The War on the Post Office
The War on the Post Office
Dave Yost could prosecute Louis DeJoy if he wanted.
I was going to say that I can’t believe the Democrats actually allowed an anti-abortion, union-busting geek off the street like John fucking Kasich to speak at their convention, but then I caught myself because I absolutely do believe that.
It’s somehow less surprising than the Republican National Convention recruiting the St. Louis Mansion Gun Couple that brought out an assault rifle when black people marched down their street.
Kasich only cares about Kasich. We’re talking about a guy who literally voted for a dead man in 2016, an election that was admittedly a shitty choice but also an easy one.
Now this Tea Party goon who closed half the abortion clinics in this state is pretending to be some healing moderate, as if his Republican career didn’t pave the way directly to Trump.
But this is the waking hell I live in when “Facebook empathy moms” become the key voting bloc of the Joe Biden coalition. Hope these Democratic consultants know what they’re doing, since working people will have to live with their failures while the consultants just skate to another campaign job with their friends.
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OH GOD, DAVE YOST DID SORT OF A GOOD THING FOR ONCE?
I’m always stunned to see any Republican official give even a modicum of pushback against the drug-addled whims of President Business Deals. After all, Deals is more popular than any of them and could snap his fingers and boot them out of the offices they love so much.
Enter Ohio Attorney Dave Yost, the man who in a few quick months went from being a #NeverTrumper to taking a selfie in the port-a-pot line at the embezzlement fiesta that served as Trump’s inauguration.
Yost is apparently the only prominent Ohio Republican that takes issue with Donald Trump’s assault on the Postal Service ahead of our pandemic election.
From Jack Turman of cbsnews.com:
As the Trump administration begins to implement cost-cutting operational changes that have already begun to delay services, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is calling on President Trump to postpone Postal Service reforms until after the November election, according to a letter obtained by CBS News.
In the letter, dated August 16, Yost, a Republican, told the president that "the radical changes only weeks before early voting begins — however fiscally well founded — would place the solvency of the Post Office above the legitimacy of the Government itself." Early voting begins in the state on October 6.
He cited reports that included the removal of sorting boxes and mail boxes and added that changes would likely face legal battles. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said in a press conference last week that the state would limit the county boards of elections to a single ballot drop box per county.
Always a grim day when I find myself agreeing with Yost. (Also, big shoutout to LaRose for ensuring Franklin County has the same amount of ballot drop boxes as [population: 1.37 million] as Preble County [population: 41,000]).
Of course if Yost really wanted to be the man of action he pretends to be, he could simply charge Louis DeJoy, the Trump donor tasked with destroying the Post Office, for obstructing the mail.
From Steve Neavling of clevescene.com:
The Trump administration’s assault on the U.S. Postal Service ahead of an expected surge in mail-in voting during the general election may amount to obstructing mail, a federal crime, said Barbara McQuade, the former U.S. attorney for Eastern District of Michigan.
Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee and megadonor, has drawn serious criticism for sweeping changes he’s implemented at USPS since becoming the postmaster general on June 16. The changes, including removing mail-sorting machines and drop boxes, prohibiting employee overtime, and imposing a hiring freeze, have led to delays in mail delivery in many areas, including Ohio.
Trump even admitted Thursday that he’s preventing additional funding for the USPS in order to make it more difficult to handle the influx of mail-in ballots.
Living in Ohio, I’m used to Republican suppressing the vote. Especially in a presidential year, considering no Republican president has won the popular vote in my lifetime.
What I don’t understand is the gleefulness in destroying the Post Office. Veterans and rural people — two groups Republicans claim to cherish — depend on the Postal Service.
From Sheridan Hendrix of dispatch.com:
Restructuring and other possible changes at the Postal Service, however, could severely affect rural carriers such as Miller and the millions of rural residents they serve.
The USPS employs more than 600,000 workers. Of that number, more than 97,000 are military veterans, and minorities make up about 40% of the workforce. The Postal Service is consistently polled as one of the most-trusted and beloved government agencies.
The USPS receives zero tax dollars for operating expenses, relying instead on the sale of postage, products and services. For years that was enough, as the Postal Service operated in the black.
But with the rise of the internet and email, a congressional mandate to pre-fund its retirement-benefits programs, the 2008 financial crisis and competitors including Amazon creating their own delivery fleets, financial troubles have mounted. The USPS lost $9 billion last year.
*Sigh*
The USPS did not lose $9 billion last year. It is forced to fund pensions for workers 75 years in advance, literally for workers who aren’t even born yet. No other company or public institution is required to do that. Nor would any entity choose to do that, because it’s fiscally irresponsible and also insane. Remove that nonsense, and the USPS actually makes money.
And even if the Post Service did lose $9 billion — it’s not a fucking business. It’s a public service enshrined in the Constitution. (Nobody rails against the military or public schools for “losing money.”) It delivers more mail in 16 days than FedEx and UPS do in the entire year. Neither of them could exist without USPS.
Oh, well. Looks like we can throw the existence of the Postal Service on the heap of things at stake in November. And our hope is Joe Biden, so God help us all.
OHIO SCHOOLS LOOK AT THEIR RACIST NAMES
I remember the first Piqua Football game I attended in 2016. I walked in and noticed there were two white students dressed in Wal-Mart costumes, complete with face paint and headdresses, tomahawk-chopping and war-chanting on the sidelines to get the crowd fired up.
“Damn, that’s some racist shit,” I thought at the time.
Piqua isn’t alone in the embarrassment, but thankfully change is slowly but surely coming to more schools that realize Native American mascots aren’t cool.
From Mike Wagner of dispatch.com:
A Dispatch analysis of data from the Ohio High School Athletic Association showed that as of June, 79 high schools in the state have Native American nicknames and mascots. The list included 24 with the name Indians, 11 with Redskins and five with Redmen. Others included Apaches, Arrows, Braves, Chieftains, Chipps, Mohawks, Raiders, Seminoles, Senecas and Warriors.
And those are just the high schools. Ohio has more than 200 uses of Indian-related nicknames among elementary, middle and high schools, according to the American Indian Sports Team Mascot website — more than any other state.
The Dispatch contacted each of the districts representing the 79 high schools and found that changes have already have begun in many.
Can only imagine the amount of white tears that will be shed by parents when their kids’ schools change their name. They’ll get over it eventually.
PRO-LIFE LIBERTY GRADUATE GOOD WITH NUMBERS
I remember running against Jena Powell; she never spared a chance to ramble about “the sanctity of life from conception to death.”
As always, that only extends to the right-wing fetishization of the fetus in a young woman’s womb. They don’t actually give a fuck about you after that, which is why this ostensibly pro-life representative is sharing month-old statistics about a pandemic that has killed 170,000 Americans with no end in sight.
It’s not just her, either. Here’s the president’s wax doll of a son-in-law, Jared Kusher, a slumlord so crooked he deserves to die in prison, claiming that his handling of the pandemic is actually a success story:
I hope sometime in the near future Americans wake up to the fact we already have a conservative party; they’re called the Democrats. The Republicans have no interest in governing, only raw power which they use to melt the world economy every time they seize power in this godforsaken country.
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