Remember The Swamp? Trump Fished Louis DeJoy Out Of It To Run The Post Office (Into The Ground)

Can this crooked, rich, ugly man with an obscene watch give Trump 4 more years via the USPS?

Louis DeJoy personally contributed over a million dollars to the NRC and to Trump's campaign, $32,300 to the North Carolina Republican Party, tens of thousands more to Republican congressional candidates and thousands to official Republican Party committees in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arizona, Minnesota, Iowa, Maine, Arkansas and Washington. That's all perfectly legal and he was then hired by Trump to destroy the U.S. Postal Service, which he's been busy doing. Reporters Aaron Davis, Amy Gardner and Jon Swaine of the Washington Post looked into another kind of fundraising De Joy did that is perfectly illegal and which could and should, but won't, send him to prison.

"DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising," they wrote, "which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates-- money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say. Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s aides or by the chief executive himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his 15,000-square-foot gated mansion beside a Greensboro, N.C., country club. There, events for Republicans running for the White House and Congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more apiece. Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful."

That's the illegal part, but widely practiced-- if not quite as systematically-- in the sewer known as corporate America. Politically-engaged CEOs and chairmen do it almost routinely... and, I'm sure you've noticed, no CEOs ever go to prison for funneling illegal cash to politicians. Not all their wives become the ambassador to Estonia and Canada though. Still, funny how that works.

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations-- and that covered the tax and everything else.”

Another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events, saying DeJoy orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to specific individuals.

“He would ask employees to make contributions at the same time that he would say, ‘I’ll get it back to you down the road,’ ” said the former employee, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from DeJoy.

In response to a series of detailed questions from the Washington Post, Monty Hagler, a spokesman for DeJoy, said the former New Breed chief executive was not aware that any employees had felt pressured to make donations.

After repeatedly being asked, Hagler did not directly address the assertions that DeJoy reimbursed workers for making contributions, pointing to a statement in which he said DeJoy “believes that he has always followed campaign fundraising laws and regulations.”

...A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats.

Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.

Such federal violations carry a five-year statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.

The former employees who spoke to The Post all described donations they gave between 2003 and 2014, the year New Breed was acquired by a Connecticut-based company called XPO Logistics. DeJoy remained at XPO briefly in a leadership role, then retired at the end of 2015. By a year after the sale, several New Breed employees who had stayed on with XPO were giving significantly smaller political contributions and many stopped making them altogether, campaign finance records show.

...Democrats have accused DeJoy, who has personally given more than $1.1 million to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising vehicle of the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, of seeking to hobble the Postal Service because of the president’s antipathy to voting by mail. As states have expanded access to mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has repeatedly attacked the practice and claimed without evidence that it will lead to rampant fraud.

The Postal Service chief emphasized to House lawmakers last month that the agency will prioritize election mail. Responding to questions about his fundraising, DeJoy scoffed. “Yes, I am a Republican. . . . I give a lot of money to Republicans.” But he pushed back fiercely on accusations that he was seeking to undermine the November vote. “I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy said. “We will do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time.”

During his testimony, DeJoy was asked by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) if he had repaid executives for making donations to the Trump campaign.

“That’s an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it... The answer is no,” DeJoy responded angrily.

DeJoy had retired from XPO management by 2016. He hosted Trump at his Greensboro estate, known locally as The Castle, for a birthday party and fundraiser in June 2016.

Earlier this year, DeJoy was leading fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte when he was selected by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors in May.

DeJoy was not originally on a list of prospective candidates for the job, Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, told House lawmakers in testimony last month. Duncan, a longtime GOP fundraiser, said he submitted DeJoy’s name as a candidate after his “interest, or availability, became known to me.”

Multiple New Breed employees said DeJoy’s ascent in Republican politics was powered in part by his ability to multiply his fundraising through his company, describing him as a chief executive who was single-minded in his focus on increasing his influence in the GOP.

...As DeJoy’s profile as a Republican bundler grew, his wife, Aldona Wos, won presidential and gubernatorial appointments-- first as an ambassador to Estonia in 2004, then as head of North Carolina’s health and human services agency in 2013. Trump appointed her in May 2017 to serve on the president’s commission on White House fellowships, and earlier this year, he nominated her to be ambassador to Canada.

DeJoy and trusted aides at the company made clear that he wanted employees to support his endeavors-- through emails inviting employees to fundraisers, follow-up calls and visits to staffers’ desks, many said.

“He would put pressure on the executives over each of the areas to go to their employees and give contributions,” one former employee said.

While some employees told The Post that they were happy to make the donations, others said they felt little choice, saying DeJoy had a heavy-handed demeanor and a reputation for angering easily.

Plant managers at New Breed said they received strongly worded admonitions from superiors that they should give money when DeJoy was holding fundraisers. A program manager said that when he was handed his first company bonus, a New Breed vice president told him he should buy a ticket to DeJoy’s next fundraiser.

Several employees said New Breed often distributed large bonuses of five figures or higher. Bonuses did not usually correlate with the exact amount of political contributions, but were large enough to account for both performance payments and donations, according to the two people with knowledge of company finances.

Five former employees said DeJoy’s executive assistant, Heather Clarke, personally called senior staffers, checking on whether executives were coming to fundraisers and collecting checks for candidates.

Trump insulted Trudeau by selling DeJoy the ambassadorship to Canada for his crazy right-wing wife

Clarke, who now works alongside DeJoy at the Postal Service as his chief of staff, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Phone messages left with Clarke’s husband were returned Friday by Hagler, who said she would have no comment.

Clarke was among several nonexecutive employees who gave substantial political donations, public records show: She alone contributed $47,000 from 2002 to 2014. Clarke has continued to donate since then, but at about half the annual rate as when she worked at New Breed.

