Sunday, August 16, 2020
Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama Agree: Trump's Attack on Postal Service a Direct Assault on 2020 Election
"What elections should not be about in a democratic society is winning because your opponents are prevented from voting. And that is exactly what Trump is doing right now."
by
Julia Conley, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/14/bernie-sanders-and-barack-obama-agree-trumps-attack-postal-service-direct-assault
Both Sen. Bernie Sanders and former President Barack Obama on Friday raised alarm over President Donald Trump's open attempt to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service by refusing to provide emergency funding in what critics call an effort to hamper the general election—in which millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail.
In an email to supporters, Sanders denounced Trump's "outrageous" Thursday statement, in which the president dismissed Democratic leaders' demand for $3.5 billion in election assistance for states and $25 billion for the USPS in order to cope with major delivery delays. Trump told reporters that as long as the Postal Service isn't given emergency funding, universal mail-in voting—which the president has claimed would be a "rigged" system favoring Democrats—can't happen.
"He told the American people that he was going to defund and destroy the United States Postal Service so that, during this pandemic, they cannot have the opportunity to vote for president and in other important races," wrote Sanders. "In other words, he is forcing people to make a choice between getting sick and even dying, or casting a ballot."
"Elections should be about candidates making the best case they can to their constituents and letting the voters decide," the Vermont independent senator added. "What elections should not be about in a democratic society is winning because your opponents are prevented from voting. And that is exactly what Trump is doing right now."
Sanders' criticism was echoed by Obama, who called Trump's explicit attempt to discourage participation in the election "unheard of."
"What we've never seen before is a president say, 'I'm going to try to actively kneecap the Postal Service to [discourage] voting and I will be explicit about the reason I'm doing it,'" said the former president. "My question is what are Republicans doing where you are so scared of people voting that you are now willing to undermine what is part of the basic infrastructure of American life?"
The two leaders' statements came amid news that 46 states and Washington, D.C. recently received letters from USPS general counsel and executive vice president Thomas J. Marshall, warning that tens of millions of Americans could be effectively disenfranchised in the November election because the Postal Service can't guarantee mail-in ballots will be delivered in time to be counted.
Oregon, Rhode Island, New Mexico, and Nevada are the only states that haven't received warnings from the USPS; seven states were told that a limited number of voters could have their ballots cast aside due to mail delays, while 186 million voters could be affected by delays in the rest of the states.
"It's completely outrageous that the U.S. Postal Service is in this position," Vanita Gupta, president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told The Washington Post, accusing Trump of weaponizing "the U.S. Postal Service for the president's electoral purposes."
Marshall's warning was due to concerns that arose even before the president named Louis DeJoy, a top Trump donor, postmaster general earlier this year. DeJoy has been condemned by voting rights advocates and Democrats for ordering drastic cuts of overtime and spending by the USPS, delaying delivery times by as much as a week. The Postal Service is also currently decommissioning 10% of its mail-sorting machines, which can sort 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour and allow carriers to focus on delivering mail promptly.
Before DeJoy's actions sparked outrage and fears of severe mail delays when millions of Americans cast their votes from home to avoid spreading Covid-19, Marshall became concerned that the Postal Service does not currently have the capacity to help facilitate the election, with 10 times the usual volume of mail-in ballots in November. The battleground states of Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan were all identified as states whose tight deadlines for requesting, mailing, or counting ballots would not allow the over-strained post office to deliver all ballots in time to be tallied.
Election officials in Pennsylvania asked the state Supreme Court on Thursday to extend its ballot-counting deadline by three days to give voters time to mail in their votes.
With DeJoy's actions putting further strain on mail carriers, University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck called Trump's open sabotage of the Postal Service "as serious a threat to our democracy as anything any President has ever done."
"I'm not overreacting; this is a five-alarm fire," he added. "And Republicans who aren't vigorously pushing back are complicit."
Sanders called on his supporters to sign a petition demanding that Congress provide funding to the USPS to support vote-by-mail in November.
"Donald Trump is moving our country in an authoritarian direction and is attempting to dismantle the foundations of our democracy," wrote the senator. "Democracy must be saved. Trump must be defeated."
