as well.
A major issue here in NY (besides DEFER charters) was an expansion of State Prevailing wage laws to apply to any jobs with significant Public funding, like Hudson Yards the largest Commercial construction project in the Country, where a hair cut can cost 10K . An 8 billion dollar public subsidy in the form of direct money infrastructure and tax breaks. And when given the opportunity to apply Prevailing Wage laws to these projects, the legislature with a super majority of Democrats fails to even vote on the issue. It was actually Cuomo who killed it . Now Cuomo can plead his case that he has or will deliver almost 100billion dollars of work to the trades. In part because he has negotiated to force the Public Private Partnerships he is using to build projects to use Union Labor. The danger is the next Governor will not do the same and the privateers will decimate union labor.
But again another case where the failure of Democrats to deliver leads to the charge that both parties are the same. In spite of the fact that the bill fell one vote short of forcing Cuomo to sign it or veto it. With 29 Democrats and only 2 Republican sponsors. And Cuomo making sure it never got the needed vote.
Would it not be nice to be able to turn to right wing members of the trades who support Trump here in NY and say Democrats have delivered big time for you .
Instead of seeing that Cuomo was in bed with Steve Ross and mega billionaire real estate developers, as they held a 250k a plate dinner for Trump.
Consumers don’t have decent paying jobs nor good healthcare. The Orange IDIOT and his wealthy buddies are the ones ‘loaded up with money”.
……………………………….
74% of Economists in Survey See US Recession by End of 2021…Snopes
A strong majority, 74%, of U.S. business economists appear sufficiently concerned about the risks of some of President Donald Trump’s economic policies that they expect a recession in the U.S. by the end of 2021.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED 19 AUGUST 2019
…The economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics, in a report released Monday, mostly didn’t share Trump’s optimistic outlook for the economy, though they generally saw recession coming later than they did in a survey taken in February. Thirty-four percent of the economists surveyed said they believe a slowing economy will tip into recession in 2021. That’s up from 25% in the February survey.
Another 38% of those polled predicted that recession will occur next year, down slightly from 42% in February. Only 2% of those polled expect a recession to begin this year.
In February, 77% of the economists expected a recession either this year, next year or in 2021….
Trump has dismissed concerns about a recession, offering an optimistic outlook for the economy after last week’s steep drop in the financial markets. He said Sunday, “I don’t think we’re having a recession. We’re doing tremendously well. Our consumers are rich. I gave a tremendous tax cut and they’re loaded up with money.”…
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2019/08/19/74-of-economists-in-survey-see-us-recession-by-end-of-2021/
Trump adopts familiar mantra on possible recession: fake news
08/19/19
President Trump and his advisers are adopting a familiar mantra when it comes to mounting concerns about the economy: It’s all fake news.
Trump has dismissed concerns over a possible recession and accused the press of manufacturing a crisis and “doing everything they can to crash the economy” so he doesn’t win in 2020.
…If the economy does slow, he says it will be because he had to “take on China and some other countries.” He then accused countries in the European Union of treating the United States “very badly.”
The message has been parroted by Trump’s top advisers..
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/458011-trump-adopts-familiar-mantra-on-recession-fake-news
When We’re All Flush With Cache 💰💸🌪🚽💨
The Depression Is Surely Upon Us …
Now Trump is claiming that he won by a bigger margin ‘than he thought”. Horse hockeys on this lying POS.
………………………………
In a tweet on Monday, President Donald Trump made a sensational allegation about Google.
…………………………………………….
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Wow, Report Just Out! Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election! This was put out by a Clinton supporter, not a Trump Supporter! Google should be sued. My victory was even bigger than thought! @JudicialWatch
146K
10:52 AM – Aug 19, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
102K people are talking about this
………………………………………………….
He was referring to a study by psychologist Robert Epstein, which was discussed on Fox Business earlier on Monday….
Trump’s words and numbers were inaccurate
Epstein, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July, found what he alleges was a pro-Clinton bias in Google’s search results.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Epstein said the pro-Clinton bias was “sufficient to have shifted between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes” to Clinton.
There is no basis in Epstein’s research for Trump’s claim that the alleged bias might have affected “16 million” votes. Epstein did testify in July that big tech companies in general could potentially shift “upwards of 15 million votes” in the 2020 election, but he didn’t claim that this happened in 2016.
In the Monday interview, Epstein rejected Trump’s claim that Google “manipulated” votes in 2016. He said he does not have firm evidence even that Google intentionally manipulated its search algorithm or results, let alone votes themselves.
“I don’t have any evidence that Google manipulated anything. I just have evidence that there was this bias — highly statistically significantly bias,” he said.
““I don’t have any evidence that Google manipulated anything. I just have evidence that there was this bias — highly statistically significantly bias,” he said.”
Of course, the sentence above is an accusation in itself. Epstein would say “This is not an accusation of Google with creating bias but there was a bias in Google.”
I didn’t find a link to this article. More needs to be said. This whole research involved 95 people. How can that be anything accurate?
……..
Google said Epstein was incorrect in his claims of bias.
“This researcher’s inaccurate claim has been debunked since it was made in 2016. As we stated then, we have never re-ranked or altered search results to manipulate political sentiment. Our goal is to always provide people with access to high quality, relevant information for their queries, without regard to political viewpoint,” the company said in an email.
