Blame Your Opponents for YOUR Crimes
I thought readers would enjoying the mug shot of a Republican lawyer arraigned on charges of election fraud.
All this is reminiscent of the Nazi principle: blame your opponents for the crimes you have committed.
Losing Our Democracy
A reader and I had a brief (but interesting, I think) conversation about presidential immunity:
Craig: If I had told you five years ago that the U.S. Supreme Court would be considering the assertion that every American was subject to our nation’s criminal statutes except for the most powerful person in the country, you would have told me I was insane.
Reader: But if the president doesn’t have immunity, he can be charged with crimes by his political opponents.
Craig: Perhaps he would do well not to commit crimes like the ones following the 2020 election, resulting in four independent grand juries’ handing down four different indictments containing 91 felony counts.
This concept (“simply don’t commit crimes“) seems to have worked well for the last 240 years. But then Trump, a career criminal, comes along, tries to overthrow the government, and now we may be looking at a dictatorship.
It’s hard to imagine how our Founding Fathers would have felt about this. They certainly could have made an immunity clause a part of the Constitution. Do you think they simply forgot? Or maybe they didn’t think it was wise to install an authoritarian head of state.
Keep in mind the fact that they had a king and didn’t want another one. That was the central point of the American Revolution. I remember learning about this when I was a child. Don’t you?
Even Republicans Can’t Stand Louis DeJoy, Trump’s Appointee to Head the U.S. Postal Service
I thought I’d publish this piece I just received on Louis DeJoy, postmaster general of the U.S. Postal Service. We haven’t heard much about him in the news recently, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped destroying the USPS.
Louis DeJoy has been a complete and total disaster for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) since the moment Donald Trump installed him as postmaster general.
On-time delivery has plummeted.1 Postage rates have skyrocketed.2 DeJoy has cut operations at more than 200 locations.3
It’s gotten so bad that even Republicans are fed up. Just last week, 26 senators — including 13 Republicans, 11 Democrats, and 2 Independents — called on DeJoy to pause any further implementation of his 10-year plan to shrink the U.S. Postal Service.4
DeJoy’s response? He basically told the senators to go fly a kite, refusing to even consider revising his plans.5
Pressure is mounting on DeJoy, and we have a real chance to convince the Postal Service Board of Governors to finally get rid of him as his failures become more and more intolerable and bipartisan opposition grows.
Louis DeJoy’s 10-year so-called “modernization plan” includes shutting down as many as 400 sorting and delivery facilities nationwide.6 Currently, 59 locations across 35 states are on the chopping block, and if these cuts aren’t stopped, three entire states would be left with no mail-sorting facilities whatsoever, forcing even local mail to travel hundreds of miles just for sorting.7
Why is DeJoy doing this? He claims he wants to turn the Postal Service into a profitable operation — but that just shows that DeJoy doesn’t understand or believe in the mission of the U.S. Postal Service. The USPS isn’t a profit-seeking business. It’s a public service that people absolutely rely on for basic needs, like receiving Social Security checks, medications, and mail-in ballots.
And for what it’s worth, DeJoy isn’t even succeeding by his own standard. He predicted that USPS would break even last year, and instead he lost $6.5 billion.8 And as service continues to deteriorate and people lose faith in the post office, the problems will only get worse.
Here’s the challenge: Unlike cabinet secretaries and many other agency heads, the postmaster general can’t be directly fired by the president. Only the Postal Service Board of Governors can do that. And President Biden wasn’t able to appoint a majority on the Board of Governors until February, when two seats came open and he was able to appoint replacements.9
Now it’s time for the Postal Service Board of Governors to take action. DeJoy has lost the confidence of Republicans and Democrats alike. His performance has been abysmal. It’s time for Louis DeJoy to be fired.
Sources:
1. Government Executive, “As USPS institutes network reforms, mail delivery hits a 3-year low,” February 22, 2024.
2. Fortune, “Post Office wants to hike stamp prices for 5th time in 3 years to make up for ‘defective’ pricing system,” April 9, 2024.
3. Government Executive, “USPS Lists Hundreds of Post Offices and Other Facilities Where It Will Consolidate Operations,” August 26, 2022.
4. United States Senate, “Postmaster General DeJoy and U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors,” May 8, 2024.
5. Government Executive, “Amid ongoing losses and bipartisan pressure, DeJoy remains defiant in pushing USPS reforms,” May 9, 2024.
6. The Guardian, “‘It’s going to delay the mail’: the fight over Louis DeJoy’s USPS plan,” December 15, 2023.
7. Common Dreams, “‘Fire DeJoy’ Demand Intensifies as 10-Year Plan to Sabotage Postal Service Takes Effect,” September 29, 2021.
8. CNN, “The US Postal Service lost $6.5 billion last year. It predicted it would break even” November 15, 2023.
9. Reuters, “US House Democrats urge Biden to name new U.S. Postal board members,” February 1, 2024.
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Tagged with: Louis DeJoy postmaster general
Church and State
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries. – James Madison
Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state’… is absolutely essential in a free society. – Thomas Jefferson
Every school child learns that the United States was founded on the fundamental proposition that government must not impose religion on the American people, though this does not deter fanatics from passing laws that fly in the teeth of this guiding principle.