'Morally Obscene,' Says Sanders as McConnell Adjourns Senate for Month-Long Recess Without Deal on Coronavirus Relief
"During the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans think they can take a long vacation while millions of Americans face hunger and eviction."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/14/morally-obscene-says-sanders-mcconnell-adjourns-senate-month-long-recess-without
Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell adjourned the U.S. Senate for the rest of August on Thursday after failing to come anywhere close to approving another Covid-19 relief package, leaving tens of millions of out-of-work, hungry, and eviction-prone Americans without additional financial aid as the pandemic and economic crisis continue with no end in sight.
"During the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans think they can take a long vacation while millions of Americans face hunger and eviction. That is morally obscene," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to McConnell's decision. "It's time for the do-nothing Republican Senate to finally do its damn job."
The Senate is not expected to return until September 8, when economic conditions are likely to be even more dire for the 40 million people at risk of eviction, 30 million facing drastic income cuts due to the lapse in enhanced unemployment benefits, and 14 million households with children that don't have enough to eat.The departure of the Republican-controlled Senate comes after an attempt to revive Covid-19 relief talks earlier this week quickly failed as Democratic leaders and Trump administration officials remained far apart on key issues, from emergency funding for the U.S. Postal Service to aid to faltering state and local governments. In her weekly press conference Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said White House negotiators refused to budge from their insufficient relief offers.
"This is pathetic and devastating," consumer advocacy group Public Citizen tweeted after McConnell adjourned the upper chamber until after Labor Day. Just before skipping town, the Kentucky Republican advanced five more of President Donald Trump's right-wing judicial nominees.
Earlier Thursday, the Labor Department reported (pdf) that 963,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week—a figure that corporate news outlets presented as the first time since March that initial weekly jobless claims dipped below a million.
But Julia Wolfe, state economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog post Thursday that the Labor Department's report downplays the number of workers who filed for unemployment benefits last week. The actual figure, according to Wolfe, is 1.3 million.
"Astonishingly high numbers of workers continue to claim UI, and we are still 12.9 million jobs short of February employment levels," Wolfe wrote. "And yet, Senate Republicans allowed the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly UI benefits—the most effective economic policy crisis response so far—to expire."
"In an unserious move of political theater, the Trump administration has proposed starting up an entirely new system of restoring wages to laid-off workers through executive order (EO)," Wolfe continued. "But even in their EO wishlist, the Trump administration would slash the federal contribution to enhanced unemployment benefits in half, to $300. This inaction and ongoing uncertainty is causing significant economic pain for workers who have lost their job during the pandemic and their families."
With tens of millions of low-income and middle-class Americans facing financial ruin as the White House and congressional Republicans stonewall an additional relief package, the Washington Post's Heather Long reported Thursday that the coronavirus-induced recession "is over for the rich."
"U.S. stocks are hovering near a record high, a stunning comeback since March that underscores the new phase the economy has entered: The wealthy have mostly recovered. The bottom half remain far from it," Long wrote. "This dichotomy is evident in many facets of the economy, especially in employment. Jobs are fully back for the highest wage earners, but fewer than half the jobs lost this spring have returned for those making less than $20 an hour."
In a statement Thursday, Kyle Herrig, president of advocacy group Accountable.US, slammed the Republican-controlled Senate for opting to "pack up and leave Washington for a month without making a new deal to assist American workers and small business owners."
"The luxuries of paid time off and premium health insurance afforded to senators is of little help to the millions of Americans who lost their jobs during this crisis," said Herrig. "Where is the urgency to get workers and their families the help they need?"
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the architects of the now-expired $600-per-week unemployment insurance boost, tweeted: "Donald Trump is suppressing votes to steal an election. Almost 30 million are on unemployment and 160,000 Americans are dead. McConnell just adjourned the Senate for a month."
"Every time I think Republicans can't run this country any further into the ground," Wyden wrote, "they prove me wrong."
