Trump's War on the Post Office

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Necessary background:   

1.   The U.S. Postmaster General is a Trump political appointee by the name of Louis DeJoy.  Mr. DeJoy is a rich political supporter of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. 

2.    According to an NBC/PBS/Marist poll released last week, 62% of Joe Biden's supporters say they intend to vote by mail -  and 72% of Trump supporters say they plan on voting in-person at the polls.

3.   The United States and the world are in the midst of a deadly pandemic, a situation which makes voting by mail a prudent,  life-saving measure.

This month the US Postal Service (USPS) has been in the news almost daily with stories relating to budget shortfalls, cuts in service, and concerns that the operation of the service is being intentionally hampered in an effort to thwart voting-by-mail in the November election.  The stories which are circulating in the press state that mail-sorting machines are being removed from post offices across the nation, and that mail-collection boxes are being locked in some cities (such as Seattle and Los Angeles) and removed in other locations.   Photos of men with trucks removing the mail-collection boxes are becoming commonplace in the press and on social media - and now their are clips of postal delivery trucks themselves being trucked off by larger vehicles.

Hours of service are being cut in some locations, and Postmaster General DeJoy has issued orders that forbid overtime pay and will curtail delivery of mail rather than to pay any overtime to get it delivered on time.

All in all, postal service in the United States of America seems to have suddenly shifted into reverse - and many see that reversal as being a purely political strategy that is being put forth by the Trump administration in an effort to sabotage the November election or at least to rig it in favor of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has long railed against the idea of voting by mail declaring repeatedly that he believes it will lead to massive voter fraud - even though some states have been using mail-in voting for several years with no problems to back up Trump's claims.  Trump votes by mail himself, as does most of his White House staff and administrators who are located in Washington, DC, and he recently went on record and encouraged Floridians to vote by mail in their primary election.  (He stated a belief that the state government of Florida knew how to handle vote-by-mail - and left the impression that other states did not know how to do it, or would do it dishonestly.)

To add to the vote-by-mail drama, on Friday the USPS warned most states and Washington, DC, that mail-in ballots may not be received by election officials in time to be counted.

A true crisis is at hand!

Congress is trying to relieve pressure on the postal service through new funding, but the Trump administration has opposed moves to ease financial pressure on the USPS.  Congressional Democrats want to provide the United States Postal Service with an additional $25 billion as a part of the new stimulus package, with $3.5 billion of that specifically directed toward helping with mail-in voting.  Trump told Fox News last week that he opposes additional funding for the postal service because he believes that it will encourage mail-in voting, and he fears that mail-in voting will favor Democrats.

And Trump's fear of a process that will allow more people to vote in a safer manner in the time of a worldwide pandemic seems to have inspired his big-donor political appointee, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, to do what he can to put the brakes on democracy.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is threatening to bring Congress back from its August vacation to deal with the postal mess that Donald Trump and Louis DeJoy are foisting on America - and she damn well needs to do it!