Yeah, it might take some endangered GOP U.S. senators screaming at them before Trump and DeJoy change course.
Nah, they just need to keep their shenanigans to democratic areas. Then the GOP doesn’t care.
Remember when the Trumpists were saying that all this talk of Trump being anti-democracy was a bunch of bull (certain pro-Trump subreddits seem to be sticking with “mail in voting is anti-democracy so what Trump is doing is pro-democracy”). And I see in another thread there are still people who are going to vote Trump. If Americans don’t cherish your democracy, then you will lose it. This is as blatant an attack on elections that the USA has in modern times. And make no mistake about it, if this doesn’t get stopped, then they’ll continue to attack free and fair elections to the greatest extent they can. Everything they’re doing are trial balloons to see how far they can go. And so far, it seems there is no bar too low for the GOP base.
This conspiracy theory got popular really fast.
I worked with the post office over a decade ago, and even back then they were hemorrhaging money. The problem is that email cut the volume of mail by a huge amount tanking their revenue. Management wanted to cut costs by eliminating some rural delivery, eliminating Saturday delivery, and changing the union contracts. Congress has prevented these steps and so they have pivoted to package delivery which is a growing business. Package delivery needs different infrastructure then mail does, so they have been shutting down mail sorting machines, and eliminating boxes. The unions have been generally uncooperative, hoping for a multi billion dollar bailout from congress, so management wants to stop paying so much overtime and make city postal deliverymen work like rural ones and not give overtime. This means slower mail but is an inevitable result of the decrease in revenue.
Ever since the post office stopped being directly subsidized, the cycle has been the same. They lost billions of dollars, they try to change to stop losing so much money, Congress interferes to stop cost cutting, and the next year they lose more money. Pelosi pushing conspiracy theories is just another way Congress can mess up the post office and make it a couple more billion dollars in debt.
A podcast on this from The Daily, from the NY Times, largely agrees with you. They basically say much of this was already in the works, and that letters to states from postmasters saying that extra time might be needed for heavy vote by mail volume were probably just reasonable caution. But, Trump said a bunch of things that made it sound like this was an attempt to interfere with and prevent expansion of vote by mail. They point out that he seemed to confuse two issues, and also said out loud the quiet part – so, the usual.
To address the question in the OP first, I believe they can back off now because (as noted above) enough damage has been done that cannot be undone before the election, and in addition, they can continue to do small harm under the radar without any backlash. But I also really want to agree with this post:
Everything concerning the Trump presidency reminds me of the novel Animal Farm.
To go even a step further, I believe the voter groups the Trump campaign is using to be hopefully re-elected will be some of the first thrown under the bus once he has milked them to consolidate his power. (I am so saddened to hear sincere believers tell me what a good moral ‘christian’ man Trump is. Goodness help me, I used to be one of them – but many of my friends and family are so completely fooled by Trump’s act it hurts!)
I know the real reason, but what was the explanation given (if any) for trashing these sorting machines? I thought DeJoy was allegedly trying to streamline the USPS and make it more efficient. So, was the plan to have people do the mail sorting more quickly and efficiently than machines?
- Why do you believe them?
- No further questions.
Absolutely. A Trump never pays their debts. If any group of voters become useless to Trump, then they’re just another group of “losers and haters”.
Despite Trump floating the idea of a “third term”, I think that’s a bridge too far even for the GOP (his most diehard supporters would be behind it but I think he’d lose a lot of Republican voters). So, in Trump’s second term, he doesn’t need anybody. And he certainly doesn’t give a fig about the Republican party. So, he’ll throw them all under the bus to build his “legacy.” The only people he needs to keep on his side are the Senators to avoid being removed from office.
This term we’ve seen a restrained Trump. I know, it is shocking, but yes. Can you imagine an unrestrained Trump in office?
A Trump always makes you pay their debts.
The Supreme Court? Really? They never saw a voter suppression scheme they didn’t love.
