The Fascist Pig Is Stealing The Election In Plain Sight And Democracy Seems Incapable Of Protecting Itself-- The US Postal Service

I've thought all year that the reason Trump squealed like a stuck pig about the postal service was because he and his Russian allies had the electronic voting machines rigged in enough counties to throw him another electoral college win. Vote by mail would kill that. So he had to kill the post office, conveniently, an institution, Republicans hate anyway. "Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have taken to the courts dozens of times as part of a $20 million effort to challenge voting rules," wrote Politico's Anita Kumar, "including filing their own lawsuits in several battleground states, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Nevada. And around the time Trump started musing about delaying the election last week, aides and outside advisers began scrambling to ponder possible executive actions he could take to curb mail-in voting-- everything from directing the postal service to not deliver certain ballots to stopping local officials from counting them after Election Day... [I]t has allowed Trump to present himself as a fighter on an issue that many of his most fervent supporters have taken up in the last few months. Trump fans, said John Fredericks, a conservative radio host who serves on the Trump campaign’s advisory committee, 'think Trump is going to win legitimately, but the Democrats are trying to steal the election by manipulating mail-out ballots. They want the president to jawbone enough so there’s a level of outrage to get rid of these ballots.' Just because Trump’s claims of rampant mail-in voting fraud aren’t supported by evidence doesn’t mean election experts aren’t concerned about problems holding a presidential election during a pandemic. It’s unknown whether the United States Postal Service can handle a surge of mail-in ballots in a timely fashion."

Writting for the Washington Post yesterday, Jacob Bogage reported about how Louis DeJoy, Trump's crooked new postmaster general is working quickly and ruthlessly to destroy the U.S. postal service from within. "DeJoy unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s mail service, displacing the two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations... The shake-up came as congressional Democrats called for an investigation of DeJoy and the cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared ballots in recent primary elections. Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. The reshuffling threatens to heighten tensions between postal officials and lawmakers, who are troubled by delivery delays-- the Postal Service banned employees from working overtime and making extra trips to deliver mail-- and wary of the Trump administration’s influence on the Postal Service as the coronavirus pandemic rages and November’s election draws near."

Ted Lieu, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, is watching closely-- and very realistic. "Democrats," he told me last night, "are going to do everything we can to stop voter suppression, including by the Post Office. At the same time, here is the truth: with conservative control of the Supreme Court, the White House, and the Senate, most if not all of the efforts by Democrats will not succeed in the next three months. That means voter suppression will occur. And the best way to overcome it is to prepare voters. That means we need to educate people that if they are going to vote by mail, they need to vote early. If they decide to vote on November 3, they need to prepare for long lines. Bring a meal, a lawn chair, a game, whatever is necessary to wait in a potentially long line to cast the vote. That is how we win, by preparing voters to overcome obstacles instead of promising actions we can't deliver on in the next three months."

DeJoy is at war with congressional Democrats and there's no doubt in my mind that if Pelosi and Schumer could, they'd throw him in prison. But they can't. Bogage reported that Jerry Connolly (D-VA), chair of the House subcommittee responsible for postal oversight, called the reorganization "a deliberate sabotage" to the nation’s mail service and a "Trojan Horse." Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the subcommittee, told me yesterday that "All the Oversight Committee Democratic Members have been focused on defending the Post Office against right-wing attack ever since Trump came to power. The defense of the Post Office now assumes paramount importance and urgency as it will be a central transmission belt for delivery of ballots and votes in Nobember. Trump and his team have been making overtly hostile moves to undermine postal capacity, so expect intensive oversight hearings, demands for information and legislative action to stop Trump’s unfolding sabotage of the Post Office and 2020 presidential election."

The Postal Service will implement a hiring freeze, according to the reorganization announcement, and will ask for voluntary early retirements. It also will realign into three “operating units”-- retail and delivery, logistics and processing, and commerce and business solutions-- and scale down from seven regions to four.

The structure displaces postal executives with decades of experience, moving some to new positions and others out of leadership roles entirely, including McAdams, Williams and chief commerce and business solutions officer Jacqueline Krage Strako, who previously held the title of executive vice president and chief customer and marketing officer.

