Security
We live in a small town outside of Columbus, Ohio. I’ve been here since 1978, when I moved into an apartment as a first year teacher at the local high school. Since then, I bought a house near the library, got married, and put on an addition that doubled the size. In all of those years (forty-two and counting) I’ve never felt unsafe in my home, even though I lived alone for all but ten of them.
But in the “modern era” it makes sense to have some security. When I worked I was scheduled “away” a lot, so we installed video cameras around the house exterior. And now we have “Ring” cameras and doorbells. No matter where we are, here or in Florida or wherever, when someone approaches the house, were notified. And when someone rings the doorbell, we answer.
So if a notification popped up on my phone, showing someone lifting a dog trap from the back of the truck, or stealing my “Joe Biden” sign from the front yard, I’d do something about it. I’d yell through the “Ring” (you can do that!!), I’d call the next-door neighbor, or I’d dial the police. You don’t just let folks steal from you in “plain view”; it’s why you spent all the money for the “Rings” in the first place!
Post Office
The United States Postal Service is as old as the nation. In fact, it’s enshrined in the Constitution as one of the core powers of the Congress. Article I, Section 8, clause 6 states: “…that Congress will have the power to establish post offices and post roads”. The Founding Fathers understood that to have a nation, you had to be able to communicate. Post Offices and the roads connecting them were critical national infrastructures.
And while there are now numerous ways in which we are “webbed” together (including the world wide web), the United States Postal Service still serves an important role. It is the base communication that everyone can use, regardless of whether they can afford a computer, or a phone, or even a home address. Everyone can still drop a letter in the mailbox, and everyone, even if they don’t have a street address, could have a Post Office Box (between $40 and $150 a year, depending on where you live) or even just have mailed delivered to the Post Office for them to pick up. It’s called General Delivery.
Modern World
Email and other forms of electronic communication have taken over what was once done by “snail mail”. But there are whole other categories of important products, including medicines and government documents that are hand delivered, daily, by the Postal Service.
Could UPS or FEDEX do that? Of course they could. But it would cost a lot more, and those companies would have to expand their entire infrastructure. They would have to become, well, the Postal Service, and we would have to pay a lot more for it. The Postal Service isn’t a “for profit” corporation. It is established as a government service, written into the founding document of the nation, and funded in part by the United States Government. It is one of the founding pillars of our nation, like the military and the printing of money.
De-Construction
So when the current Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, claims he is “revising the business model” of the Postal Service, he’s not fulfilling his Constitutional mandate. In fact, he is fulfilling an original goal of Steve Bannon, the 2016 Trump Campaign Chairman. Bannon didn’t believe in the “government” as we know it today. He wanted it “deconstructed”. And even though Bannon is long gone, the Trump Administration has done a pretty good job of fulfilling his “white board” list. The State Department is hollowed out, a polluter leads the Environmental Protection Agency, and “acting” directors and secretaries now head multiple agencies and departments. The Constitutional mandate of Senate “advice and consent” for Presidential appointments is ignored.
But all of this philosophical “deconstruction” really isn’t what’s happening at the Postal Service. Nope, General DeJoy isn’t really engaging in “deconstructing”. He’s engaging in theft in plain view. And he’s not stealing money (at least that we know of): he’s trying to steal the Presidential election of 2020.
We are in the middle of a global pandemic. Over 170,000 Americans are already dead, and almost 5 ½ million are infected. We have a long, long way to go before we reach some kind of equilibrium with COVID, some kind of vaccine induced herd immunity. And meanwhile, we need to continue with our national life, including holding elections.
It’s common sense that if the virus is spread through crowds and contact, we ought to avoid crowding peoples together, particularly those most vulnerable to the deadly consequences of infection. So we ought to have a way for folks to vote without creating that risk.
Stealing an Election
Oh snap, we do!! We vote by mail (or absentee to split the difference). We’ve done it for almost one hundred and fifty years. But somehow the President of the United States has determined that if that everyone that can vote, does, he will lose. So his simple campaign strategy is to make it harder to vote. And since he is the President, with seeming unlimited powers, why not “deconstruct” the Postal Service now. That way when people try to vote by mail, it will be more difficult.
Or even better, their ballots won’t arrive in time to be counted. Or there will be huge stacks of ballots just laying around in Postal warehouses. That way, when Trump loses, he can claim that the election was “rigged”. And it will be, by Mr. Trump himself and his Postmaster General, Mr. DeJoy.
Nearly seven hundred sorting machines are being removed from Postal Service regional centers, right now. Workers who sort mail are being told they cannot work overtime. Carriers are not allowed to make additional trips back to the Post Offices to get more mail. Mailboxes (the blue drop boxes) are being removed from street corners. Unsorted mail is stacking up everywhere.
In Plain View
The Postman’s Oath is:
“I believe: Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Dark Of Night Shall Stay These Couriers From The Swift Completion Of Their Appointed Rounds.”
But Postmaster General DeJoy and the President of the United States are doing their best to make sure that the mail won’t be delivered, and that couriers no longer make their “appointed rounds”. The oath doesn’t say anything about political interference.
The President and his henchman is trying to steal an election. We don’t need “Ring” doorbells or surveillance cameras to see the thefts. It’s happening right out in public, in plain view to us all.
The question is: what are we going to do about it?
