Skip to main content

Save the Post Office . . . and the Election

Donald Trump and the leadership of the Republican Party have wanted to turn the Post Office over to private business for a long time. Early in his Presidency Trump came out for privatizing the Post Office and turning the most profitable parts over to UPS, FedEx, Amazon, and other private carriers. Imagine if Amazon owned all the small town post offices and UPS bought up the post office branches in urban neighborhoods. 


Right now the U.S. Post Office is the most popular government agency in the country. If Amazon or UPS owned it that wouldn’t continue. I’ll bet they wouldn’t even deliver first class mail!

Over the last few years the Trump administration has managed to get the Post Office to cut services and slow down the delivery of mail. But recently he’s come up with a visionary plan to trash the Post Office along with the 2020 election.

At the beginning of the year Trump, and his Republican supporters, began to hammer away at the use of mail-in ballots. There would be massive voter fraud with mail-in ballots, Trump and his cronies said. They said this knowing that mail-in voting had worked well for both Republicans and Democrats in Washington State and a number of other states around the country.

Then, when the pandemic struck, it became clear that mail-in balloting was the best and safest way to hold an election. That caused Trump to really start tweeting and bellowing. He said that the 2020 election would be the worst, most fraudulent election in the history of the country. Meanwhile, lawyers for the Republican Party began suing states that tried to put safe and effective vote by mail systems in place. They’ve sued Nevada for trying to expand vote by mail. They’ve sued the state of California and they’ve gone after Pennsylvania. The list goes on.

Trump and the Republicans are spending millions to stop mail-in voting. Meanwhile, they’re doing nothing to make voting safer and more secure.

While the Republican National Committee is busy in the courts trying to stop Americans from voting by mail and Trump’s Twitter account is on fire with false tweets, the new Postmaster General is doing his best to cause chaos at the post office where, in a few months, mail-in ballots will start coming in. 

Recently the newly appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy cut overtime work for postal employees, thereby slowing the movement of the mail. He also sent out closure notices to small rural post offices in West Virginia, New Jersey, and other states. Those post offices were required to tell their patrons they were closing. They did that. Then, the next day, the local post offices were told it was a mistake. They were going to stay open, DeJoy’s staff told them.

The Trump administration is notorious for erratic behavior. It’s a strategy devised to keep everybody off-balance and confused while they wreak havoc.

DeJoy is a Trump man. He bought his position with $1.5 million in contributions to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns. And he’s doing everything he can to wreak havoc at the agency he’s been put in charge of.

Late last week he made a major shake up in management at the Post Office headquarters in Washington. Government Watchdogs are calling DeJoy’s firing, or reassigning, of twenty-three Post Office executives a Friday Night massacre. DeJoy has consolidated the power of these executives into his office.

Commentators are saying this is all part of Trump’s attempt to stop mail-in voting. But the truth is, Republicans can vote by mail too. So Trump and his supporters aren’t just trying to keep people from voting. 

I believe Trump is trying to cause so much chaos in the Postal Service that he will be able to declare that the election was a failure. He and his millionaire donor DeJoy, along with the Republican National Committee, will snarl up voting so bad that Trump will get his ”worst election ever”. Trump is trying to hijack the election by wrecking the Postal Service. 

Activists  around the country are calling on citizens and postal patrons to call on our elected representatives to take immediate action to save the Post Office - and our 2020 election. That’s a good idea.

Tim
Central Minnesota Political

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let us all walk in the foot steps of John Lewis

By John King In Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 7, 1965, John Lewis, standing in the lead of a long line of marchers, looked down from the crest of The Edmund Pettus Bridge at the line of police armed with clubs, whips and truncheons and said, “I am going to die here.” Lewis intended to lead the marchers from Selma to the capital Montgomery, to demand access to voting for Black people in Alabama. Sheriff Jim Clark lowered his gas mask and led the deputies, some on horseback and some on foot, into the line of marchers. Under swinging clubs and hooves trampling, Lewis was the first to go down. Women and children were not spared. Choking and blinded by tear gas, they were struck by clubs and truncheons wrapped with barbed wire. Lewis, with a fractured skull and a severe concussion, almost did die. The nearby Good Samaritan Hospital did not have enough beds to care for the injured marchers. A nation watched in horror as news footage of that bloody day appeared on T
2 comments
Read more

More Republican dirty tricks

  As a Blue Dog Corporate Democrat, 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson’s votes in Congress go against the beliefs and convictions of progressive voters in our district. I’m one of those progressive 7th District voters. Like most average voters I rarely actually encounter my Member of Congress. However, I recall three encounters with Rep. Peterson over the many years I’ve been stuck with him. I met him at Mikey’s Restaurant, on Main Street in Long Prairie, when he was first campaigning for a seat in Congress. We were both young then and he was full of energy and inspired in me a sense of hope for positive change. Besides, I’d met the Republican incumbent. He was an older man who, it seemed, was operating on dead batteries. I was happy to vote for the energetic Peterson. Some years later I was a delegate to the DFL District convention in Bemidji. Peterson opposed a woman’s right to choose abortion. He was being challenged by a woman who supported the right to that choice. I gave my
Post a Comment
Read more

Step aside Republicans; Minnesotans want electric vehicles

Late last month Senator Paul Gazelka, the Republican leader of the Senate, told the Minnesota Reformer that the Republican controlled Senate would likely fire the acting Commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Laura Bishop, if the Agency, at the behest of the Governor, went ahead with the Clean Car Rule. The rule would require automakers to increase the number of electric vehicles they deliver to Minnesota auto dealers. Gazelka told The Reformer that he’d had “a conversation” with Bishop about the rule. Bishop has not been confirmed by the Senate. Gazelka, and his Republican colleagues, claim that electric vehicles are too expensive and that the rule would be a burden to Minnesotans. Gazelka, and the rest of his Party are wrong. They aren’t paying attention to the economics of EV ownership and they are not paying attention to consumer preferences. Way back in September 2019, Consumer Reports reported on a study of Minnesotans they had done in collaboration with the
2 comments
Read more