...[T]he changes worried postal analysts, who say the tone of DeJoy’s first eight weeks and his restructuring have recast the nation’s mail service as a for-profit arm of the government, rather than an essential service.

“He keeps referring to the USPS as ‘our business.’ But he’s been appointed postmaster general. You don’t run a business,” said Philip Rubio, a history professor at North Carolina A&T State University and a former postal worker. “He’s not accountable to shareholders. He’s accountable to the American people and Congress.”

Earlier Friday, congressional Democrats demanded an investigation of DeJoy’s cost-cutting initiatives, which postal workers blame for delivery slowdowns.

A letter signed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) and seven other Democrats, including Connolly, urged Postal Service Inspector General Tammy L. Whitcomb to examine how DeJoy came to implement policies that prohibit postal workers from taking overtime or making extra trips to deliver mail on time, and how such delays specifically affect election mail.

“Given the ongoing concerns about the adverse impacts of Trump Administration policies on the quality and efficiency of the Postal Service, we ask that you conduct an audit of all operational changes put in place by Mr. DeJoy and other Trump Administration officials in 2020,” the letter states.

It also asks Whitcomb to review the finances of DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, the nominee for ambassador to Canada. The couple’s holdings include between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors, according to a financial disclosure Wos filed with the Office of Government Ethics when she was nominated. Postal Service mail processing contractor XPO Logistics-- which acquired DeJoy’s company New Breed Logistics in 2014-- represents the vast majority of those holdings. Their combined stake in competitors UPS and trucking company J.B. Hunt is roughly $265,000.

DeJoy had 30 days from taking over the agency to disclose any assets that present a conflict of interest, according to the Postal Service. DeJoy in a statement said he had “done what is necessary to ensure that I am and will remain in compliance with those obligations.”

“We would welcome the Inspector General to look into the steps we are taking to make the Postal Service more efficient,” Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer said. “She will find that much of what we are doing is designed to address recommendations that her office has made in recent years.”

Agapi Doulaveris, a spokesperson for the Office of Inspector General, said the department had received the letter, but could not comment on ongoing work.

“I would absolutely hope the inspector general would look into why the mail is being slowed, because that’s outrageous,” Rubio said. “Especially during the pandemic and with America about to vote, this is the worst time to be changing policies.”

DeJoy met Wednesday with Pelosi, Schumer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to discuss the new mail-handling procedures and the Postal Service’s tenuous financial position. The agency is projected to run out of money between March and October 2021, though it just accessed a $10 billion Treasury loan authorized last week in an early coronavirus relief package.

During the USPS’s quarterly board of governors meeting Friday, DeJoy said he negotiated the loan terms with Mnuchin. Upon accessing the loan, the Postal Service, subject to confidentiality restrictions, will hand over proprietary contracts for its 10 largest service agreements with private sector shippers. Those businesses use the mail service for “last mile” package delivery from distribution centers to consumers’ homes or businesses.

Mnuchin had sought sweeping operational control of the Postal Service in previous loan terms, including provisions that would allow the Trump administration to approve senior postal personnel decisions, service contracts with third-party shippers, collective bargaining negotiation strategies and high package prices.

In April, shortly after Congress authorized the loan, Trump called the Postal Service “a joke” and said he would not approve any emergency funding unless the USPS quadrupled package delivery prices, a move analysts said would quickly bankrupt the agency by chasing away customers to private-sector competitors.

DeJoy, at the governors meeting Friday, said that though he has a “good relationship” with Trump-- he’s donated more than $2 million to the Trump campaign or Republican causes since 2016, and chaired the finance committee for the 2020 GOP convention-- he does not take direction from Trump on postal issues.

“While I certainly have a good relationship with the President of the United States, the notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President, or anyone else in the administration, is wholly off-base,” he said. “I serve at the pleasure of the governors of the Postal Service, a group that is bipartisan by statute and that will evaluate my performance in a nonpartisan fashion.”