Another longtime senior official in DeJoy’s company, Joe Hauck, also routinely contacted company employees urging them to contribute, former workers said.

In an interview, Hauck denied that the company reimbursed New Breed employees for political contributions. He said he never received any bonuses for that purpose, nor was he offered any. “That’s illegal-- you can’t do that,” said Hauck, who was vice president for sales, marketing and communications when the company was sold.

Hauck did acknowledge approaching employees and asking them to contribute, but disputed that he pressured anyone.

“I created a list of people that had indicated that they were interested. And whenever there was an event coming up, I would let them know about the event and they would either say, ‘Yeah, I want to participate’ or ‘No, I don’t,’ ” he said.

Hauck said he sometimes did collect checks for candidates in the office, but only because some employees “happened to have their checkbooks on them.”

...Steve Moore, who took a job as plant manager of a New Breed facility in Bolingbrook, Ill., in 2007, said he felt pressured to contribute just a few months into his job. DeJoy sent managers an email announcing a fundraising event at his house for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a candidate for president.

Moore said his manager, Philip Meyer, soon followed up, telling him that making a contribution was “highly recommended,” even if he would not attend.

“I took that to mean my job is on the line here, or things won’t go smooth for me here at New Breed if I didn’t contribute,” Moore said in an interview. He donated $250. “I didn’t really agree with what was going on,” he said. Moore said he was terminated in 2008 after a dispute with his supervisors.

In a text message, Meyer declined to comment.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of donations from New Breed employees has been GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose campaign committees collected nearly $300,000 from people at the company in 2014, campaign finance records show.

When asked for comment on the accounts of employees who said they were pressured to donate to DeJoy’s favored candidates, Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Tillis’s campaign, said in an email: “Neither Senator Tillis nor our campaign had knowledge of these findings.”

...Young, the retired director of human resources, said it was during the 2004 Bush reelection campaign that he saw DeJoy begin to “take advantage” of his power as CEO to move money for politics.

“No one was ever forced to or lost a job because they didn’t, but if people contributed, their raises and their bonuses were bumped up to accommodate that,” said Young, who gave more than $19,000 in donations while he worked at New Breed.

...By 2007, DeJoy was carving his own path politically. With Giuliani leading in early polls for the Republican nomination for president, DeJoy signed on as co-chair of the former mayor’s North Carolina finance committee.

New Breed employees quickly followed.

DeJoy kicked off his fundraising effort by inviting a group of senior New Breed executives who had previously donated to Republicans while at the company to contribute, according to one of those who wrote a check. Campaign finance records show that New Breed employees gave Giuliani’s campaign more than $27,000 in one day.

Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Less than a month later, when Giuliani made a swing through North Carolina, DeJoy invited a broader group of New Breed employees to contribute and take part in a fundraiser, according to people familiar with his outreach. The second effort netted about $40,000 from employees, campaign finance records show.

Moore, the plant director in Illinois, said he received the email inviting employees to give-- and he donated reluctantly.

Another middle manager at another New Breed facility said he received the solicitation, too, as well as encouragement in person from Meyer during a plant visit.

“He would come to me and say, ‘Louis is having this thing, and he really wants all the managers there, and you need to contribute,’ ” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he fears DeJoy could sue him.

The former employee said he recalled Meyer saying that not contributing was “not going to have any bearing on your job.”

But he worried that the reverse was true, he said. “You feel the pressure. They tell you it’s not there, and then they put it on you,” he said.





...After Giuliani’s campaign faltered, DeJoy pivoted and put his energy into backing the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket, organizing and hosting multiple fundraisers over the next year. Again, New Breed employees followed. Along with DeJoy, they contributed more than $180,000, FEC records show.

Four years later, an additional $193,000 flowed from DeJoy and other New Breed employees to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah.

Before the 2012 election, more than $170,000 in contributions from DeJoy and New Breed employees would also go to help lift McCrory to the North Carolina governor’s mansion, state campaign finance records show.

The following month, McCrory named Wos, DeJoy’s wife and a retired physician, as his choice for state health secretary.

In an interview, McCrory said Wos’s appointment had no connection to campaign contributions he received. “She was the most qualified person and I had to beg her to take the job,” he said.

Told of The Post’s findings, McCrory said: “I’m not aware of any of these claims.”

During her tenure, Wos drew scrutiny from Democrats after awarding a $310,000 state contract to Hauck, the New Breed employee who colleagues said had urged them to support DeJoy’s fundraising efforts.

At the time, Wos defended her pick, saying Hauck worked on a major restructuring of the department’s bureaucracy.

Hauck said he took a pay cut by going on leave from New Breed to work for Wos for 11 months. “I looked at it as serving,” he said in an interview.

ACTIVISM!

D.C. organizers figured out where DeJoy lives-- this condo in Kalorama-- so they're holding a "No Joy for DeJoy" noise demonstration at his building and stuffing mock absentee ballots into the gates.

Trump Has Gone Postal-- What Is Required Of Patriots?

Louis & Donald Fix The Post Office by Nancy Ohanian

The House hadn't voted since it passed the Pentagon budget on July 31. Then on Saturday, there were 4 votes on the post office, including a Republican motion to prevent a vote from taking place at all. That Republican vote to recommit failed 223 to to 182. The 144 who voted, all voted to recommit. 222 Democrats voted against that but eight less-than-worthless fake Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- protected by the DCCC-- voted with the Republicans, of course; they always do. The enemies of the people:

• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)
• Jared Golden (Blue Dog-ME)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)

When the bill itself hit the floor half an hour later, all 231 Democrats voted yes and 149 Republicans voted no. That doesn't add up to the 257-150 win. Well, Justin Amash, the conservative independent, was with his GOP buddies on this one. So that makes 150. But that doesn't account for 26 yes votes.