First place DeJoy has already said that the mail-sorting machines will not be replaced. Second I strongly suspect that the sabotage will continue, just not talked about publicly. And the ban on overtime reinstated just in time for the election.
Also I have read that DeJoy has a financial interest in destroying the post office since he has interests in some package delivery company.
I mailed in my overseas ballot yesterday. Hope for the best.
I would post something to the effect that not only Trump, but also the likes of Dejoy and all of the others who have stomped on the law should be investigated and prosecuted if there is cause to do so once a President Biden takes office.
But saying that brings me back to a point I’ve made before, which is that it’s not just Trump who is in legal jeopardy if he and his administration loses; others are in the circle as well. And that has to be understood in order to understand the level of threat that we’re dealing with. We have a rather large number - a significant number - of high level political officials who currently hold a lot of power who not only stand to lose that power but a) the ability to use that power for their own narrowly focused, self-serving purposes; and b) also stand to be possibly investigated, sued, indicted, and possibly jailed after leaving office.
This is what we’re dealing with: an institution at the highest levels of the government that operates criminally and in diametric opposition to the principles which helped them gain power in the first place but naively assumes will allow us to remove them if we vote against them. It’s a criminal circle. Not different than what we’d find in Russia or some parts of Eastern Europe. The only thing that’s stopping them has been the strength of our institutions, but those are one hell of a lot weaker now than they were when we gave them power nearly 4 years ago, and they were fraying even then.
Dejoy, Barr, Pompeo…they all know the costs of winning and losing in this election. They will do whatever they can to “win,” even if it means ignoring their obvious defeat at the polls and making us accept a different outcome.
It’s not a fucking conspiracy theory when Trump says he doing this to fuck up the vote.
Jesus Christ.
Cite: Trump Proves Biden Right on USPS Funding, Mail-In Ballots - FactCheck.org
Yeah, but remember, Trump lies.
So, people like @puddleglum give him the benefit of the doubt that when he says things like that, he is lying. When he says things that they want to hear, that is when they think that he is telling the truth. That is why the support him.
Trump does not seem to know too much about how the government works and unsurprisingly has fallen for the conspiracy theory.
There are two issues and some people have been conflating them on purpose. One issue is the 3.5 billion package on voting during the pandemic. Some of this would go to the post office but would have no effect on the long term decline of the post office. The other issue is the 25 billion post office bailout. Supporters of the 25 billion bailout have been pretending that without the bailout that the post office won’t be able to process the mail in ballots. Taking advantage of a crisis to try and fund ongoing expenses with emergency money is business as usual in Washington. Without serious reform any post office bailout is just throwing good money after bad.
Is it your position that the claims of observed decline in post office service and delivery times are fictional?
WTF? How can he fall for his own theory? It’s his idea, he’s resisting giving the post office more funding, and his reason is to hobble it to hurt mail-in ballots.
The post office has been intentionally hobbled, by making them pre-fund for all their retirement benefits up front. Private companies don’t have to do this, and it makes the PO look like it’s running huge losses, when those losses are decades out, if they happen at all.
Meanwhile, the head of the post office keeps his investments in PO competitors. It’s all one big corrupt ball.
All companies have to pre fund retirement benefits. The Post Office has to prefund for longer because by law none of the retirement benefits can be changed. Despite this the Post Office has not been prefunding the retirement funds, they have been kicking the can down the road, hoping for a bailout.
Actually, it turns out it’s about medical benefits. They were pay-as-you-go and Congress forced them, and no other federal agency, to fully pre-fund their medical benefits. From here:
Do you dispute that Trump is withholding a post office bailout because he wants to hobble them prior to an election that will have record mail-in ballots? How many companies were bailed out because of the COVID-19 shutdown? Why bail out the airlines and not the post office?
And even if Trump legitimately is so clueless about government that he’s chasing conspiracy theories… why do we have this guy in charge of the government?
If your defense against charges of being evil is just that you’re incompetent, well, either way, you shouldn’t be in the job.