If you offered people $100 to name a Supreme Court Justice, I bet you’d lose quite a bit of money. If you challenged random people to name a Cabinet Secretary, you’d still lose money, just not at much. If the challenge was to name any Postmaster General other than Benjamin Franklin, your money would be safe. Unless you happen to be an activist liberal, that is, then the name will roll of your tongue with venom: Louis DeJoy.
Since November 5, 2020, I have received 238 fundraising emails from left-wing groups about just how awful Mr. DeJoy is. Missing from most, especially the ones in the past year, is any attempt to explain how the Postmaster General is likely history’s greatest monster. So ubiquitous is the demonization of DeJoy throughout the left, the “why” part is no longer necessary to explain; they just know.
The “problem” with DeJoy is he was appointed by President Donald Trump. Seriously, that is what has set the left off. Well, that and their desire to force the entire country into voting by mail in perpetuity coupled with the financial realities of the Postal Service.
On the first part, it’s no secret Democrats want to force voting by mail, it helps them. If something helps Democrats, no matter how unnecessary, they are all for it. Add in the bonus fact of the ease with which voting by mail can be corrupted and ballot harvesting and you begin to see why the Postal Service is so “near and dear” to their hearts.
Then there is DeJoy. As Postmaster General he has started trying to get their financial house in order. To do that required some reality, and “some reality” for an organization that has lost tens of billions of dollars means reforms that could involve reduction in some services, especially ones that aren’t used much. Bailouts in the past were relatively string-free, but they always only ever led to more bailouts eventually.
This “lather, rinse, repeat” model has always been good enough for Democrats, the postal union supports them so nothing else really matters. But the idea of real changes for lasting effect have never been the left’s priority. Now that their future electoral plans hinge on the mail, the freak-out has begun.
The current freak-out fight is over the Postal Reform Act of 2022, a “bi-partisan” bailout, yet again. I’ve always been weary of “bi-partisan” bills, they’re usually just payoffs to special interests on both sides of the aisle. I see no reason to think this bill will be any different.
There are countless problems with the “reform” aspects of the bill, particularly the idea of dumping retiree health benefits for Medicare, an already sinking ship. What’s the point of making something nominally better by making something with significantly bigger problems and further reach measurably worse?
It doesn’t make sense, if you think about it. But long-term freak-outs over Louis DeJoy has very few people thinking about it. One fundraising email from a group called the Democratic Strategy Institute pushed the idea of Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and devout communist, to possibly replace DeJoy. “Robert Reich is leading the fight to save the post office from Louis DeJoy’s reign of terror,” they write. Did you know the Post Office is under a “reign of terror”? I sure didn’t.
In a bit of extra hysterical hypocrisy, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), being an awful person and political hack, whined in 2020 about DeJoy “slowing down the mail” to impact the election. Now the bill Schumer is pushing, according to Forbes, “includes measures that slows delivery of some mail.” You could make this stuff up…but no one would believe you.
Democrats want DeJoy gone so President Joe Biden can put his own henchman in there so when they ram through “voting reform” there won’t be any question their plan will be implemented as needed, the rest of the mail or services the Post Office provides are irrelevant. Republicans aren’t smart enough to think strategically the way Democrats do, they just think they’re addressing real problems that will keep the mail flowing.
I have friends working on both sides of the bill, for all manner of reasons, who’ve pitched me to support their side or issue. None of them have been able to argue in support of the bill in any way that makes it seem like a good idea to me. There must come a point where the Post Office either sinks or swims on its own. How many billions – good money after bad – must we set on fire before we acknowledge things have to fundamentally change?
The argument you hear over legislation like this goes like this: in a time when trillions of dollars are being created out of nothing, what’s a few more? It’s true, the last few drops of water are no more responsible for sinking the Titanic than any of the others were, but that doesn’t mean you blow a bigger hole in the side to take on water faster.
We have soaring deficits, raging inflation, and a national debt so large the very concept of it was unimaginable only a few decades ago. “A few more” matters because they all matter. The Postal Service matters, but not at the expense of everything else. Actually, not at the expense of anything else. Reform – real reform – or die. And stay the hell out of elections.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.