No proof? You cited it yourself, where Trump admits that he wants to block USPS funding in order to interfere with mail-in ballots. In addition, David C. Williams, the former vice chairman of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, told lawmakers he believed the White House was taking extraordinary steps to turn the independent agency into a “political tool.” Try as you might, you can offer no rational explanation for DeJoy's dismantling (literally) of USPS infrastructure. While he was originally doing this in order to further his goal of privatizing the USPS to the advantage of his own private interests, it is now a transparent (and admitted by Trump) effort to rig the election in a time of pandemic. While he has “promised” not to dismantle it any more before the election, he has not said he will restore the equipment he has already dismantled. As your own chart demonstrates, if not for the so-called “Postal Accountability Act” (yes, supported by Democrats such as yourself, as well as Republicans), the USPS would not be in financial trouble today.
Despite your efforts to minimize the havoc wreaked by DeJoys dismantling of the USPS, the effects are real, and are growing. My wife can testify to the delays and damages this dismantling has done to her small business, which depends on shipping her product all over the country.
Meanwhile, Republican state governments are doing what they can to block mail-in or “absentee” ballots. The Texas Supreme Court has agreed that fear of dying from COVID-19 is not a valid reason to get an absentee ballot, and the Supreme Court declined to stay that ruling. In states which allow mail-in ballots (other than Trump’s home state of Florida, of course, where he is mailing his own ballot), the Republican Party is suing to block mail-in ballot measures. These are not all isolated events. They are part of a planned and well-funded campaign. Justin Clark, Trump’s Campaign Director of Election Day Operations brags that “suppressing votes” is going to be part of a much “more aggressive . . better funded” program this year. There is also evidence that the postal changes are based on race as well as politics. Some states are challenging this dismantling of USPS for political purposes.
As a lawyer, I dispute your contention that the Post Office is a “voluntary” power of Congress, with no obligation to continue or fund it. As the Supreme Court noted, in striking down a law holding up “communist propaganda” in the mails:
“Whatever may have been the voluntary nature of the postal system in the period of its establishment, it is now the main artery through which the business, social, and personal affairs of the people are conducted and upon which depends in a greater degree than upon any other activity of government the promotion of the general welfare.”
Lamont v. Postmaster Gen. of U. S., 381 U.S. 301, 305 n. 3 (1965)
As a citizen of the United States, I have an even deeper dispute with this attempt to dismantle the “main artery” on which we, as the people, depend. This supposedly democratic government exists as a “social contract” only by the consent of the governed. Dismantling this vital service to which we entrusted the government, during a pandemic in which we are even more dependent on it to exercise our rights as citizens, is a dismantling of that social contract itself. As Rousseau wrote: “At the moment when it [the government] violates the agreement in virtue of which it exists it annihilates itself.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, Ch. VII. If Trump and DeJoy succeed in this effort, the government of the United States of America will lose its last shred of legitimacy.
And what about you, Mr. Harper? You admit to being a lobbyist. Whose interest are you representing in minimizing what is happening to the USPS? Who has paid you for this piece?
