Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

A Facebook Inc. logo.

Facebook is getting disliked by environmental groups and progressive organizations such as Moveon.org in response to ads being run by affiliates of a group created by Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Moveon, Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters are among the organizations that said today they would not advertise on Facebook for at least two weeks.

Zuckerberg’s group, Fwd.us, was set up to promote a rewrite of U.S. immigration laws. It also funds Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning organizations, each with their own boards of directors, running issue ads in support of senators who back new immigration laws.

The commercials, though, highlight other issues beyond immigration as they try to show supporters of overhauling immigration in a favorable light.

An ad praising Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, features him criticizing President Barack Obama for not approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which environmentalists say will increase the use of fossil fuels blamed for global warming. An advertisement backing Sen. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat, applauds him for supporting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Former Sen. Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, said Fwd.us has “chosen a strategy that’s condescending to voters and counterproductive to the cause” of enacting a new immigration law.

Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for Facebook, declined to comment.

Original post is Facebook Disliked: Environmentalists Challenge Ads for Senators by Political Capital.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush addresses the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Jeb Bush says it’s time his Republican Party stops being known as the “anti” party. It’s time, he says, to reach out to Americans who have been excluded.

“We used to be the party in the front,” Bush said in remarks prepared for his keynote speech tonight at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside of Washington “After the last election, we’re the party in the back.”

The question, he said, is how his party once again elects presidents in the mold of Ronald Reagan, honored at tonight’s event.

For now, Bush is content not to be considered one of those candidates. The former governor of Florida, brother of one president and son of another, says he has not ruled out a campaign in 2016. Yet Al Cardenas, his longtime friend and former Republican Party of Florida chairman who now chairs the American Conservative Union sponsoring CPAC, says Bush is “open” to the idea.

For now, Bush has opted out of the straw poll which CPAC traditionally holds at its conventions. That comes tomorrow, at the close of a convention that has featured the likes of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, sure to be considered among the potential contenders in 2016. It’s too soon to think of that, Bush’s office said this week.

Tonight, he was talking about the future of the party.

Alluding to the IBM super-computer, “Watson,” Bush asked: “I wonder what Watson would say if he brought all that computing power to bear on the political future of the Republican Party?”

“First, Watson would probably note that Republicans lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. In those six elections Watson would be quick to point out that a total of more than twenty million votes were cast for presidential candidates who were not Republicans. That’s a staggering number. How can that be?”

“If Watson were to read the blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts that mention the Republican Party, it would find that all too often we’re associated with being “anti” everything. Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker… and the list goes on. Many voters are simply unwilling to choose our candidates because those voters feel unloved, unwanted and unwelcome in our party.”

“And so tonight my thought is this: if Watson can learn from its past mistakes, so can we.This means that we must move beyond the divisive and extraneous issues that currently define the public debate. Never again can the Republican Party simply write off entire segments of our society because we assume our principles have limited appeal. They have broad appeal. We need to be larger than that.”

“For exactly the same reason that millions of immigrants were drawn to our shores from every nation, we need to draw into our party people from every corner of society because conservative principles, and not liberal dogma, best reflect the ideals that made this nation great. We should be united in the principle that everyone should be given the opportunity to rise to the top, to raise a family, and to be free. Our core principles — greater individual responsibility, more personal freedom, smaller and more effective government — are the only principles that can offer our children the full measure of their potential in the greatest of American centuries.”

“I’m here to tell you there is no ‘us’ or ‘them.’ The face of the Republican Party needs to be the face of every American, and we need to be the party of inclusion and acceptance. It’s our heritage and it’s our future and we need to couch our efforts in those terms.”

“As Republicans, we need to get re-acquainted with the notion that the relationships that really matter are not made through Twitter and social media. Real relationships take time to grow, and they begin with a genuine interest in the stories, dreams and challenges harbored within each of us.”

“We used to be the party that understood personal connections matter.”

`We need to be that party again.”

Original post is Jeb Bush: Republicans Too ‘Anti’ by Political Capital.

Jill, get your shotgun.

So says Vice President Joe Biden, countering the idea that someone protecting the home-front requires a semi-automatic weapon with a high-capacity ammuniton clip (assault weapon) to fend off home-invaders.

Biden is the point-man on the Obama administration’s push to curb gun violence.

Biden, appearing at a Facebook Town Hall hosted by Parents Magazine today,  allowed that he keeps two shotguns and shells locked in a metal safe at home. He said he has advised wife Jill that if she needs to protect herself, “put that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house. I promise you, whoever is coming in is not going to.”

Besides, Biden said, an AR-15, the most popular of assault weapons, is too hard to handle.

“If you want to protect yourself, get a double barrel shotgun, you don’t need an AR-15,” Biden said in response to a virtual town-haller’s question, while voicing disbelief that this was coming from a Parents Magazine reader.  ”You don’t need an AR-15. It’s harder to aim, it’s harder to use… In fact, you don’t need 30 rounds to protect yourself. Buy a shotgun. Buy a shotgun!”

Original post is Biden: Double-Barrel Shotgun Does It by Political Capital.

