Where are the comments? I can’t be the first one to comment on an issue as heated as this.
I do not know enough details about this issue, and know even less about the constitutionality/ law behind it all. All I know is that I am a US Navy veteran; I’ve been waiting for my VA docs appointment conformation notification for some critical tests and meds which were supposed to have arrived by now. And the problems are not just limited to my local area. I’ve got other vettie buddies experiencing these same problems. One of them had to go through hoops to schedule a critical surgery. It required that he take prescribed medication the day before the surgery. There was ample time for the prescription to make the trip. The surgery had to be cancelled.
You wrote that the US Postal Service has had slowdowns before in the past.
-Not to this level/ extent/ magnitude
-I’ve never heard of the Post Office going around and removing half of a States mailbox drop off boxes, until so many of the State’s citizens complained that the HMFIC at the USPS basically said, “Oops, my bad. We won’t remove any more.”
-I’ve never heard of the Postal Service personnel being ordered to remove over 600 letter sorting machines, -that costs MILLION$ of dollar$-, -busting them up or throwing them into the trash or the dumps-, -without having replacement machines in house, and in operation first-, -and ESPECIALLY **right before** one of the most important elections in US history!-, -***DURING A PANDEMIC!!!***
Now I’ve personally heard, and read, the President make the comment that if mail-in voting were allowed, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said universal mail voting would be “the end of our republic as we know it.”
The GOP speaker of the House in Georgia said an all-mail election would be “extremely devastating to Republicans.”
Couple the many statements made by Republicans like those I just mentioned above, with the egregious gerrymandering across the country, and the dozens of blatant admissions of voter ID laws enacted as types of voter suppression tactics, admitted, on video, and posted as some sort of twisted bragging rights; along with soliciting assistance from foreign nations, -many of them our adversaries, and potentially hostile-, and now we learn that the NRA has been accepting funds from other countries, -like Russia-, and then “donating” those monies to various Republican’s “campaign contributions.”
By a preponderance of the evidence, Republicans are HARD tilting elections and power in their direction, -and they’ve been doing this for yeeeaaaars.
So reading your article playing devil’s advocate didn’t exactly make my day. We’ve got a wannabe mob gangster criminal, appointed by another wannabe gangster criminal as Postmaster General, muckying up a government service that has worked, damn near flawlessly-, for the past 240 sumn years, in an effort to get the HMFIC re-elected, so that they can all thwart authorities for a long enough time to not go the way of Manafort, Cohen, Gates, and the countless others that Trump has surrounded himself with.
We are under an insidious attack by our adversaries AND by a virus, (which I’m not convinced that the two are not related), And everyone is just going about their day, making excuses for the president like it’s nobody’s business.
I came here to read what other people thought about the sitchy. I can’t be the only one. The whole thing is poisoning my mind, and making me physically sick. We’ve got 40% of the population indoctrinated by the garbage being spewed by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, and you want to provide excuses for them.
This whole thing is sick. And it’s making me sick. Figuratively, and literally.
Thank you for your post. I will share this and will hope others read what you wrote as this is an American Story.
For context, please know that I worked in an extremely busy USPS Mail and Distribution Center sorting incoming, trucked in mail from a huge county on Long Island. We served many businesses and First Class Mail was always prioritized.
The machines that are being removed right now are incredibly accurate… Right down to sorting letters & adding barcodes if none were present. This is the zip+4 time and remarkably, each batch of mail was already sorted for each Letter Carrier at the local Post Office. They didn’t get mail for anyone else’s route. In the early a.m. the Carriers would put the sorted mail in order following their routes by specific address. Not a long process as the employees had been walking or driving these same routes for years.
No mail was allowed to be left in the Distribution Center. There were always a few workers with odd hours (like me… Hours were 6pm to 2:30pm) to allow for getting the “stragglers” properly sorted.
I used to “throw” boxes into bins by zip code (now automated), flats of magazines the same. I was required to lift up to 70lbs and was in great shape while there.
All is far more automated now and the machines work super well. If they want to put newer machines in (a “what if”), then the mismanagement, possible corruption (perhaps by using a buddy’s private contractor?) is obvious. I understand the computer coding underneath all the user friendly computers we use that is still in the coded background & it is solid.
To me, this is so obviously purposeful, these actions that slow the mail during a pandemic. I know why as well:
1. Every voting machine at polls are easily hacked. At a hackers conference (used for security issues but one needs to know how to hack to protect the systems) in Las Vegas about 2yrs ago, there was a room with every type of voting machine used in the US. These are not owned by the States, they use Contractor machines.
A contest was set up to see who could hack these voting machines & the time it took. The winner had to successful on both counts. The winner was a 12yr old girl who finished the task in 20 minutes!!! These are the same machines used today! Verifying that votes aren’t changed by the machines is always suggested after using one. The ONLY thing that bypasses this hacking is Huge Numbers in Voter Turnout!