Ah-ha! 26 Republicans! Were there suddenly--out of the blue-- 26 mainstream Republicans unwilling to lend their names to Trump's and DeJoy's plans for fascist take-over? Well... that might describe Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Peter King (R-NY), Chris Smith (R-NJ), David McKinley (R-WV) and Will Hurd (R-TX). But the rest of them? All have something in common-- they are extremely vulnerable members petrified to be associated with Trump and his authoritarianism, even, if like Mike McCaul (R-TX), Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) and Sam Graves (R-MO), they are total Trump lap-dogs who never stray from the party line. LaMalfa was the most shocking of all. But he's feeling the heat in a big way from progressive Democrat Audrey Denney and decided he's more afraid of her than of Trump at this point. Yesterday Audrey told us that she was "pleased to see Rep. LaMalfa vote the correct way on this bill-- and for once do something that favors his constituents instead of his corporate sponsors. I think it signifies the mounting pressure he is feeling from our campaign. It appears the vote may have cost Rep. LaMalfa some support within his strongest base." She pointed out some Trumpists in her district who are fuming:

And then there's multimillionaire clown Michael McCaul in Austin. You'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull the wool over Mike Siegel's eyes. He nearly beat Trumpist shill McCaul in 2018 and, despite McCaul's one vote diverging from Trump Saturday, everyone in TX-10 knows what a puppet is and that it's time to get rid of theirs. "Michael McCaul's vote for USPS funding is a clear sign it's re-election time and our rally with NALC Letter Carriers and 50 constituents on Tuesday was a success," said Siegel, a public school teacher and civil rights attorney up against eight-term Rep. Michael McCaul. "McCaul has accepted over $50,000 in corporate PAC money from FedEx and UPS, which have a direct interest in gutting the Post Office. I'm not taking a dime of corporate PAC money. Our campaign has been running for years on a message to strengthen and expand the Post Office, including Postal Banking and infrastructure for universal broadband, to create thousands of good paying jobs."

Sam Graves was another lock-step Republican who surprised everyone who knows him by starting from the party line. But, like LaMalfa, he's feeling the heat-- from his constituents and from progressive Democrat Gena Ross. "As a proponent of the House Bill meant to provide necessary funding for the USPS, I am glad that Sam Graves voted approve it. As I’ve said before, funding the postal service should not be a partisan issue. For Democrats and Republicans alike, the postal service provides a crucial service. The right thing to do, regardless of party, was to vote yes. However, we cannot settle for someone who does the right thing just some of the time. I’m running for office to guarantee the Missourians in District 6 that if elected, I will always vote with their best interest in mind, and not just when it’s convenient for me. I’m running so that the people of District 6 will finally feel like their voices have been heard, and not like their concerns have been silenced. When elected, the people of District 6 will never have to worry about whether or not I’m serving them, or my own self-interest."

Like most Americans, rural and suburban Missouri voters do not want to see the post office wrecked-- but Jason Smith diverged with Sam Graves on this one. His opponent, Kathy Ellis: "Jason Smith should be ashamed of himself. If it wasn’t clear before how out of touch and ignorant he is, it’s crystal clear now. Smith’s vote against support for USPS-- on the heels of his vote against Coronavirus relief-- demonstrates, once again, that’s he’s unfit to represent Missouri’s 8th District. Our rural area relies on USPS for voting, business matters, communication, and medicine. And we deserve a real leader, not a rubber stamp for Trump and GOP policies. It’s time for him to go."

But in some ways the most interesting vote of all was from hereditary multimillionaire Chris Jacobs in western New York (NY-27). Jacobs voted to recommit and then, following the GOP party line like he always does (100%), he voted against the bill to save the post office. No one could possibly expect anything else from him, right? Well... apparently he got some negative feedback from voters in his district-- furious rural voters, particularly. Jacobs was so frightened, that he put out a statement claiming he pressed them wrong button when he voted and actually meant to vote against Trump and with the Democrats, something he has never done before. Let's allow Jacob's progressive opponent Nate McMurray, a vocal defender of the post office, to explain what ensued: "Saturday, thousands of letter carriers and postal workers in NY-27 went to bed believing that their congressman voted against their very existence as essential workers. Today, hundreds of thousands of voters woke up to wonder whether their congressman was even able to do his job. Chris claims he was 'distracted' during the vote and was on his way to the airport before he realized he had 'pushed the wrong button.' How could he allow that to happen? Could he have been eager to get home before his big fundraiser Monday morning? The truth is that this negligence would never have happened on a vote important to his big money donors. No matter his alleged intention, Chris Jacobs' actions have shown zero support for the USPS and zero ability to stand up to the President. Chris has been silent as Trump threatened our democracy, saying that no funding meant fewer mail-in ballots for November and a better chance for his re-election. He hasn't said a word about postmaster DeJoy stealing mailboxes and dismantling mail sorting machines here in Buffalo. I'm proud to be endorsed by the National Association of Letter Carriers, because they know I can't be distracted from the fight to protect our workers, unions, and democratic institutions. There is going to be another big vote in November, on inept politicians like Jacobs and Trump-- I know there are many former Jacobs voters in NY-27 who are ready to change their vote too."

Trump roadie Alex Mooney (R-WV) was one of the Republicans who voted against Saturday's bill to provide $25 million in USPS funding, even as one of West Virginia's other Republican Congressmen, David McKinley, voted for it. The postal service employs nearly 4,000 West Virginians. "On-time mail delivery is a basic public service, and is particularly critical in a rural state like West Virginia," said Cathy Kunkel, Mooney's challenger. "We urgently need to fund the postal service to get through the November election. Beyond that, Congress must repeal the bill that required the Postal Service to pre-fund retiree medical benefits, which has put an unnecessary strain on its finances. It is deeply disappointing that Congressman Mooney voted against funding for this fundamental institution of our democracy."

