Month: May 2020

There are many reasons why Donald Trump is panicking as he faces the election but the disintegration of the Trump Organization grift has to be a big one. It’s possible that he’ll attempt to build a new media empire but I would bet money that it will implode in about a tenth of the time Glenn Beck’s did. If Trump’s post-presidency follows previous wingnut celebrity cults it will disintegrate once he’s no longer prominent. I have a feeling his support is totally tribal and once he’s no longer relevant to the tribe, they’ll run in the opposite direction.

And all of this will be waiting for him:

A federal judge sitting in the Southern District of New York has refused to stay a lawsuit alleging that Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, and the Trump Corporation committed “various business torts,” including engaging in an illegal pyramid scheme.

The complicated and anonymous class action lawsuit, filed by a Jane Doe and others, resulted in motions to stay the proceedings and interlocutory appeals by the Trumps, the Trump Corporation, and a third party called ACN Opportunity, LLC. ACN was ordered to produce documents relevant to the claims. Interlocutory appeals are appeals to higher courts filed in the midst, rather than at the conclusion, of lower court litigation.

The judge, Lorna G. Schofield, a Barack Obama appointee, said the lawsuit would not be put on hold.

The lawsuit, originally filed in Oct. 2018 as an anti-“racketeering enterprise” action, was later streamlined. The class sued on various state and federal charges–including “racketeering and conspiracy to racketeer” claims. The two federal claims were dismissed by the court after the Trump family filed for a broad dismissal in January 2019. But the case is yet living.

The class action plaintiffs allege that the Trump family business promoted a multi-level marketing, or pyramid, scheme known as ACN Opportunity, LLC. ACN, the plaintiffs said, was a “get-rich-quick scheme” that relied on Trump and his family “conn[ing] each of these victims into giving up hundreds or thousands of dollars,” in violation of various state laws. […]

The plaintiffs claimed that the Trump family falsely endorsed and promoted ACN by insisting that the enterprise “offered a reasonable probability of commercial success”—even using The Celebrity Apprentice to draw them in:

Between 2005 and at least 2015, Defendants promoted and endorsed ACN through videos, print and online media, at ACN events, and during episodes of The Celebrity Apprentice, a television program hosted by Trump and featuring Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. Defendants’ endorsement of ACN was crucial to Plaintiffs’ decisions to become [Independent Business Owners (IBOS)] for at least two related reasons. First, Plaintiffs considered Trump and his family highly successful in business. Second, Plaintiffs believed that the endorsement was independent of ACN.

According to the lawsuit, ACN was paying the Trumps for the above-described exposure but this was not public knowledge.

Schofield walked the case through the “traditional standard” for determining whether to stay litigation. The first factor is whether the parties applying for the stay — the Trumps and ACN — are likely to succeed on the merits.  Here, Schofield ruled that they are not, and for several reasons.

The first reason the Trumps and ACN are not likely to succeed — here, in an interlocutory appeal — is because they attempted to force the case into arbitration “despite the absence of any written agreement between” the parties which required arbitration. “The fundamental rule of arbitration is that arbitration is a matter of contract and a party cannot be required to submit to arbitration any dispute which he has not agreed so to submit,” the judge said (internal quotations and citations omitted).  The judge also said that a narrow exception to that rule did not apply in this case because the “Plaintiffs were duped about the nature of the relationship between ACN and Defendants.” Second, the defendants — the Trumps and ACN — “waived their right to arbitrate by delaying their motion to compel arbitration.” 

In other words, the Trumps, their business, and ACN botched the case, and the likelihood that they will succeed in an interlocutory appeal is low.

There is more at the link about why the Trumps are unlikely to prevail. Let’s hope that’s true. But I would imagine that they are going to be inundated with similar lawsuits for the foreseeable future (just as they were before) but their properties are going to be huge money losers and his brand is destroyed. After all, his rich supporters are only spending at his holdings to curry favor with the powerful and there will be social costs to continuing to do that if he’s out of office. (Anyway, why bother? There are much better properties.) And whatever is left of the true believers can’t afford his golf resorts and hotels.

They’ll carry on for a while with the dregs of MAGA and, as I said, they’ll almost assuredly try to start a media empire, probably based on OAN. But I suspect they are going to end up bankrupt in the end and their followers won’t really care much.

He and his family of grifters will be outcasts even among the former true believers. Right-wingers don’t like “losers.” Trump may be a moron but he understands that much.