Now we learn that Louisiana, among the most backwards states in the union, is likely to require the 10 Commandments be displayed in all public school and university classrooms.
Tagged with: separation of church and state
Deploying Nuclear Energy Before It’s Too Late
Dr. Alex Cannara (pictured below) is the incredibly senior proponent of nuclear energy whom I’ve referred to frequently here. He heads a group of about 50 of us who share his views, and writes:
Hi gang. I wrote a short note to Chris Hayes who just interviewed a fellow discussing how grave environmental things are. Chris is supportive of nuclear power, so he is easier to write.
It occurred to me that anyone who wishes to write any officials/groups on the subject might find the letter a useful source, so it’s attached…
Use anything you like from it. Note that the 2nd attached graphic drives home the effectiveness of nuclear power by showing how France far exceeds other countries on reducing emissions. If Ontario Canada were plotted, it too would display nuclear’s huge emissions benefit.
My reason for writing is that we’re getting into very bad straights caused by our bumbling around. Australia says The Great Barrier Reef is in dire straits from warmed waters (see before and after pic above), yet Aussies still ship coal around the world and avoid nuclear. Germany is similarly foolish.
The message is that there’s no runway left for fiddling with the controls. I hope each of you can use this letter’s content to reach one or more others who might help others wake up and take action.
Thanks,
Alex
Note: At the risk of stating the obvious, the reason that the Aussies are shipping coal all around the world is money. The wealthiest people in Australia know what everyone else does: coal is by far the most toxic energy source known to humankind, but it’s still just as lucrative as ever.
One would hope that these people would respond the way Richard Nixon’s lawyer John Dean did when his boss suggested hiding information on the Watergate break-in: “We could do it, but it would be wrong.” But no, they couldn’t care less that it’s wrong, and that it’s destroying the only home we have.
Tagged with: Deploying Nuclear Before It's Too Late
Creating Laws to Prevent Crimes that Do Not Exist
Sadly, there are American voters–plenty of them–who believe what they want to believe, despite all evidence.
A good example is that a law already exists that prohibits non-citizens from voting. And it’s not some obscure law like those concerning jaywalking or spitting on a sidewalk. It’s the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Yet we have the Republican Speaker of the House stirring our country’s most ignorant people into an uproar over this point. Most of the folks are no more familiar with the Constitution than they are with the procedures of open-heart surgery or sending rockets into space, and the Speaker knows this goddamn well.
If you need another reason to believe this, Johnson is an utterly disgusting human being.
Tagged with: Speaker Mike Johnson
Respect for Nikki Haley
It’s hard to respect anyone whose viewpoints on social issues goes from white to black in the blink of an eye, simply to attain political power.
When Haley was a U.S. representative in Hawaii, she was a liberal–on everything from women’s rights to environmental responsibility to the duty of government to help those least capable of helping themselves.
A few years later she’s a garden-variety Trump supporter?
That’s just disgusting.
Tagged with: garden-variety Trump supporter
The Cult of Trump
If we look up the word “cult,” we find many different meanings, most of which are pejorative. Here are two good examples:
a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister. “a network of Satan-worshiping cults”
a group which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader, who tightly controls its members, requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant (outside the norms of society)
As suggested by the meme here, once you’re a member of one of these groups, you’ve proven that you’re susceptible to this type of thinking, making you an easy target for another cult membership.
Tagged with: The Cult of Trump
California Is Unique
For some reason, I’m on the email distribution list of “For the Love of Old Houses,” and one thing that this has confirmed for me is the old adage: “The three most important ingredients in evaluating real estate are location, location, and location.”
The house pictured above was built in 1919 near the ocean in Carmel, CA, about 100 miles south of San Francisco. It’s on the market for $7.995 million. Now, consider picking this up, moving it almost anywhere else in the United States, and trying to get even half of that.
Conservatives like to say the bloom is off the rose for California and other “woke” parts of the country. Tell that to investors in Chevron, Meta/Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Well Fargo, Apple, Disney, Intel, Google, Northop Grumman, and Oracle. These companies are a big part of the reason that, if it were a country, California would be the fourth largest economy on Earth.
It’s true that California is often the locus of innovations that make our lives longer and healthier, not to mention more productive and convenient. And perhaps that has given us a reputation for being progressive. Ya know what? We’re actually proud of that.
Inside the (Climate) Movement
The good people at Inside the Movement write:
(We’re) the action toolkit for the climate movement. Come find your place (and your voice!). Here’s how you can join us:
- Be a part of the Summer of Heat, and join those shutting down Citibank’s HQ in protest of their continued funding of fossil fuels
- Encourage insurances companies to just say no to Liquified Natural gas projects that need protection in order to stay in business
- Keep the pressure on Ecuador’s President and demand he stop oil drilling in Yasuní National Park
- Join the conversation to see how you can get started in a climate career, or connect your current work to the climate movement
- Check out the latest voices in the movement, most interesting science and best shareable videos
All this and more — Inside the Movement.
FWIW, I love keeping track of and promoting what these folks are up to, and I heartily recommend that readers do the same.
Tagged with: Inside the (Climate) Movement