Photograph by Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg

Sean Eldridge, president of Hudson River Ventures, left, and Chris Hughes, editor-in-chief and publisher of The New Republic and a founder of Facebook Inc., during the Paris Review Spring Revel gala in New York.

Sean Eldridge, an investor and Democratic political activist, has filed paperwork establishing a 2014 campaign for Congress in New York’s Hudson Valley.

A statement of organization creating “Sean Eldridge for Congress” and a statement of candidacy were processed by the Federal Election Commission on Feb. 1.

Eldridge is the president and founder of Hudson River Ventures LLC and a senior adviser to Freedom to Marry, which advocates for same-sex marriage. He’s married to Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and the publisher of The New Republic magazine. Eldridge created a political action committee that promoted an overhaul of campaign finance laws, according to Capital Tonight.

Eldridge would seek the 19th District seat held by two-term Republican Chris Gibson, who was re-elected by 53 percent to 47 percent in 2012. New York’s 19th District, which takes in all or part of 11 counties, backed President Barack Obama over Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 52 percent to 46 percent, according to data compiled by Political Capital.

Eldridge is a frequent donor to Democratic candidates and committees. He gave $30,800 in February 2012 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, Federal Election Commission records show.

Eldridge didn’t immediately return an e-mail seeking comment.

House Democrats, who fell 17 seats short of winning a majority in 2012, are targeting Republican-held districts like Gibson’s that voted for Obama. Andrew Romanoff, a former Colorado state House speaker, announced last weekend that he will challenge three-term Republican Mike Coffman in the 6^th District near Denver, a district that also voted for Obama.

Original post is Investor Eldridge Eyes N.Y. House Seat by Political Capital.

Zoetis, based in Madison, New Jersey, created the PAC on Jan. 31, according to paperwork it filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Zoetis raised $2.24 billion in an initial public offering this week, the biggest in the U.S. since Facebook Inc.’s IPO last year, Bloomberg News reported.

Company PACs typically make political donations to high-ranking members of Congress and members of committees that have jurisdiction over issues of interest to the companies. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, donated more than $1 million to federal candidates in the 2012 election through its federal PAC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group that tracks campaign giving.

Original post is Pfizer’s Zoetis Forms Federal PAC by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The Google Inc. logo in Washington.

The price of persuasion went down in 2012, the second consecutive year of declining spending on lobbying, according to figures released today by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Total spending to try to influence Congress, the White House and federal agencies fell to $3.28 billion last year, compared with $3.33 billion in 2011 and $3.52 billion in 2010.

High-tech companies such as Google Inc., whose lobbying expenditures increased to $18.2 million from $9.7 million a year earlier; and Facebook Inc., which spent $4 million in 2012 compared with $1.4 million in 2011, went against the overall pattern.

“It’s a continued slide, but there are industries that are ramping up, like the tech industry, where some companies are opening up shops and some are expanding,” said Viveca Novak, editorial and communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics.

General Electric Co. was the biggest corporate spender on lobbying, as it was in 2011 and 2010. It reported $21.1 million in lobbying expenses in 2012, down from $26.3 million the year before.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce again spent more than any other entity. The largest U.S. business lobby and its affiliate spent $135.5 million, up from $65.8 million a year earlier.

Original post is Price of Persuasion Down Year to Year by Political Capital.

“Tech certainly is a driver,” Schlossberg said of the industry feeding an insatiable global appetite for tablets and apps and everything else made of chips and code. “Just look at the rents, and the restaurants at night, it’s all being driven by tech growth and the spillover from that.”

Even though Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter help make California’s $1.96 trillion economy bigger than India’s, the Golden State can use the tailwind.

The largest U.S. state, with 37.7 million residents, has a 9.8 percent unemployment rate that’s the third highest in the country. That level also is the average since government began calculating the level for states in 1976. The U.S. average for the same period is 6.5 percent.

Western states, where unemployment was highest after the nation’s housing bubble burst in 2006, are leading the country in hiring as industries from homebuilding to technology add staff, helping erase the pain left over in places where real estate prices plunged most: Las Vegas, southern California and Arizona.

Nevada’s unemployment dropped 2.4 percentage points in the year ended November 2012, the most of any state, to 10.8 percent, though it’s still the highest in the U.S.

Joblessness in Arizona, California, Hawaii and Idaho also dropped at least 1 percentage point. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast the national unemployment rate held at a four-year low of 7.7 percent in December. The Labor Department releases the figures Friday.

Bloomberg’s Steve Matthews, Aki Ito and Amanda Crawford have the full story.

Original post is Tech Helps Give West Best U.S. Job Growth by Political Capital.

If Election Day promises the longest day of the 2012 campaign season, today offers a strong rival.

Republican Mitt Romney opened the final day of his pitch for the presidency with a morning campaign rally in Sanford, Florida, and four stops and four states later he will close with a rally near midnight in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“We need every vote,” Romney said in Sanford, a state in which the better independent polls have portrayed as a toss-up in the closing days of the campaign. “Tomorrow, we begin a new tomorrow.”