Yesterday’s Trump campaign email:

This looks pretty hysterical to me but I guess that’s what gets the base excited.

It’s only May. I can only imagine what kind of fever pitch they’ll be at by October.

I’m speaking of federal employees working in the Trump administration:

President Donald Trump said Monday that he would prefer for government employees to wash Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s dishes if his wife or son was not there to do so.

While the dish-washing assertion was not among those reportedly investigated by the State Department inspector general fired by Trump last week at Pompeo’s recommendation, the secretary of state faced dual investigations by the department watchdog into whether he had staffers perform personal chores and whether he looked to circumvent Congress in accelerating an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

“Look, he’s a high quality person, Mike. He’s a very high quality, he’s a very brilliant guy,” Trump told reporters at the White House after he was asked whether he was concerned that Pompeo might have requested the watchdog’s ouster to halt the investigations. “And now I have you telling me about dog walking, washing dishes and, you know what, I’d rather have him on the phone with some world leader than have him wash dishes because maybe his wife isn’t there or his kids aren’t there, you know,” Trump said.

There’s so much wrong with that statement I hardly know where to start. First of all, the antediluvian nonsense about Pompeo’s wife not being available to do the dishes is just … whatever. It’s even more ridiculous considering that Susan Pompeo is part of the problem since she is also accused of inappropriately using both CIA and State Department employees for her own projects despite the fact that she doesn’t have any official role.

But beyond all that is the idea that taxpayers are not supposed to pay for the personal servants of elected and appointed officials in the government. It’s true that the alleged billionaire in the White House is bilking the taxpayers for millions. But Pompeo can be expected to pay for his own dog walker and maid out of his own pocket.

This is just one more illustration of Trump’s view that he is a monarch, not an elected leader, and that he thinks all of his henchmen are dukes and earls. Apparently, they all agree with him.

That little illustration comes from a twitter thread that I came across and thought I’d share with my readers:

Mark D. Levine@MarkLevineNYC

It’s time to update the all-or-nothing messaging on Covid-19 risk.

Let’s give people the tools to understand that the riskiness of social activities lies on a spectrum.

We are staring quarantine fatigue in the face. We need new guidance–and policies–to meet this challenge. 

1/ Strict sheltering at home in NY over the past two months succeeded, against the odds, in flattening the curve enough to prevent our hospital system from breaking at the apex. This avoided untold suffering. 

2/ The risk of a rebound still looms, so we need to continue extraordinary measures to ensure physical distancing for the foreseeable future. 

3/ But given the long road ahead, it’s simply not realistic that we tell people to indefinitely avoid all in-person social contact outside their household. 

4/ If we don’t give people the information to choose low-risk activities, they will choose high-risk ones–like house parties, large gatherings in front of bars, or swimming at beaches without lifeguards. (All of which is already happening in NYC.) 

5/ On the other hand, lack of clear guidance on relative risk means that some people overly focus on minor threats, like contamination from bringing mail or fresh produce into your home, or from someone passing you on a bicycle in the park. 

6/ The growing consensus of scientists is that most transmission is happening in enclosed spaces during sustained contact. Yes any contact, in any setting, for any duration has some risk. And those who are most vulnerable need to be especially mindful of this. 

7/ But it’s also true that:
* Outdoors is less risky than indoors.
* Small groups are less risky than large groups.
* Simply passing by someone is less risky than sustained contact

So let’s give people the tools to understand that risk is a *spectrum.* 

8/ Epidemiologists @JuliaLMarcus and @EpiEllie have suggested conveying a spectrum of risk with a color-coded system like [the one above].

9/Instead of simply saying “don’t get together with your friends in the park”, let’s give people guidance on how to minimize the risk if they do so. (Keep the group as small as possible, don’t share food/drinks/utensils, and stay home if you’re sick) 

10/ And let’s give people guidance on the level of risk–and how to minimize it–for activities like visiting parents, going on a walk with your friend, having a playdate for your kids, etc. 

11/ NYC also needs policies to help minimize rising quarantine fatigue.

That means offering options that are less risky than crowded house parties–like safe plans for opening beaches and park sprinklers this summer (as long as we continue to reduce the rate of new infections). 

12/ Coronavirus is not going away any time soon. So everyone needs to continue taking extraordinary measures to protect themselves and others–physical distancing, face coverings, hand washing, staying home when possible. But it’s time to update our advice for the long haul. 