(An aside: Judicial Watch, a conservative legal activist group that is active on elections issues, was not involved in Epstein’s research. The group told CNN that it believed Trump tagged it in the tweet to encourage it to look into the allegations.)
How Epstein determined there was bias
Epstein is senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and a former editor in chief of Psychology Today magazine. He said he voted for Clinton and is not a Trump supporter today.
For this study, he had 95 people from 24 states, including 21 self-described undecided voters, conduct election-related searches using search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing. Then he had another group of Americans, hired through the crowdsourcing website Amazon Mechanical Turk, use a point scale to rate the supposed bias of the articles found on the first page of the search results.
An extremely pro-Trump article would get a minus-5, while an extremely pro-Clinton article would get a plus-5.
Using this method, he found that Google’s results were reliably more pro-Clinton, in both red states and blue states, than Yahoo or Bing results. Then, using his previous research from elections in other countries about how search results can affect voter intentions, he came to a broad estimate of 2.6 million to 10.4 million votes potentially affected by search bias in the US in 2016.
Epstein said he chose to publish his findings on the website Hacker Noon, not in a peer-reviewed journal.
Epstein said he is “suspicious” that Google is deliberately biasing its results, given the Democratic leanings of its employees and the allegations of company “whistleblowers.” But he said it is possible the bias comes from the company simply neglecting to fix an unintentionally flawed algorithm.
“I don’t even care about the human element. There’s a system out there running amok,” he said.
Criticism of the data
Other academics have joined Google in criticizing Epstein’s methodology and conclusions.
One issue is the quality of news sources.
Google says one of its criteria for ranking news results is how authoritative a source is. Using Epstein’s methodology, a search engine whose top results page did not feature an article from a far-right pro-Trump website, such as Breitbart, would be ranked as more biased in favor of Clinton than a search engine that did showcase Breitbart — even if the first search engine highlighted a deeply informative Washington Post investigation about Trump’s past and the second search engine highlighted Breitbart’s pro-Trump puff piece.
Epstein emphasized that he is not a Trump fan. But he argued that Google results should not be treating pro-Trump media as second-class “for whatever reason, whatever your excuse.”
“I’ve certainly met people that say Breitbart is a more reliable news source than the New York Times … there’s a lot of subjectivity that goes into these kinds of determinations,” he said.
Another issue, other academics say, is that Epstein’s study did not establish a link between alleged bias in search results and voter behavior in 2016.
Epstein said he came to the conclusion of bias sufficient to affect 2.6 million to 10.4 million votes based on what he has found in studies of national elections outside the US, including the 2010 Australian prime minister election and a 2014 Indian legislative election.
In other words: Epstein did not test 2016 American voters to see if their Clinton-or-Trump choice had been changed by search results they got. He extrapolated from his previous studies.
In an American presidential election, people tend to know so much about the two leading candidates, and are getting news from so many different sources, that it is not at all clear that search results would affect their preferences the same way they might in other settings where they have less information, said Michael McDonald, a political science professor and elections expert at the University of Florida.
McDonald said it is certainly possible that political results from Google and other search engines have been affected by the unconscious biases of the people who wrote their algorithms. But McDonald said Epstein has failed to establish that any such biases have had anywhere near the magnitude of impact on American presidential voting that Epstein suggests.
“It’s just not plausible,” McDonald said.
Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at University of California, Los Angeles, and author of the forthcoming book “Beyond the Valley,” said Epstein’s analysis did not take into account how much a voter might care about a particular subject.
For example, a strongly anti-abortion voter might be more likely to have their vote affected by abortion-related search results than results about another subject. But Epstein’s analysis did not distinguish between voters’ interest levels in different topics.
And Srinivasan noted that the study did not take into account how people’s voting preferences might have been affected by other technological platforms, such as Facebook, which he said was “quite clearly gamed by third parties” in 2016.
“You can’t zero in on Google and have Google be your only factor in your analysis to shape one’s voting outcomes,” he said.
Srinivasan also said that the political value systems of the people who create search algorithms might affect the results.
He said, “Robert and I agree on a lot.” But he said Epstein’s analysis on search results and voting is overly simplistic.
CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this article.
“But he argued that Google results should not be treating pro-Trump media as second-class “for whatever reason, whatever your excuse.””
But of course a pro-Trump media is second class.
Máté Wierdl: I remember the results of a study that claimed people who watch Fox know less about the news than people who don’t watch the news.
Fox eliminates anything negative about trump and twists themselves in knots to say how great he is ALL the time.
Here’s an opinion coming from the NYT, if you can access it.
Fact-Checking Trump’s Claim That Google ‘Manipulated’ Millions of Votes for Clinton
After making baseless claims of voter fraud, the president has turned to a new way of explaining his loss of the popular vote in 2016.
The white paper also came with huge caveats. First, it was not peer-reviewed or rigorously evaluated by other researchers.
It was based on the daily online searches of just 95 participants, 21 of whom were self-described undecided voters — a small sample size to extrapolate to millions of voters, experts said. (Mr. Epstein says that the statistical significance of his findings was high.)