Republicans without serious challengers-- and also Republicans who still can't get their heads out of Trump's ass-- just toed the party line (without making up stories like Jacobs did to evade accountability). The most foolish votes against the interests of their own constituents were by two crooks, Roger Williams (R-TX), Mike Garcia (R-CA) and Ken Calvert (R-CA). I asked Julie Oliver, Williams' opponent how Williams' vote can re explained, since people in central Texas like and depend on the postal service. Like Mike Siegel, Julie is also based in Austin and also running in a gerrymandered Republican district. And like Mike, she's looking like a winner. But in her case, her corrupt opponent, Roger Williams, refused to vote for the post office. "After taking $20,000 from UPS and Fedex, Roger Williams voted against funding the United States Post Office," said Julie. "It's about corruption, plain and simple. And it's not just a disservice to veterans, seniors, and rural Texans who rely on USPS for last-mile delivery. It's un-American."

The bill itself, likely to be buried in the Senate by Moscow Mitch, would prevent DeJoy from making any changes to postal operations that could slow delivery of mailed-in ballots for this fall’s elections and would force him to reverse the decisions he's already made to slow down the mail until the pandemic is over-- like removing mail-sorting machines, restricting overtime pay, destroying post boxes and handling election mail as anything other than first-class for prioritized delivery. In line with what was requested by the Republican postal service board of governors, the legislation also approved $25 billion in funding for the service. Trump's says if Moscow Mitch fails to stop it, he'll veto it.

DeJoy will be grilled by members of the House Oversight Committee this morning and with members like Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Ro Khanna (D-CA), AOC (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Katie Porter (D-CA)-- plus neo-Nazis Gym Jordan (R-OH), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Jody Hice (R-GA), Glenn Grothman (R-WI) and Clay Higgins (R-LA)-- you can count on the hearing being a lot more exciting than Trump's hodgepodge tribute to himself that starts tonight.

Yesterday, conservative Republican #NeverTrumper Steve Schmidt wrote in a Business Insider OpEd that because of Trump's post office agenda, American democracy is in grave danger, "an attack on the right to vote... Trump's scheme to cause chaos at the US Postal Service and undermine faith in our voting system-- in the midst of a pandemic no less-- must be met with a rededication by all Americans who love this country to vote the president out of office."

Trump is causing chaos in America. He has attacked and weakened our most vital institutions for the past four years, and now, he has decided that he will stay in power by any means necessary, even going as far as to muse about running for an unconstitutional third-term in 2024.

Trump is trying to steal the election using a voter suppression scheme that confuses Americans and undermines the very basics of voting.

The US Postal Service has been selected by Trump to be the unwitting bludgeon as he assaults our free and fair elections process. He has installed a crony at the head of the USPS to make changes that will sow confusion and slow mail service, threatening the ability of the USPS to deliver mail-in ballots on time.

And it's not only the election. Imagine our fellow citizens, seniors, and veterans, who need their medications right now. The inescapable reality is that more Americans will die needlessly as the result of yet another cold, calculating, and calloused decision by Trump.

The USPS is as old as the nation and shares with it a storied history. The first US Postmaster General was Dr. Benjamin Franklin. He understood that mail delivery is amongst the very highest priorities and requirements of a functioning national government.

From the daring days of the Pony Express, to the pioneering Air Mail pilots at the dawn of aviation, to the men and women who walk a route today and know our kids' names and always have a treat for the dog, the USPS has been a vital part of our country. We cannot let Trump and his appointees threaten it.

As has been the case for the past four years, Trump's assault on our country's institutions is made possible by the silence of his collaborators in this plot against America.

What are we supposed to call it when one of America's two political parties succumbs fully to the siren of power at the expense of the American experiment? Freedom is on the line.

...We must defend freedom. We must vote. We must organize. We must participate. We must never ever let any person or any nation threaten our right to vote. It is an inheritance paid for in blood. We will never surrender it.

Donald Trump is a name that will live in ignominy for all time. His depravities, incompetence, and malice will be repudiated by the American people in a decisive vote that Trump will be unable to stop.

In the end, we are Americans. We decide who leads. We will vote.

Any and every Republican elected office who doesn't stand up to Trump on this, is complicit and should be voted out of office. The folks at the Lincoln Project know the stuff in this ad is true-- most of them were the ones who created or applied these right-wing strategies in American political campaigns to begin with:

We Get Letters, We Get Letters-- Or At Least We Used To... Before Trump Hired Louis DeJoy To Destroy The Post Office

Louis & Donald Fix The Post Office by Nancy Ohanian

I'm absolutely positive that Trump gave DeJoy a blanket pardon before DeJoy went for work for him. Either that or DeJoy is plum loco. On Tuesday DeJoy issued a disingenuous official statement on his disenfranchisement shenanigans, acknowledging that the postal service which he has been systematically disrupting, "will play a critical role this year in delivering election mail for millions of voters across the country... I want to assure all Americans of the following:

• Retail hours at Post Offices will not change.
• Mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain where they are.
• No mail processing facilities will be closed.
• And we reassert that overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed.

When he said "mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain where they are," he meant in the land-fills they've already been dumped in.

And when he said "overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed," he meant by his own lackeys who are have basically two jobs:

• Destroy public trust in the post office so it can be sold off and privatized.
• Disenfranchise Democratic voters to help Trump steal the election.