13/ To recap: Risk isn’t binary. And simply telling people to stay home is not enough. We need to give the public the tools to understand where their choices fall on a spectrum–so they choose the safer path. That’s our best shot for beating this virus.

14/14 This thread owes a lot to @JuliaLMarcus, who has been way ahead of the crowd in developing the idea of applying “harm reduction” to covid. Read her excellent article on the topic:

Quarantine Fatigue Is RealInstead of an all-or-nothing approach to risk prevention, Americans need a manual on how to have a life in a pandemic.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/quarantine-fatigue-real-and-shaming-people-wont-help/611482/

People like me will probably err on the side of caution for some time to come. We’re all healthy in my household but we’re not young and I really don’t want to get this thing — or if I have to get it I want to wait until they know a whole lot more about the virus and how to treat it. No hurry for me.

But I understand that younger, otherwise healthy, young people are simply not going to do that for much longer. It’s already breaking down substantially. So maybe if the lockdown is lifted with these guidelines shared widely, and the risks are made plain, the vast majority will do it smartly and with some concern for the more vulnerable people with whom they interact.

Sadly, the wearing of masks, which has been shown to make a big difference in the rate of transmission when everyone wears one is not taken seriously by way too many people. It’s probably partially the fault of the health care community which said in the beginning that masks were actually bad for you, so that’s a real pity. Lying to the public in a public health crisis is a very, very bad idea. But a lot of young people and right wingers don’t feel at personal risk and don’t seem to understand (or care) that they can actually spread it to others if they don’t feel sick.

Maybe if the messaging is different — if people can see that they don’t have to stay on lockdown but they need to use these common sense guidelines to protect themselves and others — it will help reduce the risk for everyone.

It’s not the most important tradition Trump has exploded but it’s a telling one:

It’s been a White House tradition for decades: A first-term president hosts a ceremony in the East Room for the unveiling of the official portrait of his immediate predecessor that will hang in the halls of the White House for posterity.

Republican presidents have done it for Democratic presidents, and vice versa — even when one of them ascended to the White House by defeating or sharply criticizing the other.

“We may have our differences politically,” President Barack Obama said when he hosted former President George W. Bush for his portrait unveiling in 2012, “but the presidency transcends those differences.”

Yet this modern ritual won’t be taking place between Obama and President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. And if Trump wins a second term in November, it could be 2025 before Obama returns to the White House to see his portrait displayed among every U.S. president from George Washington to Bush.

Trump is unconcerned about shunning yet another presidential custom, and he has attacked Obama to an extent no other president has done to a predecessor. Most recently he’s made unfounded accusations that Obama committed an unspecified crime.

Obama, for his part, has no interest in participating in the post-presidency rite of passage so long as Trump is in office, the people familiar with the matter said.

If he is defeated and actually leaves the White House, which is not guaranteed, I wonder if this tradition will be upheld? Frankly, I don’t think it should be but I imagine that a Biden administration will try to do it to “heal the nation’s wounds.”

If they only use these superficial traditions to try to do it, that’s fine. If they decide to do something more substantial, like refusing to “look in the rearview mirror” it’s going to be a huge problem. Trump is destroying the world and there must be a reckoning.

“Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine,” read a bold CNN landing-page headline on Monday. (It has since vanished; a later headline reads, “Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine …“. Emphasis mine.) The very idea that a major news outlet would affirm a such a claim from pathological liar Donald Trump without qualification is, technically speaking, nuts.

The acting president told astonished reporters on Monday he has been taking the drug daily for a couple of weeks on the day after “60 Minutes” ran an interview with whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright, dismissed former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Bright had criticized the administration’s coronavirus response and opposed Trump’s advocacy of hydroxychloroquine as an unproven treatment for COVID-19.

Activists and pundits have warned since the beginning of Trump’s reign that we as a people could not allow normalization of his up-is-downism. But since claims that his inauguration crowd was larger than Barack Obama’s, Trump has slow-marched the executive branch, the Republican Party (beyond the Never-Trump fringe), and a good portion of the country to Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Dana Milbank follows up on MSNBC reporting on a deceptively crafted chart (top) released by Georgia health authorities. At first glance, it appears to indicate a declining rate of infection. Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp reopened restaurants, theaters, nail salons, etc. in late April, and the chart seemed to support his decision:

But on closer inspection, the dates on the chart showed a curious ordering: April 30 was followed by May 4; May 5 was followed by May 2, which was followed by May 7 — which in turn was followed by April 26. The dates had been re-sorted to create the illusion of a decline. The five counties were likewise re-sorted on each day to enhance the illusion.