Coronavirus funding for the Postal Service-- and Schumer and Pelosi’s demand that DeJoy roll back the cost-cutting policies-- emerged as a sticking point between Democrats and the White House in negotiations on a “Phase IV” relief package. The House passed a package with $25 billion for the Postal Service that does not need to be repaid to replace the Treasury loan. The Trump administration has objected to any direct aid to the Postal Service.

On his Bradcast radio show Friday, Brad Friedman warned "Never mind the pre-election polling numbers you are hearing. Given the way Donald Trump and his Administration and acolytes around the country are actively working to undermine this year's November 3rd general elections, you'd make a mistake to place Joe Biden's odds of being declared the winner at any better than 50/50 at best at this point. Disturbing comments from our guest today only underscore that concern yet again." Even as Trump, reported Friedman, continues to make false claims about absentee voting (after fraudulently doing so himself!), his recently appointed Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, is now undermining the U.S. Postal Service itself in advance of what will be, by far, the largest Vote-by-Mail elections in all 50 states in the nation's history. "The Republican Trump mega-donor DeJoy, with no previous USPS experience, issued several directives upon taking office in June that have resulted in the slow down of mail delivery. And while both DeJoy and other leadership at the 250-year old Postal Service (whose first Postmaster General was Benjamin Franklin) have claimed the new directives are not aimed at slowing down mail or doing Trump's bidding to undermine absentee voting, our guest today, Mark Dimondstein, President of the American Postal Workers Union and Postal Service worker since 1983, charges that is exactly what is happening. The new directives purportedly meant as efficiency measures to curb overtime costs, 'can't do anything but slow down mail,' says Dimondstein. 'Our understanding is that it's really happening all over the country, and it needs to be reversed. It needs to be stopped.' The APWU chief, representing more than 200,000 postal workers, charges the new measures, which direct carriers to leave mail behind at sorting stations if waiting for it will delay their route, 'runs counter to our DNA. Our DNA as a postal worker is to serve the customer, leave no mail behind, treat it as if it is our own.'"

The USPS is in crisis mode now, as coronavirus lockdowns have severely curbed regular mail delivery-- though package delivery has increased, he tells me, helping to mitigate that loss somewhat. The Post Office is funded entirely by postage, not tax payer dollars, but its Republican-dominated Board of Governor's, he says, unanimously voted to request a $25 billion emergency bailout from Congress earlier this year. While almost every other company in the nation has received crisis funding during the pandemic, Republicans in Congress and the White House have continued to block the request. "The Post Office does not run on tax dollars in normal times, it runs off the revenue. So if the revenue is not there, then the Post Office will run out of money," Dimondstein warns. "It's not a question of if, it's a question of when."

..."Vote-by-Mail is nothing new for postal workers. We've been doing this for generations. Military personnel have been voting by mail since the days of the Civil War...And of course now, with the pandemic, it's a question of access to the ballot box at all for tens of millions of people who want to vote safely," he tells me, noting ironically that "Trump trusts us to deliver his mail-in ballot!"

..."The idea that the Postal Service is a joke is an insult to every dedicated postal worker. 600,000 plus strong," says Dimondstein. "Out here in this pandemic, on the front lines, can you imagine how we all feel hearing that? And it's an insult to the customers. 91% of the people in this country, in the latest Pew Research Poll [support USPS]. The Postal Service always rates the highest. This year, it was the highest ever, I think out of a deeper appreciation for the role of postal workers in this pandemic."

"The country just laid to rest John Lewis," Dimondstein notes. "His historic role in this country, courageously done, was the question of voting rights for African-Americans in the South of the United States. And it was courageous. He was almost beaten to death. Voting rights now is right here at the epicenter of what's going on right now, and the Post Office is right in the middle of this thing. Because without Vote-by-Mail, people aren't going to be able to vote. It's as simple as that. Tens of millions of people, from seniors to young people, just will not be able to vote during this pandemic if they don't have good access to Vote-by-Mail and don't have the states step up. We have to worry about some of these states that don't want people to vote. That's the reality."

When asked how long before Election Day Dimondstein would advise voters get their absentee ballot into the mail to ensure it arrives n time to be counted, he recommends that if you haven't mailed it by the Tuesday or Wednesday before Election Day, you'd be wise to try and drop it off in person at your precinct or local County headquarters.