Not part of the public statement, though, was the order he gave not to reconnect and mail sorting machines and not to reinstall any blue boxes he had ordered removed. This was a memo from one of DeJoy's stooges, Kevin Couch the national director of Maintenance Operations:

Please message out to your respective Maintenance Managers tonight.

They are not to reconnect / reinstall machines that have previously been disconnected without approval from HQ Maintenance, no matter what direction they are getting from their plant manager," wrote Kevin Couch, Director of Maintenance Operations. "Please have them flow that request through you then on to me for a direction."

A follow up e-mail to every regional maintenance manager read: "We are not to reconnect any machines that have previously been disconnected." This was (in part), Pelosi's statement after she met with DeJoy on Wednesday: "The Postmaster General’s alleged pause is wholly insufficient and does not reverse damage already wreaked.  The Postmaster General frankly admitted that he had no intention of replacing the sorting machines, blue mailboxes and other key mail infrastructure that have been removed and that plans for adequate overtime, which is critical for the timely delivery of mail, are not in the works.  All of these changes directly jeopardize the election and disproportionately threaten to disenfranchise voters in communities of color.  At the same time, we are highly concerned that the slowdown of the delivery of medicines to veterans is not being sufficiently addressed."

90 Members of Congress-- all Democrats-- sent the 6 members of the Postal Service's board of governors a letter calling for the dismissal of DeJoy, also on Wednesday. "We write to urge you to immediately remove Postmaster General Louis DeJoy," they began, "using your powers under 39 U.S. Code § 202. Mr. DeJoy has used his time as Postmaster General to sabotage the United States Postal Service (USPS) and he must be removed immediately to protect this critical institution. Despite recent claims by Mr. DeJoy that implementation of certain changes may be delayed, he has already done considerable damage to the institution and we believe his conflicts of interest are insurmountable.

And that brings us to a worrying assertion by top investigative journalist Greg Palast that voting by mail with DeJoy running the post office "is playing Russian Roulette with your vote." He recommends that "since voting in-person on Election Day can kill you, to avoid the pitfalls of vote by mail, get your absentee ballot from your local county Board of Elections and return it there. Or, use drop boxes in states that have them. Otherwise, ask for your ballot at least 8 weeks before the election. In most states, you can take the mail-in ballot to an early polling station-- and safely drop it off."

Palast told radio host Mike Papantonio that an MIT study found that even pre-Trump 22% of all vote by mail ballots don't get counted. One in 10 people who ask for absentee ballots never get them and one in 5 mailed-in ballots get junked. When Papantonio asked him "How safe is vote by mail," he responded that it isn't. "you can have all these jerks in Hawaiian shirts, the Boogaloo Boys, the Proud Boys, they're going to go in… Trump’s calling for 50,000 volunteers. It's not an intimidation army. People have that wrong. The real danger’s that are going to go in and say, I don't like that signature on that ballot. That ballot was taped shut instead of a sealed shut by licking the envelope. I'm not kidding. And if you think it's just Republicans who do that, in New York this past last week the Democratic Party challenged the counting of 28,000 mail-in ballots-- the Democratic Party. Once they established that precedent, how many ballots do you think Trump's people will challenge? How many millions I should say. So it's not safe to mail in your ballot."

He reminded his listeners that the Democratic Party in California shafted Bernie out of 553,000 votes in the March primary. "That's what the Democratic Party did. But nationwide, what you have is a mass wipe out of voters by the Republicans. We've had a big purge of the voter list. 16.7 million people, according to the federal government, have been erased from the voter rolls. They're going to have a tough time getting their mail-in ballots if you're not on the voter rolls. And the Republicans have learned from the Democrats in New York and the Democrats in California and throughout the nation they're going to be challenging every single mail-in ballot that comes in."

North Carolina Republican Party Mails Out Absentee/Mail-in Ballot Request Forms With Trump's Picture And Plea.

-by Noah

I always love pointing out the fact that Republicans have no sense of irony. It's just so easy and it points up the limitations of the Republican mind. But, they've really gone and maximized the irony this time. They can't apply so much as an ounce of critical thinking to anything that enters their fawlty minds, not even to the blatant appearance of their own dubious actions. This time, in the middle of trying to badmouth the very idea of absentee or mail-in voting (Same thing), as led by their Orange Fascist Messiah, the North Carolina Repug Party sent out mail-in ballot request forms (See above) which doubled as campaign pamphlets to North Carolinians. The forms were apparently designed and printed by the Trump campaign itself and come complete with a picture of their Dear Leader and a campaign "Vote for me" pitch. I'm sure other state Repug Parties will copy then and do the same. North Carolina even managed to do it at the height of the eruption over the personal efforts of Trump and his third world styled Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, to sabotage the very idea of mail-in voting.

Said Chandler Carranza a Gaston County North Carolina voter:

The irony is very thick and definitely not lost on me. Trump has been saying mail-in ballots will bring fraud to the election but absentee ballots are legit. Which is ist It can't be both ways. I laughed because if the campaign actually took information from other times they have reached out to me, they'd know I won't vote for Trump despite being a registered Republican.

Speaking of Louis DeJoy, the aforementioned Trump Postmaster Commandant is a prominent citizen of the North Carolina city of Greensboro, a town best known among republicans as the site of a particularly heinous event on 11/3/79 wherein local members of the KKK and American Nazi Party murdered 5 participants of a Death To The Klan march. Notice the date? More irony. 11/3, same day as the day that is planned for this year's election; planned as long as Herr Trump doesn't follow through on "delaying" or "postponing" it. But, the real thing of interest here is that the pro-Trump ballot request mailing happened in the very state where DeJoy Boy is a prominent billionaire repug. Coincidence? You decide, based on your own naivete. Hell, the mailing even went out before all the mailboxes were removed.