Only in Brian Kemp’s Georgia is the first Thursday in May followed immediately by the last Sunday in April. And only in President Trump’s America would we have the producers of such flimflam leading the reopening of our national economy.

Blogger Joey deVilla (“As a public service”) reordered the chart to put the dates in chronological order:

But deVilla noticed something else odd about the chart that Milbank also mentioned:

For every date, the county order is different (look at the colors of the bars). In fact, the order is always from highest to lowest number of cases, a design trick meant to fool the eye into seeing a consistent downward slope …

Georgia is not the only red state now playing fast and loose with its COVID-19 data. Florida Republican Gov. DeSantis may be wiping infection data that reflects poorly on his decision to reopen Florida the way los desaparecidos vanished in Argentina:

Late last Friday, the architect and manager of Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard — praised by White House officials for its accessibility — announced that she had been removed from her post, causing outcry from independent researchers now worried about government censorship.

The dashboard has been a one-stop shop for researchers, the media and the public to access and download tables of COVID-19 cases, testing and death data to analyze freely. It had been widely hailed as a shining example of transparency and accessibility.

But over the last few weeks it had “crashed” and gone offline; data has gone missing without explanation and access to the underlying data sheets has become increasingly difficult. 

Rebekah Jones announced that for “reasons beyond my division’s control” her office no longer has control of the data. Nor is it involved in fixing mistakes or answering questions. She also cautions she does not know “what data they are now restricting.”

“As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it.”

L’État, c’est moi.

Trump increasingly attaches unnamed crimes to critics and has called for investigations into and prosecutions of perceived enemies. He now claims unfavorable news coverage is illegal:

They, and the Lamestream Media (including Jake), have spent 3 1/2 years illegally smearing me. They got caught! https://t.co/J7tOWPGkUK

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2020

Steve Benen writes:

Note, the president could’ve simply accused news organizations of “smearing” him, or made an argument about reporting he considers unfair, but for Trump, that’s not good enough. He instead felt the need to argue that American news organizations are guilty of “illegal” coverage.

A day earlier, Trump wrote that the “radical left” controls a variety of tech companies, adding that his administration “is working to remedy this illegal situation.”

The president also, of course, recently condemned the investigation into the Russia scandal and his impeachment as “illegal.”

Reporters might want to decline future offers of rides in the acting president’s aircraft. An Aristophanes comedy this is not.

Update: It’s Ron DeSantis, not Rick Scott (anymore). I’m living in the past. [h/t SS]

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

Shoot me now…

Americans are almost evenly divided over whether they trust President Trump or presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden to lead the country through the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new poll by Washington-based FTI Consulting.

Six months before Election Day, 41 percent of respondents said they have more confidence in Trump leading the federal response to the deadly outbreak, while 38 percent said they favored the former vice president. That was within the poll’s 3.09 percentage-point margin of error.

About 14 percent of the 1,012 people who participated in the survey, conducted May 12-14, said they were undecided, while 5 percent said they trusted both leaders equally.

Tens of millions of people think this guy is the one they prefer to lead them through the pandemic:

I just can’t …

Oh well, at least my dark mood isn’t unique:

I just watched another 60 something mask-less Republican woman in Arizona standing in a crowd of others just like herself tell the news media that she thinks the Coronavirus is not worse than a cold or the flu and she has no fear of it. (She also weirdly said that they don’t even have a name for it yet, which she didn’t explain.)

Maybe she will listen to this fellow:

A Florida man who thought the coronavirus was “a fake crisis” has changed his mind after he and his wife contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. Brian Hitchens, a rideshare driver who lives in Jupiter, downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus in Facebook posts in March and April.

“I’m honoring what our government says to do during this epidemic but I do not fear this virus because I know that my God is bigger than this Virus will ever be,” he wrote in a post on April 2. “Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”

In mid-April, Hitchens, 46, began documenting his and his wife’s health on Facebook. “Been home sick for over a week. Both my wife and I home sick,” he wrote in a post on April 18. “I’ve got no energy and all I want to do is sleep.” A day later, Hitchens and his wife, Erin, were admitted to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, Hitchens said in a Facebook post.

