No Holiday DeJoy At USPS #265
By Hank Silverberg
Has your mail been slow this week? It's not just the holiday rush. The United States Postal Service has brought in just 10,000 seasonal workers this holiday season, a 64% reduction from the number
Added to this, it may be the last Christmas rush for hundreds of USPS employees as Dejoy continues to close sorting centers and slash jobs. Right now 30 mail processing facilities are under review for consolidation, and it could go as high as 400. That will slow the mail dramatically. For example, one facility that might be closed is in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. The mail would instead be sent to Harrisburg, which is 90 miles away, obviously slowing delivery.
The postal unions are fighting hard to keep the sorting facilities and the jobs that go with them. Each facility closed could eliminate 25 jobs.
Congress has been getting an earful on this from constituents about service delays, but only the postal Board of Governors can fire Dejoy, and right now there are two vacancies on that Board. So far the Biden Administration has not nominated replacements for the Board, so Dejoy's job is secure. It's unclear why the appointments have not been made, and there's a petition with 40,000 signatures so far asking for the new Board members to be placed.
Dejoy has repeatedly said he wants thee U.S. Postal Service to stop losing money and the cuts are necessary. The private companies like Fed Ex or UPS could pick up some of the USPS business, but that too has its limits and would likely increase costs for consumers.
With all this in mind, it might be a good idea to mail all your packages for the 2024 holiday season, by July 4th.
War On Books?
I am an author. I have published four books (see advertisement below) so nothing offends me more than any effort to ban books. It's a violation of the First Amendment and frankly, unamerican to suppress the free flow of ideas. So a move by several states to sever ties with the nation's oldest library organization has me in a tizzy. Florida (where else?) became the latest state to forbid any grant activities tied to the American Library Association, a 150-year-old organization that aids thousands of libraries across the country with funding and training.
The states, which also include Alabama, Wyoming, Missouri and Texas, claim the group exposed children to pornography. And specifically point to the new president of the ALA who is a lesbian (She also claims to be a Marxist).
Conservatives across the country continue to
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| (A local book stores response to banned books) |
The problem I have with all these decisions? Those doing the book banning have almost never actually looked at the content of the books involved, and rely on lists generated after complaints by one or two parents or well-funded right-wing groups.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/31/florida-conservative-national-library-ala-00124516
Much of the effort has been spearheaded by a group called "Moms for Liberty" that sprung up in Florida in 2021, originally to fight mask mandates during the pandemic. But now the group spreads conspiracy theories and spews out hateful imagery against the LGBTQ+ community.
The group also has ties to the ultra-right Proud Boys, QAnon, and Christian Nationalists.
"Moms for Liberty" is funded by large Republican donors, some of whom are associated with the far right-wing Koch brothers.
Choosing books for students to read or to go on the shelves of local libraries should be left up to professional groups familiar with the content of those books. Groups like "Moms for Liberty" have already gone too far. Next they will be prowling the local book store seeking to cleanse the shelves of anything they don't like, and you can be sure it will be more about politics than a few books on "alternative lifestyles" or teen sex.
Lost Cause Lost Again!
A monument to Confederate war dead is being removed from Arlington National Cemetery. It's part of the overall push to remove any monument for the Confederacy from any U.S. military-related facility. The cemetery is administered by the Pentagon.
The move comes even after 40 Republican Congressmen demanded that the effort be stopped.
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| (This is the memorial being removed, photo courtesy ANC) |
Security fences have been set up around the memorial in Section 16 of the cemetery, and the removal should be complete by December 22nd.
The memorial features a bronze woman, crowned with olive branches standing on a 32-foot high pedestal, and has been at Arlington since 1914. It is supposed to represent the American South. The woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock, a pruning hook and has the Biblical inscription "They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks" at her feet.
But the memorial also includes a Black woman depicted as a "Mammy" holding what is said to be a child of a white officer and an enslaved man following his owner to war.
The Congressmen claim the statues do not commemorate the Confederacy, but instead "reconciliation" and "national unity."
After the statue is removed from Arlington, Virginia's Governor Glenn Youngkin says it will be taken to the New Market Battlefield State Historical site in the Shenandoah Valley.
This is just the latest in a series of statue removals that followed the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, some of which centered on Confederate memorials.
The military has also changed the names of several bases that had been named after Confederate heroes. Fort Bragg, named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg, was renamed Fort Liberty last June.
Arlington Cemetery itself was built on land that once belonged to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It was confiscated during the Civil War and turned into a cemetery for Union casualties. But there are several hundred Confederate dead buried there, a controversy that began in 1864 and remains today.
https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/About/Confederate-Memorial-Removal
Preparing For Trump Presidency?
A majority of Congress appears to be worried about a second term for former president Donald Trump. So much so that they have included a provision in the $886 billion Defense Spending Authorization Bill to prohibit any future president from withdrawing the U.S. from NATO without congressional approval.
In a book he published in 2000, Trump wrote that pulling back from the alliance "would save this country millions of dollars annually." The funds, he wrote, could be put to better use.
It is that criticism which has damaged the United States' reputation in Europe and has made some countries there balk at full support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, though it wants to be. A Russian victory against Ukraine would again put Russian troops on the border with several NATO members, and possibly reignite the post-World War Two cold war that lasted more than 50 years.
U.S. withdrawal from NATO would probably doom the organization, and increase the likelihood of renewed border wars in Europe similar to hose in the early 20th Century that eventually lead to two world wars.
The new provision preventing any withdrawal without Congressional approval has strong bipartisan support. It was sponsored by Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine and Florida Republican Marco Rubio.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nato-withdraw-congress-defense-bill-2023-12
Dumbest Quote of The Week!
This week's dumb quote comes from Republican Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina. During a House committee meeting, Norman had this to say about the President of the United States:
"You've got a President of the United States who's cognitively gone."
And went on, "I would wager a bit of money. You get him with five doctors, they would tell you the man's not there."
He then implied the President can't say anything that is not on a teleprompter in front of him.
That was immediately challenged by Pennsylvania Democrat Mary Gay Scanlon, who asked, "Have you spent any time with Mr. Biden, with the President?"
"Good God, no!" Norman said.
Scanlon shot back, "I have spent hours with the President without teleprompters, and the level of his conversation is way above this committee right now."
Scanlan accused Norman of watching too much Fox News. Yep, that's likely.
For the record, it's well known that Mr. Biden has had a speech impediment since childhood, and throughout his long career he has occasionally has had difficulty articulating certain words or phrases because of it. It has nothing to do with his age.
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