Yeah, I know. the USPS Board Of Directors "advised" DeJoy Boy to stop the removal of mailboxes and sorting machines and to restore overtime until after the election. I haven't heard anything about returning the purloined mailboxes (See my Wednesday Midnight Meme to our street corners, or reinstalling the sorting machines, have you? As usual, enough was said to fool people into thinking all would be normal at the post office. The devil is in the details.

All of this makes me wonder how long before states with Republican legislatures manage to set things up so your ballot request gets you a ballot that has only Republican choices listed? They could have a Louis DeJoy republican controlled post office handle it. Our ballots are already like that in all but party name only in so many places anyway so how long before the ballots just list one name at all? Even Russia's ballots have two candidates. You just dare not vote for anyone but Putin or your vote will be cancelled and there's a real good chance you will be "cancelled" too, real permanent like. You know that's the Trump dream and the corporate masters in this country would love to move beyond our current status quo of having two major party candidates and being able to live with either even if they do slighlty prefer one over the other. Hell, I see a future where your ballot request form or the actual ballot comes with a MAGA t-shirt and hat offer or at least a Trump autographed 8 X 10. Or, how about this: you send in your ballot request form and your family Bible and it comes back with Trump's autograph?

Lastly, Wake County North Carolina voter Taylor Alexander had this to say:

My initial reaction was that I was kind of shocked, and laughed because of the irony of it, because Trump had been tailing against mail-in voting, but here his party was, promoting it, and sending out an absentee ballot request form. I think it's ridiculous that the funding is being cut and processes are being changed in the post office. Peoples life saving medications are days late, bills aren't being paid on time, and all for what? It's rigging the election."

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Trump and DeJoy Boy have gone postal! Their deliberate disruption/destruction of the USPS isn't just about the coming election. Sure, if Trump loses, he will use the chaos he has created at the post office and elsewhere as an excuse for branding the election as illegitimate. There's a method to his madness. But the chaos is also about pleasing his psychopathy. It's about destroying the lives of Americans by destroying their credit when their bill payments don't arrive on time or the bills don't arrive at their homes in time. It's about destroying the small businesses that they have worked so hard to build. It's also about Americans who depend on medications to lead productive lives, including American veterans, vets he knows make him look bad just by comparison to himself, not getting their medications on schedule, but when did Trump or any of his henchmen and staff ever really care about our quality of life or whether we even live or die. To Trump and his people, American lives are a political negotiating tool and that is all. This is Republicanism given free reign.

The truck pictured in tonight's meme says "We Deliver For You." What people like Trump and his personal Postmaster General deliver is what they aim to deliver; human suffering and misery. People like them run on it. It fuels them.

Not that I ever expect Washington to do the right thing but it's always worth illustrating the difference between what is right and how Washington sells out the Constitution and the country at nearly every opportunity. Washington takes care of its own, thus making it two cities; a city that says it is one thing and a city as it really is. The glint of gold blinds the former. Set up the tribunals! Oil up the blades! Order up the baskets for the D.C. deplorables! I'll bring my knitting!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

First they erected a wall around the White House. Now they've erected a wall around your neighborhood mailbox. Next they will build a wall around you. Republicans don't like our taking down statues of their racist traitors like Robert E. Lee who they idolize, so now they are erecting what amount to industrial art pieces that symbolize their goal of fascist totalitarianism. That's exactly what tonight's meme shows.

Former Republican National Committee Deputy National Finance Co-Chair Louis DeJoy, now Trump's Postmaster General, has temporarily stopped "stealing" mailboxes from the nation's street corners but highly efficient mail sorting machines are still being disappeared in preparation for stealing or disappearing your ballots and the 2020 election itself. Since the machines can sort up to 36,000 pieces of mail per hour, there is no reason to get rid of them right before a presidential election other than to gum up the works at a madman's behest. This is exponentially way beyond the unpatriotic anti-democracy efforts of Flor-i-duh Governor "Jeb" Bush and his personal Secretary of State Katherine Harris during the 2000 election and that was bad enough.

Tonight's meme is a manifestation of what DeJoy and Trump have been cooking up in their many no longer secret oval office meetings and phone calls where they obviously strategize how to sabotage the United States Post Office and achieve their goal. What it amounts to is an affront to our Constitutional rights, the right to vote, and human decency itself, but that's what republicans are all about. They even admit it proudly now, right out in the open on national television. The Mailbox Graveyard, however, is a physical monument to what Trump and the Republican Party stand for. Hey, it's not Mt. Rushmore but it is a monument to Trump and the authoritarian government designs he and his henchmen such as Louis DeJoy, Moscow Mitch, Chuck Grassley, Stephen Miller, and Ron Johnson have for our country.

Meanwhile Congress skipped town and again skipped their responsibilities to we the people when they should have dragged DeJoy, in chains if necessary, into the House Of Representatives for questioning immediately. It took Speaker Nancy Pelosi until Sunday to announce that she would issue the callback. There's also a USPS Board of Directors, 6 of them, who should also be summoned to talk about, among other things, the 23 postal officials who DeJoy dumped so that he could be the USPS strongman and Trump's next "Medal Of Freedom" winner. Doing this immediately last Friday should not even have been a question or discussion but the only art the Democrats really ever show us is the art of hemming, hawing, procrastinating, and meekly treading lightly. I expect that we will get just the usual meaningless dog and pony pantomime for the masses and no removal or eventual imprisonment of DeJoy and no revisitation of Comrade Trump's treasonous and extremely impeachable abuses of power which grow by the hour. Democrats have the power to do at least some of what events call for but they have the power to do lots of things they avoid doing. Burn down their phone lines and knock on their doors, very loudly. Not that it will get the righteous result but: No justice. No peace. No Removal. No peace. No arrest for treason. No peace. Some people just need to be beaten into action. A commission on Trump's War On America needs to be established by noon today. Anything else is being complicit and an accomplice.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

U.S. Code 10307:

No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse to permit a person to vote who is entitled to vote... or willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report such person's vote.

