August 2020

Our Postal Service is NOW under major attack by Donald Trump, who on 6/15/20 inserted a donor-friend, Louis DeJoy, to head it up.  DeJoy, announced a massive reorganization of USPS on 8/7/20, displacing 23 experienced postal executives, and cutting services.  Many expensive mail-sorting machines were recently removed from postal-centers, mail-collection boxes eliminated in several swing states.  DeJoy has suspended overtime pay for postal-workers, some are vociferating on the slowdown.  USPS is extremely important in our lives, providing a critical resource.  Veterans & many elderly receive their medications via mail.  Some paying bills by mail have received fees for late payments.   Look up: 18 U.S. CODES: 595 & 1701, and U.S. Code 10307.   President Trump is against funding USPS, which has delivered mail through most disasters, but they didn’t see this one coming, from within.  Trump was asked on 8/17, if he’d told the Post Office to slow down the mail; he responded, “No, I told them to speed it up”.  Only days before, he’d proclaimed the Democrats could NOT have their Universal-Mail-in-Vote initiative, deeming it too risky; but when drivers licenses, passports, birth certificates, prescriptions, tax refunds, Social Security, pension & stimulus checks can be safely mailed, so can ballots.

Political mail has always been treated as protected First Class mail, but under new rules & practices, election mail (ballots) can now be treated as recyclable bulk mail.   Democrat lawmakers have called for an investigation of DeJoy’s “weakening the agency’s ability” to process, timely, millions of mail-in ballots, amidst an impending second wave of  Covid-19 pandemic.  (The P.O. handles over a billion Christmas cards & pkgs annually; they can handle a couple million ballots during election-season.)   Louis Dejoy, called to appear before a House Oversight Committee session on 8/24/20, now announces he’s suspending the changes until post-election, but that date stated that he will NOT reinstall the mail-sorting machines!  USPS is a government SERVICE, a Constitutional piece of our infrastructure, not a for-profit business.  (Our Army & Dept. of Agriculture don’t turn a profit!)   “In 2006, the Republican-led Congress passed legislation forcing it to prepay its health-benefits for future retirees DECADES in advance.”  Republicans consistently seek to circumvent, corrupt or privatize most government services.   “In 1753, Benjamin Franklin, who had been postmaster of Philadelphia, became one of two joint postmasters general for the colonies.  Franklin was appointed Postmaster General in 1775.”    We MUST SAVE our Postal Service!   Donald Trump, worried about his poll-numbers, is already trying to finagle & convolute the 2020 presidential election, at least to ‘muddy-up’ the results.  Democrats need to vote EARLY, so early votes can be tabulated by election day, making Trump less able to claim a victory & create more chaos.

Trish Forsyth Voss

Poor people need help NOW!  30 million jobless Americans need to pay their rent & feed their families.  The negotiation process between Dems & Trump proxies broke down, mostly because ‘tea-partier’ Meadows “doesn’t want to get to Yes”.   The ‘great deal-maker Trump’ obviously instructed Manuchin & Meadows not to forge a deal with Schumer & Pelosi, so Trump could make a big show of signing four Executive Orders, which are all Scams & Lies, more FAKE promises!  Republicans want to give another $250 billion tax-break to rich donors, another $28 billion for the military, and legal immunity for corporations that hire workers in unsafe conditions.   The wealthy & greedy have made $755 billion in this pandemic; Republicans already gave $2 trillion to corporations, in the first 3 Care-Acts.   30 billion workers lost Unemployment Insurance benefits.  Millions more lost healthcare; 87 million were already uninsured or under-insured.  This pandemic shows the fallacy of having our citizenries’ healthcare tied to their employment.  WE NEED MEDICARE FOR ALL!   As the millions of Covid-19 infections rise ever higher, more than 170,000 deaths in the U.S, the commandment comes from ‘on high’ to “REOPEN EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY”.  Americans need affordable access to decent healthcare, and states need funding for safe elections!

People are hungry, out of work, getting evicted amidst a pandemic!  Money and the uber-rich is the focus of Republicans.  McConnell actually said, “Let the states go bankrupt!”  When Pelosi was asked about why the negotiations had stalled, she said, “You’re mistaking ‘THEM’ for somebody who gives a damn about alot of these things”.   Trump shifted his attention to seeking to whitewash the Census, ending the counting a month early!  Under-counting & under-representing minorities only serves the purpose of Republicans.  Are we truly a multi-racial democracy?  Bishop William Barber said, “If ‘THEY’ stay in office, they will continue to oppress & abuse us”.   Meanwhile, our intelligence agencies have warned us that Russia is running programs to attack & undermine Biden, while seeking to help Trump stay in office, because that serves Putin’s geo-political interests!  Trump keeps yammering on his favorite subjects: “a rigged election”, how we can’t trust mail-in ballots, “incorrect & fraudulent ballots received, some sent to deceased persons & pets”, Dems are election-meddling, the Chinese-virus, stock market is rebounding soon, Covid is diminishing & will suddenly disappear, his wall is being built & will be finished soon, the “Blue states” are not run well & hence he doesn’t want to give THEM financial assistance.