Obama closed Ohio last night with Stevie Wonder, and closed Virginia Saturday night with the Dave Matthews Band. This morning he was bringing Bruce Springsteen to Madison, Wisconsin — a defensive last stop in a state he has counted on winning — before taking “The Boss” along to rallies in Columbus, Ohio, this afternoon and Des Moines this evening.

Romney is closing with Kid Rock in Manchester tonight.

The get-out-the vote machinery is in full swing.

For Facebook followers who have asked to follow the campaigns, a message from Obama for America arrived this morning with instructions for finding one’s polling place.

It came with the photograph shwon above, which looks more like the president and first lady heading to a salsa dance than going to the polls — probably because they’ve already early-voted, like nearly 30 percent of all Americans surveyed.

 Lisa Lerer and Margaret Talev contributed.

Original post is Election Eve: Second Longest Day by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images

A delegate poses with a red, white and blue top hat in the Facebook photo booth during the RNC in Tampa, Florida.

Updated 5:50 pm EST

Dodge the Google bombs. Outsmart the Twitter bots. Stay off the astroturf.

Most Web users don’t realize it yet, but these are tasks they face in the 12 days left before the election to avoid being duped by social media manipulators trying to skew candidates’ apparent popularity online.

So predict two Wellesley College professors in a Science magazine article that surveys social media manipulation tactics in the political world. Online propaganda efforts have the potential to impact voters’ views and are “underappreciated by the press and the general public,” the researchers say.

Social media users “should be aware” of how manipulation works and “be prepared to search for the truth behind the messages,” Panagiotis “Takis” Metaxas and Eni Mustafaraj write.

The computer scientists highlight Google bombs — manufactured associations between search terms and Web pages – as a better-known but largely outdated tactic. When the search term “miserable failure” led people to the Web site for President George W. Bush in the early 2000s, for example, it caused a stir that prompted then-Director of Consumer Web Products Marissa Mayer to defend Google’s search result generation method in 2005.

Now Twitter has bombs, too.

“Twitter bomb is the act of sending unsolicited replies to specific users via Twitter in order to get them to pay attention to one’s cause,” write Metaxas and Mustafaraj, who predict that many Twitter bombs will be “launched within days of the election.” Well-crafted political Twitter bombs have been known to reach over 60,000 Twitter accounts in one day, they write.

Twitter bombs can be created by “bots,” which are programs and fake Twitter accounts that can follow or retweet messages from a real person’s account (in this case, a politician’s) to give the impression of popularity and credibility — unless human users recognize the propaganda in play.

Twitter bombs and bots comprise what computer scientists call “astroturf” efforts — a fake grass-roots movement that gives an impression of social media users’ support. Astroturf is found wherever the real stuff grows, including on Facebook, where fake accounts can “like” someone or something to drive up the numbers, for example.

Metaxas emphasized in an interview that manipulation and the promotion of misinformation are “by no means” the major digital tactics being used by political campaigns. Most political social media activity is above-board, and social media sites do try to stop manipulation from occurring. (Read more about political #hashtag wars here.)

Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser said in an interview that it’s unlikely Twitter users would vote based on a politician’s number of followers. It is “questionable” that spam and manipulation have an impact on “real people,” he said.

“If there’s any change, it’s indistinguishable from the momentum that the platform has generally,” he said about manipulative activity during the campaign season.

Based on previous elections, though, Metaxas said he knows both parties are manipulating social media to some degree, especially in congressional races where manipulation can fly “under the radar” more easily. He predicted instances of manipulation will peak  in the coming days.

“That’s where it matters,” Metaxas said in an interview. “When you have elections, misinformation can do its damage before the correction has time to get it straight.”

Original post is Voters on Social Media Should Dodge ‘Bombs’ Before Nov. 6 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Reading the Los Angeles Times using the Flipboard app on an iPad in Los Angeles.

More people get their news online than from radio or newspapers, and television could be next to lose out in the evolving habits of news consumers, according to a poll out today.

The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found 39 percent of Americans saying that they now read their news on computers, tablets, phones and other online sources. More people are getting their news from Facebook or other social media.

That’s ahead of newpspaers (29 percent) and radio news (33 percent) though still behind television (55 percent).

The next generation of news consumers is already shifting away from TV. Just 34 percent of those under 30 said they watched TV news yesterday, down from 49 percent in 2006. And 33 percent said they received their news from a social networking site. In total, 19 percent said they saw news or headlines via social media, up from 9 percent in 2010.

As for newspapers, 23 percent said they read a print publication yesterday, down from 38 percent in 2006. Many of those readers are migrating to the papers’ online versions; including 55 percent of New York Times readers.

Magazines are not immune from the switch either; 37 percent of Bloomberg Businessweek and Economist readers said they get their content online rather than in the print version.

Pew’s biennial media consumption survey was conducted from May 9 to June 3. Pollsters interviewed 3,003 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points. The survey began in 1994 by the old Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press and has been conducted every two years since then.

Original post is Online News Outpacing Radio, Newspapers — Television Next by Political Capital.