Well here's a wanted poster that belongs on the walls of every post office in the land. Of course, we'll never see the day but I can tell you that, if in some alternate reality, you elect me as your president on 11/3, you would not only see it but there would be an APB out for this traitorous cretin and no panic room in his ridiculous mansion in Greensboro would keep him from the weighted leg irons of justice.

Just who the hell is Louis DeJoy? How'd he get the job of being Comrade Trump's Postmaster General? Easy. He bought it for a measly $1,000,000 in contributions to Trump's campaign but he claims that he's not a traitor and he's not beholden to Trump. Just wait 'til he starts trying to sell off post office buildings for the land so his buddy Trump can erect some money laundering Trump Hotels and Trump Casinos.

So far, he has come up with a sick variety of ways to please his boss by sabotaging the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to process our mail with an eye towards making sure that mail-in ballots are not received by voters in time to vote in this year's election or be processed on time with the necessary postmark and relayed on to the proper place for counting at all. DeJoy is, in effect, designing a system of sabotage that will cause ballots to either disappear or be disqualified because of a late postmark or no postmark at all. The latter is of course assuming that the ballots ever get to voters so they can fill them out in the first place. DeJoy's methods to achieve this Trumpian goal include the firing of 23 top organizational and supervisory personnel with the express purpose of centralizing everything under himself only, thus making himself a postal strongman. DeJoy is also denying overtime needed to get the job of timely sorting and delivery done, removing truckloads of mailboxes from street corners, and literally ordering mail sorting machines to be thrown away. He's in an obvious rush to do this for an equally obvious reason. Like Trump, he is a long time republican dream come true.

I believe that, technically, DeJoy Boy may not have yet committed a federal crime in his manipulations of the mail but he is skating closer and closer to violations of civil rights laws, voting rights laws, equal protection laws, violation of the Administration Procedures Act, and various violations of several state Constitutions if he hasn't already crossed the lines. In the case of the most obvious federal violation, DeJoy would technically, have to be a member of the Trump campaign. See what he and Trump have done here? He's contributed 7 figures (actually a little more than that but I rounded it off in a fit of generosity and kindness) to the campaign but, supposedly that kind of money doesn't make you a full-fledged member of said campaign. It only makes you a henchman in an authoritative dictatorial takeover of the United States Of America. There oughta be a law but when did that ever stop Trump and Bill Barr? The Democrats? They barely even act when there is a law, at least not seriously. Instead, we see daily abuses of power on the part of Trump and in behalf of Trump and no one does anything other than write memorandums to various smirking officials and say "Vote them out on November 3rd." As if it won't be too late by then. Hopefully, their memorandums are not being sent via the post office. If so, they've probably already been circular filed in DeJoy's office or maybe he reads them to Trump or Barr for laughs.

So here we are: Trump has Putin and who knows who else working "the interwebs" and now he has this new guy messing with the ol' snail mail. Sweet deal. All the bases covered. Khrushchev would be proud and Stalin would be envious. After all, it was he who said:

Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.

Trump and his henchmen are beating that Stalin game. By November 4th, they'll be saying:

"Votes? What votes? We ain't even seen any stinkin' votes!"

How Existential A Threat To Democracy Is Trump And What Do We Do About It?

I don't trust the voting machines... never did, never will. They're too easily hackable. And I've thought that Trump's hysteria over vote-by-mail was because he had it all down exactly how the election would be stolen via machine tampering. With the appointment of future federal penitentiary inhabitant Louis DeJoy as postmaster general, Trump may have handled the vote-by-mail threat to his November plans.

In an OpEd for The Hill, Al Hunt wrote that "The charge by Trump and his attorney general that mail voting risks massive fraud is a canard. Spencer Cox, the conservative Republican lieutenant governor of Utah, who oversees voting in one of five states that exclusively votes by mail, says it's a 'tremendous success' with little fraud. The stated reason for going after the Postal Service is red ink which totaled $8.8 billion last year. A little bit of context on Donald Trump worrying about deficits: As a businessman, he bragged about being 'the King of Debt,' and on his watch, the federal deficit has almost doubled to close to $1 trillion, before the pandemic.

The new postmaster general is a Trump loyalist. He has given $2 million to Republicans and Trump campaigns since 2016, the latest being a $210,000 contribution to the Trump Victory Fund in February. He was going to be finance chair of the Republicans’ Charlotte convention before it was curtailed; his wife has been nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Canada.

DeJoy told the Postal Board of Governors Friday that he's not making any changes that will impede voting by mail and declared: although he has a "a good relationship" with the president, any assertion he'd make decisions at the direction of Trump "is wholly off-base."

In response to an email from me, he wouldn't say whether he spoke with Trump about the job prior to his appointment or has communicated with him since taking over.

He has not assuaged Democrats.

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations, told me: "Trump has appointed a donor and political crony to undermine the postal service for partisan gain."

In the first month and half under DeJoy, instructions have gone out to the more than 600,000 postal workers to curb any overtime and cut back services.

There's a more pressing need for overtime during this health crisis. Most postal workers are out every day, exposed to the virus. Three months ago-- the latest data-- some 2,400 postal employees had tested positive for the virus; 17,000 had been quarantined, and scores died. Those numbers undoubtedly have risen since then.

DeJoy is playing with political fire.