Trish Forsyth Voss

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, assembled a task-force in March 2020, and allegedly produced a plan for “an aggressive, coordinated-COVID-19 response to bring the pandemic under control” in the U.S.  Kushner’s team included a former college roommate & a group of young business associates; they teamed-up with several top experts from the diagnostic-testing industry.  They shared information through WhatsApp  messages.  “They emerged with a detailed-plan, obtained by Vanity Fair.  The plan was to set-up a system of national oversight  & coordination to surge supplies, allocate test-kits, lift regulatory & contractual roadblocks and establish a widespread virus-surveillance system by the fall, to help pinpoint subsequent outbreaks; and to be presented to president Trump and announced in the Rose Garden in early April.   No nationally-coordinated testing strategy was ever announced, and we see the human & economic cost of doing nothing.”

Jared, also in March, ordered 3.5 million Chinese-made, diagnostic-testing kits for Covid-19, which were delivered to the United Arab Emirates embassy in Washington.  Jared bi-passed regular government ordering processes, so there’s a problem in paying for them.  The cost was $52 million, and oh yeah, the tests didn’t work; “they were contaminated & unusable”.  A White House staffer said, “improper procurement of supplies is a serious deal”.   The U.S. continues to suffer the worst outbreak in the developed world.  Back to Jared’s group; they didn’t coordinate with Health & Human Services; they “operated within their own bubble” and “their efforts ran into shifting sentiments at the White House”.  Trump was downplaying the virus & spreading misinformation regarding it.  Trump’s mindset was that more testing would only show more infected people and that would be bad publicity for him, bad for his re-election bid.  Meanwhile, ‘scarf-lady’, “Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus-response-coordinator was reportedly showing models to senior staff that optimistically & erroneously predicted the virus would fade away.  The prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor.”  One of Kushner’s team expressed, “because the virus had hit Blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would NOT make sense politically”.  They callously calculated the virus would take its toll on states governed by Democrats, “they could blame those governors and THAT would be an effective political strategy”.   Trump would use those deaths to his political advantage!   BLATANTLY OUTRAGEOUS, RUTHLESS INEPTITUDE!   Trump announced on April 27: a testing plan through Quest Diagnostics and Lab Corp, but leaving the testing-problem up to the hard-hit states.   EPIC FAIL!

Trish Forsyth Voss

Trump announced his plans for withdrawing nearly 12,000 U.S. troops from Germany, which is a blow to our own interests, but a repositioning that satisfies his friend Vladimir Putin.  Trump said regarding U.S. troops, “They’re there to protect Germany, right? And Germany is supposed to pay for it.  Germany’s not paying for it.  We don’t want to be the suckers anymore.  The U.S. has been taken advantage of for 25 years, both on trade and on the military. So we’re reducing the force because they’re not paying their bills.”  Some like his tough talk, but how tough is he, to be Putin’s puppet?  Trump admitted on 7/29 to Axios on HBO, that he had not confronted Putin with the intelligence suggesting Russia was paying Taliban fighters bounties for killing U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan; “I never discussed it with him”.  How tough is that?  After numerous phone calls with Putin?  Trump said they discussed nuclear proliferation.  Tough on crime, tough on allies, soft on Putin, and other autocrats!

Allies agreed in 2014 to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense by 2024.  “Germany is a steadfast NATO ally  & 3rd largest contributor to its budget”, said Emily Haber, the German ambassador to Washington. (Trump mandated a cap of 25,000 U.S. troops in Germany.)  So, since Germany’s been paying 1.5 percent, not the full 2 percent GDP on defense, a mix of Army & Air Force units, 5400 troops will be withdrawn, moving European Command, EUCOM headquarters, 3 brigade-sized headquarters, an air defense artillery battalion & an engineering battalion to Belgium (which spends less than 1 percent of its GDP on defense), and moving 2 smaller support & contracting organizations and an F-16 fighter squadron to Italy (which pays 1.2 percent of its GDP on defense).  Rep. Senator Mitt Romney called the plan, “a grave error and a gift to Russia”.  Robert Menendez, Dem on Senate foreign relations committee said, “champagne must be flowing freely this evening at the Kremlin; withdrawing forces from Germany is an affront to one of our closest allies, and ultimately weakens U.S. efforts to counter Kremlin aggression in Europe”.  Defense officials said the move would begin within weeks, though it could take years to complete, and would cost billions of dollars, as new military construction will likely be required both in Europe, and in the U.S. to house the 6400 troops returning to the U.S. for rotational deployments.  Obviously, the plan could be reversed should Trump lose the election in November 2020.

Trish Forsyth Voss