Well, is that just too cute? Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to nearly every pillar of our government. His posse rides ever ready to do his dirty deeds. These guys are not living in the wild West, but they act like it. Attorney General Billy Bedrock Balls (William) Barr, Senate Majority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell, and Secretary of State Mike Mail-Order-Mean Pompeo (names from Legends of the West) want to send your mail on the big jump off a high cliff.
Secretary Hillary Clinton tweeted a warning about how important our vote is and what we can do to make sure it is counted in the November election. People need to do their patriotic duty to vote however they choose — in person or by mail. Clinton said:
‘“Our job between now and Election Day is to make sure that we keep up the fight for voting rights, including making sure all ballots cast by mail are counted.”’
The president’s Trump Troops with no identifying uniforms are spreading across the country. Ostensibly, they are to protect federal buildings and statues, but they have been snatching people off of the streets blocks away from these structures, stuffing them into unmarked vans, blindfolding them, and taking them to an undisclosed location.
When a Navy veteran went up to talk to them, they beat him and broke his arm. These thugs shot a young man in the face with a supposedly nonlethal bullet. The kid has undergone several plastic surgeries and nearly died. He is still in the hospital. Trump may use Trump Troops to harass voters, too.
Republicans cannot honestly win elections, because there are far more Independents and Democrats. That means they have to gerrymander districts until they look like creatures from the deep.
They take hundreds of people off of the voter rolls if the person has not voted recently. They say people in prison or with a record cannot vote.
Republicans make it tough to vote by deleting voting outlets and moving the only one miles out of town. They say that signatures on ballots do not match their records. They send out letters telling people their voting site has moved or the date had changed.
They send goons to intimidate people from voting. When all that did not work, they started going after the Post Office, making it come up with all the retirement upfront — 75 years into the future, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. No other federal agency or private company has to do this.
The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) made the USPS scrape together “$72 billion to prepay for its post-retirement health costs.”
‘If the costs of this retiree health care mandate were removed from the USPS financial statements, the Post Office would have reported operating profits in each of the last six years. This extraordinary mandate created a financial “crisis” that has been used to justify harmful service cuts and even calls for postal privatization. Additional cuts in service and privatization would be devastating for millions of postal workers and customers.’
The United States Postal Service sent mail by horseback in 1860. The Pony Express was hard, with men riding their horses until the horses collapsed. Even then, people understood the importance of mail. Now, the United States Postal Service has provided mail, a vital link between us and the world for 160 years.
A mail carrier used to be able to support a family on his salary alone if he could withstand below zero weather or that hitting 113 degrees. It is an honorable career with people braving all the elements six days a week, year-after-year. Then, the Republicans got ahold of it and started calling for privatization.
Email took a big bite out of their profits. Then, Republicans started squeezing the funds out of the USPS and calling for retirement benefits upfront.
Donald Trump does not like what The Washington Post says about him. Jeff Bezos owns the newspaper and Amazon. The president even had the nerve to talk directly to the US Postmaster General and demanded she double the rates on Amazon packages, which was totally inappropriate. She did not. She could not, according to The Washington Post.
‘[He signed] an executive order mandating a government review of the financially strapped Postal Service that could lead to major changes in the way it charges Amazon and others for package delivery.’
Now that people have been urging everyone to vote by mail, because Russia, China, and Iran among others can and have hacked our voting systems. Trump hates the idea of mail-in-votes, maybe for the same reason.
Wisconsin was an example of everything that could go wrong, going wrong. As the coronavirus pandemic raced across the country voters were forced to vote in person in long, long lines as the virus spiked:
‘Wisconsin’s April primary election illustrated exactly what could go wrong in an American election during the pandemic. Voters faced long lines, conflicting government orders, and spikes of the virus.’
Yet, Trump was not done. Georgia faced according to The Democracy Docket:
‘[P]oll worker shortages, precinct closures, and equipment problems yielded hours-long wait times throughout the state.’
In Nevada:
‘[T]he last voter in Clark County didn’t cast his ballot until 3:09 AM.’
Kentucky had to deal with:
‘[A]larmingly high rates of absentee ballot rejections.’
Iowa’s primary worked, so:
‘[The] Republicans changed the law to make voting more difficult in November.’
The president took Pennsylvania to court to block using “mail ballot drop boxes.” Trump’s senior campaign counselor Justin Clark appeared on 60 Minutes and said:
‘The President views vote by mail as a threat to his election.’
In April, USPS notified Congress that it might go broke by September. Trump is using that to support his voter suppression agenda.
A new Inspector General’s report raises an echo of Clinton’s alarm:
‘We identified potential nationwide issues integrating election offices vote by mail processes with the Postal Service processes which could impact future elections.
‘Nationally, we noted potential concerns with the deadlines set by the states to request absentee ballots, ballots postmarks, ballots mailed without mail tracking technology, and the ratio of Political and Election Mail coordinators to election offices in certain locations.’
- ‘Three tubs of 749 undelivered voter ballots were discovered after the polls closed on Election Day
- A computer glitch caused 2,700 requested ballots to never be sent to voters
- 390 mailed ballots had varying postmark issues that required Postal Service workers to help review
- The same year at least 3,175 absentee ballots were rejected in Arizona.’
POTUS thinks the USPS’ 36 voting rights cases threaten his reelection in 2020.
Trump said:
‘My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits. We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think — I think it puts the election at risk.’
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