2. State Voter Registration lists are being hacked to remove voters. If people ask for absentee ballots, they may not get one if they’ve been removed from the Voter rolls.
3. Absentee ballots are paper so there is a paper trail to determine any questions of fraud. If cheating via hacking is limited, paper ballots will tell the truth. Therein lies the fear that the Russians won’t be able to swing the election results.
In the interim, people who served our Country with Honor, willing to sacrifice their lives for our Country such as yourself, deserve better than political games when Veteran’s healthcare is threatened. This is simply WRONG!
My father and his lifelong best friends that he met in boot camp for the Army Air Corp (no Air Force as yet), served proudly during WWll.
Our leaders asked much of the civilian population at home and people did everything they could for the “war effort.”
Rationed fuel, food, nylons for women (heard about that all the time as a kid!), cloth to make clothes was Patriotism.
Regular folks are more selfish now, at least in general. Acts of kindness are plenty but not mass sacrifice for the sake of all.
Thank you for your comment! Prayers being sent your way!
You say in your article that “we have not, as Americans, generally thought of the Post Office as subsidized,” and more generally talk about how the idea that the post office should be a government function (rather than a semi-private entity) is a new trend. But even a cursory glance at the history of our postal system would show that this is incorrect. The Post Office was a government entity from its foundation under President Washington’s administration until it was turned into the USPS (a semi-private entity) in 1971, under President Nixon. And for most of that history the Postmaster General was a cabinet level official. So, yes, for the majority of our country’s history we *have* generally thought of the Post Office as subsidized, and more than subsidized, as a normal government agency. The Constitution gives Congress the power to create post offices in the same section as it gives the power to establish copyrights and trademarks, or to maintain a navy. The Post Office being a government agency is no more an innovation than the Patent Office or the US Navy being government agencies.
This author fails to address the fact that 5 states have mail in voting and physically can’t have in-person voting. The real issue is that millions of Americans will get their ballots late, and even if they’re mailed by the deadline, might not have their votes counted.
Is she a garbage reporter who doesn’t know the issue she is speaking about? Or is she a propagandist who is making for a look like a biased fake news site. Either way, the glaring omission of the real crux of this issue is shameful.
If you can’t do your job and report on the REAL issue with this, which is voter suppression for millions of Americans, you should not be writing for a national platform.
Where are the comments? I can’t be the first one to comment on an issue as heated as this.
I do not know enough details about this issue, and know even less about the constitutionality/ law behind it all. All I know is that I am a US Navy veteran; I’ve been waiting for my VA docs appointment conformation notification for some critical tests and meds which were supposed to have arrived by now. And the problems are not just limited to my local area. I’ve got other vettie buddies experiencing these same problems. One of them had to go through hoops to schedule a critical surgery. It required that he take prescribed medication the day before the surgery. There was ample time for the prescription to make the trip. The surgery had to be cancelled.
You wrote that the US Postal Service has had slowdowns before in the past.
-Not to this level/ extent/ magnitude
-I’ve never heard of the Post Office going around and removing half of a States mailbox drop off boxes, until so many of the State’s citizens complained that the HMFIC at the USPS basically said, “Oops, my bad. We won’t remove any more.”
-I’ve never heard of the Postal Service personnel being ordered to remove over 600 letter sorting machines, -that costs MILLION$ of dollar$-, -busting them up or throwing them into the trash or the dumps-, -without having replacement machines in house, and in operation first-, -and ESPECIALLY **right before** one of the most important elections in US history!-, -***DURING A PANDEMIC!!!***
Now I’ve personally heard, and read, the President make the comment that if mail-in voting were allowed, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said universal mail voting would be “the end of our republic as we know it.”
The GOP speaker of the House in Georgia said an all-mail election would be “extremely devastating to Republicans.”
Couple the many statements made by Republicans like those I just mentioned above, with the egregious gerrymandering across the country, and the dozens of blatant admissions of voter ID laws enacted as types of voter suppression tactics, admitted, on video, and posted as some sort of twisted bragging rights; along with soliciting assistance from foreign nations, -many of them our adversaries, and potentially hostile-, and now we learn that the NRA has been accepting funds from other countries, -like Russia-, and then “donating” those monies to various Republican’s “campaign contributions.”
By a preponderance of the evidence, Republicans are HARD tilting elections and power in their direction, -and they’ve been doing this for yeeeaaaars.
So reading your article playing devil’s advocate didn’t exactly make my day. We’ve got a wannabe mob gangster criminal, appointed by another wannabe gangster criminal as Postmaster General, muckying up a government service that has worked, damn near flawlessly-, for the past 240 sumn years, in an effort to get the HMFIC re-elected, so that they can all thwart authorities for a long enough time to not go the way of Manafort, Cohen, Gates, and the countless others that Trump has surrounded himself with.
