This should be considered when trying to pull answers from the Postmaster General:
Did this organization really have to discuss the plan with the postmaster?
They could see that the states were going with mail in voting even before the pandemic. Pennsylvania voted on it last year and Republican legislators were all for it back then. I guess their older base voters would have fewer excuses to not vote. The other possibility is there is that 2016 was a wake up call with respect to voting security. There are all kinds of reasons to distrust that outcome. With mail in voting, there were fewer opportunities for foreign actors to tinker with flipping a few votes per precinct. Hypothetically, of course. 🙄
Then the pandemic hit and there were even more good reasons to go mail in. Oregon and Washington have been doing it for years without issues. Why not try it? PA got to see the logistical problems it might encounter with the primaries. Nothing major and they got a head start in fixing it. The rest of the states can learn by example. So this should have been a no-brainer. Just get as many people, of both parties, to vote by mail.
That’s when the Trump campaign saw that they couldn’t suppress the vote this year like they intended and they needed to do something about it.
That’s probably when Mnuchin had his meeting with DeJoy about taking over the post office. The place needs an overhaul. See what you can do. There didn’t have to be any discussion of the politics. Ok, maybe they had those discussions informally, speculating, between friends. But I doubt that crime organizations are that explicit about giving orders. No one was going to say, “we want you to f{}% up the mail enough that the mail in ballots won’t get back to the board of elections in time.” Because that would be wrong.
So, DeJoy didn’t need marching orders. All he had to do was read the papers. More mail in balloting meant less voter suppression. Therefore, it needed to be logistically messed with.
How will we know if DeJoy’s appointment was made in good faith or whether there was an agenda? Well, the Senator from Nevada (I was listening so I don’t know which one) got right to the point. DeJoy’s big claim to fame is he’s a logistics expert. So did he collect data about how seniors or veterans were going to be impacted by his changes? Did he study the data at all before he started slowing things down? The answer so far appears to be “No”.
We have to ask ourselves what efficiencies we were to expect and at what cost. Because if there were no studies, then destroying the service and reputation of a public service makes no sense and that means more hearings to find out who benefitted from that.
I think we all know the answer to that without a lot of discussion.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
Yes, appointing a large donor with no background at all in postal service, and also appointing more such people to the Board, is a very telling sign. Who has ever taken this position, and within a few months, made major changes, all of which have the effect, even if the intent cannot be definitively proven, of slowing down postal delivery? And in the middle of an awful pandemic. And months before a national election. it defies any innocent sense of logic or appropriateness.
Lawyers, and particularly law school students, love to show off Lain phrases which have been used in laws or decisions. One of the favorites is ‘Res ipsa loquitur,’ which means, “The facts speak.’ It stands for a principle that even if one was not there to know exactly what led to a certain outcome,, the conclusion from the circumstances and effects of the event is so obvious, that the trier of fact must conclude them. Without that principle, one could always get away with crimes by saying that there are no written or taped statements of motive or conspiracy, so that it was just coincidence that they had that result. I may not have the exact facts right on the history, but i think it was used by a judge in what became a famous case, where a pot of flour from a bakery hit a pedestrian on the head, causing injury. The judge could not prove how this happened, and there were no witnesses who would attest to the facts, but the event of the pot from the bakery hitting the man on the top of his head as he was walking along could not be interpreted any other way than that it was due to criminal negligence.. Similarly, if a loyal employee of the mafia shoots one of the capo’s enemies, it is legitimate to assume that it was a hit which was ordered.
All DeJoy could answer was the trucks left on time. He didn’t care if there was mail on them. He was stuttering and spitting and not answering and lying all over the place. Ron Johnson is the Russian asset? OMG! This is scary. DeJoy says having trouble getting workers because of Covid. Then he says sorting machines were taken out because they didn’t need them. What lies and BS!
What I got from the portions of the testimony I heard was that they are ecstatic that they have a chance to privatize this broken system that isn’t broken. And those pensions? The new owners didn’t agree to them. They’ve got to go.
You know what he really revealed? The mail clerks and carriers are overworked. They have put in too much overtime and making too many after hours deliveries. But it might not be possible to fully staff the service because of the stupid pension pre-pay for 75 years in advance. I think that was the soap that caused the slippery slope.
One thing is for sure, I have NEVER had an issue with the post office, ever. They are extremely reliable. But DeJoy seems to want to change all that.
One other thing. He used to own a company that contracted with the post office to process packages. And what is the reason DeJoy is pulling out the sorting machines?
It’s to process more packages.
My guess is some contractor wants to cash in on the amazon traffic and DeJoy is there to make the contracts and replace the staff.
Off topic: Weekly reminder.
8 PM – 9 PM Central time Friday nights: The Magical Mystery Tour. Host Tom Wood takes a look at the Beatles from various angles, one angle per week.
9 PM – 12 AM Central time Friday nights: The legendary program Beaker Street has returned. Iconic host Clyde Clifford is currently receiving treatment for myeloma (sp?), but he expects to return for the show on the 28th. Meanwhile, other veterans of Arkansas radio are filling in ably.
Both shows can be found at http://arkansasrocks.com/ .
If you can’t listen to Beaker Street live, files of the broadcasts show up shortly afterward at https://beakerstreetsetlists.com/ .
Even if he has an honorless bear backing him up, no orange monkey is going to stop the show called America.