Hitchens could not immediately be reached for comment Monday. The voicemail box for a number listed for him is full. In a lengthy post on May 12, Hitchens said that he was once among those who thought the coronavirus “is a fake crisis” that was “blown out of proportion” and “wasn’t that serious.”

That changed when he started to feel sick in April and stopped working, he wrote. Hitchens said he “had just enough energy” to drive himself and his wife to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center on April 19, where they both tested positive for the virus. “They admitted us right away and we both went to ICU,” he wrote. “I started feeling better within a few days but my wife got worse to the point where they sedated her and put her on the ventilator.”

Hitchens said he never experienced terrible aches and pains but felt weak and exhausted. He said he felt better on May 12, at which point he had been in the hospital for three weeks, and that he still had COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. He also said he had pneumonia in his lungs.

“As of today my wife is still sedated and on the ventilator with no signs of improving,” Hitchens wrote. “There were a couple times were they tried to start weaning her off the ventilator but as soon as they’ve done that her oxygen level dropped and they had to put her back on the ventilator full time.”

He said his wife of eight years has been sick “quite a few times” in the past and she always fought through. This time, he said, “I have come to accept that my wife may pass away.” Hitchens, who has been unable to see his wife since they were hospitalized, said he was holding out hope she would recover.

“This thing is nothing to be messed with please listen to the authorities and heed the advice of the experts,” he wrote. “We don’t have to fear this and by heeding the advice doesn’t mean that you fear it that means you’re showing wisdom during this epidemic time.”

The May 12 post has been shared more than 500 times. Hitchens implored people to “use wisdom.” “Looking back I should have wore a mask in the beginning but I didn’t and perhaps I’m paying the price for it now,” he wrote. If he passed the virus on to his wife, he said, he knows that she and God forgive him.

“So just think about what I said and if you have to go out please use wisdom and don’t be foolish like I was so the same so the same thing won’t happen to you like it happened to me and my wife,” he wrote.

One might have thought that religious leaders would help spread the word about staying safe and looking out for your fellow citizens but as that Florida fellow’s story shows, they have gone in a very different direction.

I wish I could understand the resistance to wearing masks and socially distancing as much as possible. If we want the country to re-open their businesses, get back to work and make it safe for workers and customers, they really don’t have any choice. Tens of thousands of people are getting sick and dying. You can’t expect the economy to recover without the full participation of everyone. What are they going to do? Yank us out of our houses and force us to go out to dinner?

It’s not too much to ask that people keep a physical distance and wear a fucking mask. It really isn’t. The fact that these fellow Americans (and not all of them are right-wingers I’m sorry to say) refuse to do these simple, easy, things is a very sad comment on our culture.

Obama was so right:

The election that’s coming up on every level so important, because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party, but what we’re fighting against is these longterm trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy, that has become a stronger impulse in American life.

There needs to be a national campaign to support mask wearing. It needs to come from certain types of national organizations and be directed at corporations.

To make it work there needs to be movement on multiple fronts with support from people with various types of expertise and influence.

This needs to happen because of the massive failure at the national political level to protect lives during a pandemic.

Here’s a great piece in Vanity Fair about the power of wearing masks.

If 80% of Americans Wore Masks, COVID-19 Infections Would Plummet

They comparing data in the US vs other countries that wear masks to show the massive difference in deaths. They also created a simulator to show how masks can prevent infection.

“What’s most important about wearing masks right now,” said Guy-Philippe Goldstein, an economist, cybersecurity expert, and lecturer at the Ecole de Guerre Economique in Paris—and a masksim collaborator, “is that it works, along with social distancing, to flatten the curve of infections as we wait for treatments and vaccines to be developed—while also allowing people to go out and some businesses to reopen.”

The study addressed the cultural differences between countries about masks and how it’s been difficult to enforce in the US. If the business community wants to start up retail again, one way to do that is massive support of mask wearing at the retail level.

Americans can start pushing on masks at retail spaces because they are usually on private property and can refuse service to people not wearing masks  No Mask. No Service.

This piece in the New York Times points out why there needs to be widespread support for wearing masks:

Who’s Enforcing Mask Rules? Often Retail Workers, and They’re Getting Hurt
The risk of a violent reaction now hangs over jobs already fraught with health perils. May 15th by Neil MacFarquhar

So what will it take to make this happen? Given my background in convincing major corporations to walk away from toxic right wing media to protect their brand, here are the groups that can make it happen and the steps to take.