Lawmakers Demand Removal of Postmaster General DeJoy Over 'Nefarious' Efforts to Destroy the Postal Service and 'Aid Trump Reelection'
"He is working to dismantle a fundamental institution of our democracy. He needs to resign or be removed, now."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/10/lawmakers-demand-removal-postmaster-general-dejoy-over-nefarious-efforts-destroy
On the heels of a "Friday Night Massacre" at the U.S. Postal Service that deeply alarmed lawmakers, activists, and ordinary citizens nationwide, two House Democrats are demanding the immediate removal of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over his sweeping operational changes to the beloved government service that have slowed the delivery of essential packages and jeopardized mail-in voting.
"DeJoy's baseless operational changes have already crippled a beloved and essential agency, delaying mail, critical prescription drug shipments for veterans, and seniors and other essential goods," said DeFazio.In a statement over the weekend, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) accused DeJoy—a major GOP donor to President Donald Trump with millions invested in USPS competitors—of doing the president's bidding by sabotaging mail delivery with the November election less than 90 days away.
The Oregon Democrat warned that the latest change imposed by DeJoy—the ouster of two top officials and reshuffling of nearly two dozen others—lay bare his "mission to centralize power, dismantle the agency, and degrade service in order to thwart vote-by-mail across the nation to aid Trump's reelection efforts."
"This November, an historic number of citizens will vote by mail in order to protect their health and safety during the Covid-19 pandemic," said DeFazio. "DeJoy's nefarious collective efforts will suppress millions of mail-in ballots and threaten the voting rights of millions of Americans, setting the stage for breach of our Constitution. It is imperative that we remove him from his post and immediately replace him with an experienced leader who is committed to sustaining a critical service for all Americans."
DeJoy, a former North Carolina logistics executive, was appointed to lead USPS by the agency's Board of Governors in May despite his complete lack of experience at the Postal Service and his potential conflicts of interest, which have drawn scrutiny from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other lawmakers. After taking charge in mid-June, the new Postmaster General wasted little time rolling out changes to USPS that postal workers said undermine the agency's core mission and potentially set the stage for privatization.
During an open session last week with the USPS Board of Governors, which has the authority to remove the Postmaster General, DeJoy rebuked lawmakers for "sensationalizing" major mail backlogs reported in states across the nation and downplayed the resulting delays as "isolated, operational incidents." Postal workers, for their part, have warned that the delays appear to be a direct consequence of DeJoy's policies barring overtime and prohibiting the sorting of mail ahead of morning deliveries.
As the American Prospect's David Dayen noted, the Postal Service under DeJoy's leadership has also "informed states that they'll need to pay first-class 55-cent postage to mail ballots to voters, rather than the normal 20-cent bulk rate."
"That nearly triples the per-ballot cost at a time when tens of millions more will be delivered," Dayen noted. "The rate change would have to go through the Postal Regulatory Commission and, undoubtedly, litigation. But the time frame for that is incredibly short, as ballots go out very soon. A side benefit of this money grab is that states and cities may decide they don't have the money to mail absentee ballots, and will make them harder to get. Which is exactly the worst-case scenario everyone fears."
Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) said in a statement issued alongside DeFazio's that DeJoy is guilty of "unconstitutional sabotage of our Postal Service with complete disregard for the institution's promise of the 'safe and speedy transit of the mail' and the 'prompt delivery of its contents.'"
"My friend Maya Angelou used to say, 'when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,'" Adams added. "The Postmaster General has shown us on multiple occasions he is working to dismantle a fundamental institution of our democracy. He needs to resign or be removed, now."
Why I Am Voting No on the Democratic Party Platform
History teaches us that the Democratic Party has sometimes faced an issue so great that it alone should be the yardstick for measuring the wisdom of voting for or against the platform. This is one of those times. And Medicare for All is that issue.
by
Ro Khanna
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/08/13/why-i-am-voting-no-democratic-party-platform
I will do everything possible to help end the disastrous presidency of Donald Trump, and that means emphatically supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. At the same time, after much deliberation, I am announcing via this article for Common Dreams that I will not be voting for the platform (pdf) that has been put in front of Democratic National Convention delegates for our approval.