We are under an insidious attack by our adversaries AND by a virus, (which I’m not convinced that the two are not related), And everyone is just going about their day, making excuses for the president like it’s nobody’s business.
I came here to read what other people thought about the sitchy. I can’t be the only one. The whole thing is poisoning my mind, and making me physically sick. We’ve got 40% of the population indoctrinated by the garbage being spewed by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, and you want to provide excuses for them.
This whole thing is sick. And it’s making me sick. Figuratively, and literally.
DMH
veteran
USN
Thank you for your post. I will share this and will hope others read what you wrote as this is an American Story.
For context, please know that I worked in an extremely busy USPS Mail and Distribution Center sorting incoming, trucked in mail from a huge county on Long Island. We served many businesses and First Class Mail was always prioritized.
The machines that are being removed right now are incredibly accurate… Right down to sorting letters & adding barcodes if none were present. This is the zip+4 time and remarkably, each batch of mail was already sorted for each Letter Carrier at the local Post Office. They didn’t get mail for anyone else’s route. In the early a.m. the Carriers would put the sorted mail in order following their routes by specific address. Not a long process as the employees had been walking or driving these same routes for years.
No mail was allowed to be left in the Distribution Center. There were always a few workers with odd hours (like me… Hours were 6pm to 2:30pm) to allow for getting the “stragglers” properly sorted.
I used to “throw” boxes into bins by zip code (now automated), flats of magazines the same. I was required to lift up to 70lbs and was in great shape while there.
All is far more automated now and the machines work super well. If they want to put newer machines in (a “what if”), then the mismanagement, possible corruption (perhaps by using a buddy’s private contractor?) is obvious. I understand the computer coding underneath all the user friendly computers we use that is still in the coded background & it is solid.
To me, this is so obviously purposeful, these actions that slow the mail during a pandemic. I know why as well:
1. Every voting machine at polls are easily hacked. At a hackers conference (used for security issues but one needs to know how to hack to protect the systems) in Las Vegas about 2yrs ago, there was a room with every type of voting machine used in the US. These are not owned by the States, they use Contractor machines.
A contest was set up to see who could hack these voting machines & the time it took. The winner had to successful on both counts. The winner was a 12yr old girl who finished the task in 20 minutes!!! These are the same machines used today! Verifying that votes aren’t changed by the machines is always suggested after using one. The ONLY thing that bypasses this hacking is Huge Numbers in Voter Turnout!
2. State Voter Registration lists are being hacked to remove voters. If people ask for absentee ballots, they may not get one if they’ve been removed from the Voter rolls.
3. Absentee ballots are paper so there is a paper trail to determine any questions of fraud. If cheating via hacking is limited, paper ballots will tell the truth. Therein lies the fear that the Russians won’t be able to swing the election results.
In the interim, people who served our Country with Honor, willing to sacrifice their lives for our Country such as yourself, deserve better than political games when Veteran’s healthcare is threatened. This is simply WRONG!
My father and his lifelong best friends that he met in boot camp for the Army Air Corp (no Air Force as yet), served proudly during WWll.
Our leaders asked much of the civilian population at home and people did everything they could for the “war effort.”
Rationed fuel, food, nylons for women (heard about that all the time as a kid!), cloth to make clothes was Patriotism.
Regular folks are more selfish now, at least in general. Acts of kindness are plenty but not mass sacrifice for the sake of all.
Thank you for your comment! Prayers being sent your way!
Reblogged this on Dignity For All and commented:
Please read through and then read the comments. IMPORTANT
You say in your article that “we have not, as Americans, generally thought of the Post Office as subsidized,” and more generally talk about how the idea that the post office should be a government function (rather than a semi-private entity) is a new trend. But even a cursory glance at the history of our postal system would show that this is incorrect. The Post Office was a government entity from its foundation under President Washington’s administration until it was turned into the USPS (a semi-private entity) in 1971, under President Nixon. And for most of that history the Postmaster General was a cabinet level official. So, yes, for the majority of our country’s history we *have* generally thought of the Post Office as subsidized, and more than subsidized, as a normal government agency. The Constitution gives Congress the power to create post offices in the same section as it gives the power to establish copyrights and trademarks, or to maintain a navy. The Post Office being a government agency is no more an innovation than the Patent Office or the US Navy being government agencies.
This author fails to address the fact that 5 states have mail in voting and physically can’t have in-person voting. The real issue is that millions of Americans will get their ballots late, and even if they’re mailed by the deadline, might not have their votes counted.
Is she a garbage reporter who doesn’t know the issue she is speaking about? Or is she a propagandist who is making for a look like a biased fake news site. Either way, the glaring omission of the real crux of this issue is shameful.
If you can’t do your job and report on the REAL issue with this, which is voter suppression for millions of Americans, you should not be writing for a national platform.