3 GROUPS TO SUPPORT, ENDORSE & ENFORCE MASKS IN RETAIL

To get all customers to wear masks in stores people with expertise and influence in the following areas need to help: Legal, insurance, financial, HR and PR.

The push needs to come from national organizations who have clout right now.  I’ve  listed them in the order of their current PR clout (which isn’t the same as their political, financial or actual clout.)

1) First responders (EMT, firefighters, police, sheriffs)
First responder organizations can tell retailers, “Making ads praising us is great, but if you want to save our lives, push for your customers to wear masks.”

• Use male EMT, firefighters and cops as mask wearing role models.A recent study showed that men think wearing masks show weakness and that they won’t be impacted. it’s irrational and incorrect, but it needs to be addressed.
  

2) Doctors, Nurses, Health Care Workers and Hospital Administrators
The representatives for doctors, nurses, health care workers can ensure retailers have the medical data to back up the policies, but the most important thing they can offer is their endorsement of the mask policy.

3) Lawyers with experience in state & local law, executive orders and public policy
Anti-maskers are using weaknesses in federal and state policy to stop implementation of mask wearing nationwide. Corporations need help to push back against a very small, but loud group that has the support of Trump and RW groups.

Making Mask Wearing the Reality in Retail

Customers can influence policy in retail. They can convince corporate HQ to make changes that give managers the tools to support and enforce policies that make mask wearing in retail spaces a reality.  Educate corporations that everyone wearing masks is good for their brands and bottom line.

Dead customers are bad for your brand (unless you are the BodyBagStore.)

For retail managers I wrote some scenarios local managers can use to shut down debates with anti-maskers.  Store mangers need a POLICY. Employees need a SIGN.

THE POWER OF RED HOT ALERTS & EDUCATION! 

I know from experience that there are people already doing the work behind the scenes to support mask wearing at the retail level. I’m writing this to encourage them. They are focusing on the health and safety of all the customers and staff first, which is good. But the media covers anti-maskers because it’s news and they need a “both sides’ story.

HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT MASK WEARING IN RETAIL
If you go to a store and see people not wearing masks what can you do? Call the company directly and find out their policy. Look to see what the State and local policies are.  If they don’t have one a policy send them one they can use. For example here’s Trader Joes’ policy page: Customer Use of Face Coverings. 

Or work with your favorite activist group that has experience with pressure campaigns on corporations at a national level. They can use the power of customer numbers.

In my experience people at corporations need to hear from people who support mask policies. Be polite. Alert them to your concerns. Educate them. Otherwise they will only see the stories about people complaining and threatening staff.  Conflict is news, compliance is not.  I know the people who work in Corporate HR, PR, communications and legal. They all want people to be safe. Sometimes they need reasons and excuses to tell top management to do what’s right instead of doing what Trump or a dumb Governor wants.

Company HQ especially need to hear that people in states that DON’T require masks, want masks. This is important since often they default to a narrow legal talking point. “We follow all state and local laws.” This doesn’t address the fact that on private property companies can require STRONGER POLICIES THAN WHAT THE STATES REQUIRE.

THE POWER OF RED HOT MEMES! 
If you don’t want to do any of this you can create memes, stickers, videos and social media to support mask wearing in stores.

I’m not an ad wizard, but watch this video and see how easily it could be changed into one supporting mask wearing.

[Fade in] Video of first responders wearing masks. They look at the camera and say,”If you care about me, (EMT), me, (Cop) me (Doctor) and me (Nurse) you will wear your mask when out in public and shopping here, (CVS,) here (Trader Joes) and here (Target).

We support masks in stores for everyone because, “We’re all in this together..” [fade out.]

Dear God …

It will be a miracle if the country survives this puerile moron. https://t.co/jxgwUO4owW

— digby (@digby56) May 18, 2020

.@jeffmason1: What is the evidence that hydroxychloroquine has a preventative impact?

TRUMP: "Are you ready? Here's my evidence — I get a lot of positive calls about it … what do you have to lose?" pic.twitter.com/51b967dypu

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 18, 2020

Honestly:

How to medical pic.twitter.com/0EDqJcy38p

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) April 24, 2020