To be clear: I respect and appreciate the people who worked to put this platform together. I know those who worked on it did so with a strong sense of purpose, wanting to make this a better party. And I recognize that the platform includes many positive planks. Among its breakthroughs is a call for a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour. There's much progress embodied in the platform.
In 1948, there was going to be a split in the Democratic Party regardless of the national convention's vote on civil rights. Those who stood up and demanded a plank for civil rights in the platform fundamentally changed our party's direction.Yet history teaches us that the Democratic Party has sometimes faced an issue so great that it alone should be the yardstick for measuring the wisdom of voting for or against the platform. This is one of those times.
Likewise, in 1968, I also believe that I would have stood up and not supported a platform that failed to clearly call for ending the U.S. warfare in Vietnam.
In my view, 2020 presents us with another such issue.
I believe that moving away from a profit-based healthcare system is the moral issue of our time. And in the final analysis, because of that belief, I could not vote for a platform that lacks a clear statement supporting Medicare for All.
I have heard the arguments made as to why I, or any other delegate, should just get in line and vote for the platform. Two of those arguments resonated, and I would like to address them.
"With Trump in the White House," some might say, "we need 100 percent unity, and anything that would chip away at unity is dangerous to undertake—including a no vote on the platform."
No doubt, the specter of four more years of Donald Trump is a compelling argument for unity—but the thing is, I see a vote of conscience against the platform as an ultimate show of unity. A party that cannot embrace honest debate and differences of opinion would be too rigid to learn or to grow wiser.
Some may ask: "Why does the left have such a hard time understanding that you don't get 100 percent of what you want, that the truly great gains are made incrementally?"
To this I say, nobody understands the realities of incrementalism better than progressives. Harry Truman ran and won on universal healthcare in 1948, and it was part of Democratic Party platforms until 1980. Thirty-six years later, the 2016 platform merely called for lowering the eligibility age for Medicare to 55. The 2020 platform proposes raising the goal to 60. That is not incrementalism; that is moving backwards.
I will cast my one vote of "No" for every person who has had to ration medication to afford food, or who has lost a loved one because a procedure that a doctor said was needed was not covered in an insurance plan. I will be voting "No" on the platform because when we say that healthcare is a human right, we must truly mean it—and fight for it. I believe if we remain stuck on such concepts as "affordable" when talking about solutions to healthcare accessibility, we are badly constrained inside a limited debate.
I will cast a "No" vote because, in the words of our great Democratic National Committee member from Iowa, Jodi Clemens, "Our friends are dying"—and I want my party, the Democratic Party, to address this moral problem with clarity of moral purpose.
As James Baldwin wrote, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." We are now long past the time when our country should face the cruel injustice of a system that denies healthcare as a human right. And when we face it, we can change it—with Medicare for All.
On Its 85th Anniversary, 'No Damn Politician' Should Be Allowed To Scrap Social Security
On this anniversary, we must renew our commitment to preserving and expanding Social Security in the face of these relentless efforts to undermine it.
by
Max Richtman
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/08/14/its-85th-anniversary-no-damn-politician-should-be-allowed-scrap-social-security
When President Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law 85 years ago today, he expressed hope that the program would offer Americans a "measure of protection" from the "hazards and vicissitudes of life." True to FDR's vision, Social Security has protected workers from some of the costliest hazards and vicissitudes of life—including loss of income from retirement, disability, and the death of a family breadwinner. This year, though, Americans have faced "hazards and vicissitudes" unseen for one hundred years—a deadly global pandemic and the resulting economic fallout. Now, as Social Security continues to provide basic financial security to 68 million Americans during this tumultuous time, the program itself needs protection. Not only are Social Security's resources strained by the pandemic; the program's opponents seek to undermine and eventually dismantle it amid a national crisis.
Social Security is more crucial today than ever before. Employer-provided pensions have all but disappeared. Income inequality rages. Retirement savings are historically low while the cost of growing old has soared. Most seniors depend on Social Security for the majority of their income. Without Social Security, 40% of elderly Americans would live in poverty.