In a recent Hart Research-North Star Opinion Research national survey, 94 percent of Americans say the Postal Service is important to them, and there's widespread backing of federal support. A large number of the 31,000 post offices are in rural America, areas that are generally more dependent on mail delivery and that are represented by Republicans.

This morning I woke up to this ominous tweet by by friend Frank Schaeffer:

Jamelle Bouie's NY Times column, published at the same time, came to a similar conclusion: To keep a crooked authoritarian threat to democracy from claiming victory on Nov. 3, Americans patriots who can vote in person may well have to. This is gettin' serious, friends.

There’s no mystery about what President Trump intends to do if he holds a lead on election night in November. He’s practically broadcasting it.

First, he’ll claim victory. Then, having spent most of the year denouncing vote-by-mail as corrupt, fraudulent and prone to abuse, he’ll demand that authorities stop counting mail-in and absentee ballots. He’ll have teams of lawyers challenging counts and ballots across the country.

He also seems to be counting on having the advantage of mail slowdowns, engineered by the recently installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. Fewer pickups and deliveries could mean more late-arriving ballots and a better shot at dismissing votes before they’re even opened, especially if the campaign has successfully sued to block states from extending deadlines. We might even see a Brooks Brothers riot or two, where well-heeled Republican operatives stage angry and voluble protests against ballot counts and recounts.

If Trump is leading on election night, in other words, there’s a good chance he’ll try to disrupt and delegitimize the counting process. That way, if Joe Biden pulls ahead in the days (or weeks) after voting ends-- if we experience a “blue shift” like the one in 2018, in which the Democratic majority in the House grew as votes came in-- the president will have given himself grounds to reject the outcome as “fake news.”

The only way to prevent this scenario, or at least, rob it of the oxygen it needs to burn, is to deliver an election night lead to Biden. This means voting in person. No, not everyone will be able to do that. But if you plan to vote against Trump and can take appropriate precautions, then some kind of hand delivery-- going to the polls or bringing your mail-in ballot to a “drop box”-- will be the best way to protect your vote from the president’s concerted attempt to undermine the election for his benefit.

...There are reforms that could keep the president from taking this tack. To account for postal delays, states can pledge to count ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 3, so that they’re included in the total even if they arrive late. To speed up the process, states could permit election officials to verify and count mail-in ballots even before Election Day. They could also decline to release results until all polls close and all votes are in. News organizations, similarly, could set expectations for viewers and bring as much transparency as possible to vote counts and other forms of election analysis.

Nonetheless, there is a chance that the president takes this path regardless of state officials and the media. And there’s every reason to think that some portion of the Republican Party will back him. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are already challenging mail-in voting laws and suing to keep states like Nevada and Pennsylvania from enlarging their scope. It is easy to imagine a replay of Florida 2000, except on a national scale.

The best defense for the president’s political opponents is, if possible, to vote in person. For some, this will mean going to the polls in November, in the middle of flu season, when the spread of Covid-19 may worsen. In most states, however, there are multiple ways to cast or hand in a ballot. Every state offers some form of early or absentee voting, and 33 states-- including swing states like Arizona and Wisconsin-- allow absentee voting without an excuse. Trump supports absentee voting-- it’s how his older supporters in Florida vote-- and his opponents should take advantage of the fact that those systems won’t be under the same kind of attack. Many vote-by-mail states also offer drop boxes so that voters can deliver ballots directly to the registrar. And if you must mail in your ballot, the best practice would be to post it as early as possible, to account for potential delays.

Earlier this year, a group of more than 100 people-- Republicans, Democrats, senior political operatives and members of the media-- gathered to role play the November election, using predetermined rules and procedures. “In each scenario other than a Biden landslide,” writes Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute, who helped organize the exercise, “we ended up with a constitutional crisis that lasted until the inauguration, featuring violence in the streets and a severely disrupted administrative transition.”

There you have it. To head off the worst outcomes, Trump must go down in a decisive defeat. He’s on that path already. The task for his opponents is to sustain that momentum and work to make his defeat as obvious as possible, as early as possible. The pandemic makes that a risk, but it’s a risk many of us may have to take.

Christine Pellegrino is favored to replace a worthless Republican Trumpist on Long Island. This morning she mentioned to me that "Trump's popularity or lack there-of is absolutely going to drive people to the polls, or their mailboxes, to vote. But I'm not taking my foot off the gas. At the end of the day, voters care about common sense issues: good jobs, good schools, and healthcare. Talking to voters about the change Albany can create for all of us is empowering for the disaffected. The voters want a real representative. They’re tired of lazy, lifetime politicians and they’re demanding more than they just show up for photos. Down ballot candidates like me need to make sure that people mobilized by the 'Trump factor' fill out their entire ballots."

My old friend, Jerry Leichtling, came up with a brilliant idea-- that's what brilliant people like Jerry do... come up with brilliant ideas. Take look at this proposal he just sent me:

Inasmuch as E-Commerce companies have benefitted tremendously from the Covid-19 Pandemic, these same companies should be willing to do the people of the United States a massive public service. Given the Trump-ordered slowdown of the United States Postal Service there is no reason why federally-bonded companies like Amazon, Fedex and UPS should not, as a patriotic public service, pick up all voters' ballots and deliver them to Local Boards of Elections. These companies, and hundreds more, already do massive business with the Postal Service. They have literally millions of employees and are NOT slowing down. Please write to the CEO’s of Amazon-- Jeff Bezos (Jeff@Amazon.com); Fedex-- Fred Smith (Fredric.Smith@Fedex.Com) and UPS, Carol Tome (CTome@UPS.com) with the heading or hashtag Special Delivery Democracy. and send copies to your elected representatives as well. Let’s see if we can derail Trump’s express train to tyranny.

Counting Sheep by Nancy Ohanian