It's absolutely about what the current Republican Party in government does.
> It's about what enemies of the state do.
That may be true, but that doesn’t negate the preceding point.
> Many Republicans are speaking up alongside their usual opponents
Many former and out-of-office Republicans are, and over the past few years also some in-office-but-already-announced-retirement Republicans have.
A handful of ongoing Republicans-in-office have, over the last several years, expressed mild and momentary concern before returning to the ranks to toe the line on substance, but none of them are speaking up—or, more importantly, acting in ant substantial way.
Uh... who? I think I read that Susan Collins wrote a letter... Republicans, as they have been throughout the administration, are almost universally silent on Trumps corruption.
All it takes is two Senate republicans to take Majority control away from McConnell and to this day, not a single one has faltered in their support of the Senior Senator from Kentucky.
Where are all the Republicans speaking up alongside their opponents where it matters most? Cause it sure ain't in the Senate.
Look, I agree with where you're coming from - there are certain things that are simply matters of right and wrong and are not a matter of whether you're on Team Red or Team Blue. But the whole reason we have political parties is that it turns out we disagree, strongly, about what right and wrong are. It is a disservice to the cause you agree with and an insult to the seriousness of those you disagree with to say that such-and-such decision about how we run our country should be non-partisan instead of acknowledging the reality that it is.
It happens to be the case that for many things, like "Should we have elections or simply have hereditary rule" or "Should people be allowed to leave their religion" or "Should we invade our neighboring countries because we are the rightful owners of this continent" or "Should people be allowed to marry outside their race" or whatever, the two major parties, organizationally, do not disagree with each other. But those are and have been political debates in other times and in other places. Sometimes questions that you wouldn't expect to be political, like "Should people stay away from each other during a plague," become political.
If you believe in a particular answer to one of these questions, and one team agrees with you and the other doesn't, do not delude yourself into thinking that both teams agree with you merely because you think they should agree with you.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/politics/donald-trump-mail-in...
This is not a "both sides" issue.
The Republican party is blatantly criminal, and anyone that supports them is either incredibly ignorant, or treasonous. I'm sick of this "both sides" bullshit when what used to be called the center of the free world is in the process of being destroyed from the inside.
If the gov can purhase (internet collected) personal data, will privatized mail create a legal loophole?
There's some laws from after this doctrine was established that attempt to rein this in by explicitly extending the 4th amendment, so like that's why the government needs to get a warrant for a wiretap, but without a specific law passed by congress, the third party doctrine applies.
I tried to google if there's a 3rd party doctrine for mail services, but I haven't been able to find anything yet.
Voting by mail in a pandemic is very wise. Advising against it is a murderous suggestion.
It's kind of a thing.
That's a huge stretch from using the USPS to rig an election. Both sides are accusing the other of trying to take advantage of the sudden surge in interest in mail-in voting.
edit reply: you can't on the one hand argue that mail is a reliable way to run an election and on the other argue that a politician is trying to use it for their advantage. Not giving up, he didn't say he was using it. He said the Democrats would use it. Either way, these arguments underscore just how hackable and exploitable mail in voting is.
He admitted it on TV. Give it up.
“If we don’t make a deal that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it. Sort of a crazy thing,”
He is explicitly trying to remove the USPS's ability to handle voting by mail.
We're talking about what trump said.
Trump said the post office needs two bills that fund it to be passed for it to be able to adequately handle universal vote by mails, and if he doesn't make a deal with the people trying to pass those bills, then the post office doesn't get the money it needs to be able to do that:
>>> “If we don’t make a deal that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it. Sort of a crazy thing,” Trump said on Thursday.
This is technically correct, the best kind of correct. If 100 people actually vote for Smith and 101 people actually vote for Jones, and you count 99 of the votes for Smith and 98 of the votes for Jones, you have not counted any fraudulent votes.
The test of a democracy is whether it is representative, not whether it counts only non-fraudulent votes. Avoiding fraud is a very important means to the end, but it is not the end itself.
Here is an analogy for the HN crowd: If my site is broken, and I need to do a deploy to fix it, and we have a rule that says that every commit must pass tests and tests take 4 hours to run, then great, the rule is making sure that no code that's failing tests hit prod - but the rule is certainly not helpful in bringing prod back online. The rule is a means to the goal of making sure that prod works. It's a good rule, of course. Nobody is questioning the merit of testing your code or saying that untested code is a good thing. But you cannot justify missing your SLAs by saying "All of our code needs to be tested in order for us to know that our site works."
Quite the opposite, mail in ballots create an irrefutable and unfalsifiable paper trail for each vote.
Republicans (and Trump) are against them because they know the more people vote (ie. the more democratic America is) the less chance they have at winning.