Now COVID is endangering seniors' lives and their financial security. Fortunately, Social Security was designed for exactly the kind of "hazards and vicissitudes" the pandemic presents. Breadwinners newly disabled by COVID are turning to Social Security to keep their families afloat. When beneficiaries die from the virus, their dependents can count on the financial lifeline of survivors' benefits.
At the same time, analysts have rightly pointed out that the surge in Social Security claims from the pandemic may strain Social Security's finances at a time when the system is already fiscally challenged. Without a boost from Congress, Social Security's trust fund will be exhausted by 2035, after which the program will still pay nearly 80% of benefits (an outcome no one who supports Social Security wants). We have endorsed landmark legislation from Rep. John Larson to keep Social Security fully solvent for the rest of this century while boosting benefits, mostly by demanding that the wealthy pay their fair share into the system like everyone else. (Payroll contributions are currently capped at $137,700 in income, leaving trillions of dollars in untapped revenue that Social Security sorely needs.).
Unfortunately, so-called "entitlement reformers" want beneficiaries—some of our most vulnerable citizens—to bear the brunt of shoring up Social Security's finances. Even as Social Security proves itself as a financial safety net in a time of crisis, conservatives continue to agitate for benefit cuts, such as raising the Social Security retirement age to 69 or 70 (even though many older citizens cannot continue working that long) or reducing cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) that don't even keep up with seniors' true expenses as it is. But some on the right want to go much further. And President Trump has surrounded himself with them.
Despite having promised "not to touch" Social Security, the President listens to conservative ideologues who have long wanted to undo FDR's landmark program, including former budget director Mick Mulvaney, chief of staff Mark Meadows, and economic advisor Larry Kudlow. The Heritage Foundation's Stephen Moore and billionaire businessman Steve Forbes also have outsized influence, not to mention Republican "entitlement reformers" in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. While the President pays lip service to protecting Social Security, he has been enlisted in the effort to dismantle it.
The most glaring example is the President's unilateral (and possibly unconstitutional) action to defer the payroll taxes that fund Social Security through the end of the year. This could cost the program over $300 billion in lost revenue, plus the interest it would have earned. Upon announcing this executive order, the President promised to "terminate" payroll taxes if re-elected. That would either bankrupt Social Security or force depend on general revenue, which would destroy the program's worker-funded nature and open it up to benefit cuts in the name of deficit reduction.
The Trump administration's campaign against Social Security did not start with the payroll tax cut. Each of the President's annual budgets have called for deep cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), with then-budget director Mick Mulvaney claiming with a straight face that SSDI is not "part of Social Security." The administration has changed the rules to make it harder for disabled Americans to continue collecting benefits, and attempted to replace the administrative law judges who decide the fate of workers' disability appeals with partisan political appointees.
Today's Social Security antagonists do not proclaim their outright hostility to the program and instead speak of "saving" or "reforming" it. Naturally, "reforming" really means some form of benefit cuts or privatization. They try to shatter the intergenerational compact at the heart of Social Security by cynically telling millennials that the program will not be there when they retire. Conservatives must feel compelled to employ these misleading tactics because they know that 85 years after its enactment, Social Security is still enormously popular with the public. Poll after poll shows that Americans across party lines want to see Social Security protected, not cut, privatized, or compromised. In a recent survey of our own membership, 88% of respondents opposed cutting payroll taxes for Coronavirus relief.
FDR famously said that "no damn politician can ever scrap my Social Security program" because it is an earned benefit funded by the workers themselves. But he may not have anticipated a reckless president with a complete disregard for precedent, unconstrained by traditional guardrails, and influenced by a well-funded right-wing movement committed to subverting the signature program of the New Deal. President Roosevelt may not have imagined a successor more than 80 years later publicly promising to "terminate" the payroll taxes that were supposed to protect the program from being "scrapped."
On this anniversary, we must renew our commitment to preserving and expanding Social Security in the face of these relentless efforts to undermine it. Fortunately, the broader public—those who paid for, depend on, and cherish their earned benefits—have an opportunity to elect new leaders who will protect seniors, the disabled, and their loved ones against the "hazards and vicissitudes" of life that President Roosevelt understood so well.
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