The USPS has been struggling for decades - at least since the 1980s. It had a near monopoly of written communication until then with a few high priced competitors for fast short messages (Western Union, Telex, etc). It was financially self sufficient with limited indirect subsides and support.
Then the fax machine arrived, then the overnight delivery services, then email and the internet. These developments ate into USPS’s business model which required huge volumes to support a vast and expensive infrastructure. For a time the rise of junk mail provided some relief but even that waned in recent decades.
Managment of the USPS was unable to deal with these changes for a number of reasons including government mandates and an inflexible unionized workforce. One persistent problem was huge pension liabilities arising from labor contracts. But the key issue was the high costs and diminished demand.
It has been bailed out several times most recently in 2012. In the next few years another bailout will be needed or perhaps bankruptcy. A long-term solution would require a politically sensitive restructuring possibly including privatization. Many other countries have either completely or partially privatized their postal systems with generally good results.
The recent shakeup, slowdowns, and scrapping of needed equipment is a separate act of sabotage to interfere with mail-in voting.
It's not "political" any more, and it's not a matter of opinion. America's electoral system is officially under attack.
Trump recently appointed a new Postmaster General which is reportedly making a lot of changes. This is now a political issue because many believe the changes are politically motivated due to the upcoming election during a pandemic when, not surprisingly, a lot of people will vote by mail.
It's especially concerning because we are clearly on a course which will lead to exceptionally low confidence in the results of the election, no matter what happens. So even if the USPS isn't profitable, it seems worth while to at least prop it up for a few more months so we can have a fair election and (equally important) have the results be trusted by the people.
But besides all that: There is simply no scenario where allowing the USPS to half-fail improves the situation.
Even if the USPS was running perfectly, this election would still have unusually low trust, because of the pandemic and because of our especially toxic political climate. Adding a hobbled USPS to the mix makes things much worse.
Lots of people are saying Trump is trying to "muddy the waters" of the election. I suppose Trumps motivation may be debated, but I think the result is clear: A half functioning USPS will "muddy the waters" of the election result. Does anyone disagree that this will be the result? Even if (being charitable) that was not the intention.
> “We are aware that some of the mailers may have directed the return envelopes to the wrong election offices.”
Nothing is fraud if you're naive/charitable enough in how you interpret things.
> Ballot-printing firms couldn’t keep up with demand, and the already rickety U.S. Postal Service didn’t move the ballots to and from voters quickly enough.
>> Patel said his campaign is looking at thousands of other votes that seem to be missing postmarks entirely—a post-office error
Read your own link.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-13/trump-app...
It will be interesting to see what they submit.
> During an interview with Fox Business Network, the president said that he will block funding for the US Postal Service requested by Democratic lawmakers, citing his intention to prevent universal mail-in voting. Trump acknowledged in the interview that the USPS will be unable to process a large number of ballots from mail-in voting without the funding.
Here’s an example:
https://www.vice.com/amp/en_ca/article/n7wk9z/the-post-offic...
”Motherboard identified 19 mail sorting machines from five processing facilities across the U.S. that either have already been removed or are scheduled to be in the near future. But the Postal Service operates hundreds of distribution facilities around the country, so it is not clear precisely how many machines are getting removed and for what purpose.”
The headline is what will be politically thrown around, but the true assessment of the facts won’t occur. How many sorting machines do they have, and why are they shutting some down? Is this routine? Have we clearly identified that it’s a budget issue?
We spent almost a year tracking Russiagate, so this kind of bullshit is par for the course.
I'm no expert but I recall the USPS acting like a bank, making money from savings accounts and other financial services. Would be interested in some of the various arguments for or against privatization/funding.
The USPS is not a business. It does not lose money.
The USPS is a service. It costs money to run, like other services in the country (Medicad, the military, the EPA).
If you're upset about the USPS losing billions here and there, wait till you hear about the military losing 750 Billion each and every year!
I live in rural America and let me tell you the USPS is a complete joke here. Everyone knows it, and we choose to use UPS/FedEx instead. I don’t have a mailbox anymore nor do I have a P.O. Box. Many neighbors are going this way, too. We don’t want or need their services anymore. They’ve become too unreliable.
Right? Or is the Post Office a special case?
And honestly I could probably be convinced that there is no responsible way to get ourselves out of the mess we put ourselves in over the last several decades and the only solution is a commander-in-chief willing to be irresponsible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_Enha...
Was it not confirmed yesterday that the USPS is being purposefully sabotaged by the current administration? Or was it facing problems previously, and the current administration decided to use the existing problems to its benefit? Is it not well within the federal government's power to simply increase funding, or does the USPS function like any other business?
I am not trying to spark a political debate here, I am genuinely curious.