President Trump wants to privatize the Postal Service.
Uproar ensued from the usual characters; but they all seemed to miss one important thing. CORRUPTION! Or maybe they don’t miss it and just want to perpetuate it? Hmm?
You see, I can speak about this with the utmost qualification and experience gained having been baptized by the fire of the postal service and its government employee union as far back as 2005 and most recently witness to FIVE STOLEN U.S. MAIL CRIMES FROM INSIDE AND OUT OF FEDERAL COURT.
Shortly after that 2005 date many years ago, just a few months before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals transferred one case into being held by another case and locked down the first case from the public eye, certain district and circuit courts found out that a letter sent overnight to the court was stolen. It was recovered inside the postal service and eventually delivered, like the law requires. Upon receipt the rather crumpled and torn envelope bore the distinctive impression of a glove compartment latch, including lubricant from the latch. Lubricant, not motor oil.
Through a very long story and one for another time: that instant case involved a connection between the N.A.A.C.P. and the Postal Union. Not the Letter Carrier’s Union [4] but the big dark dirty one [5] : the one who is doing its best to stop President Trump’s move to private. Why? Pretty simple actually. Once it goes private the public service unions are out of luck. They will have to recertify. And that alone would disrupt the corruption engine.
If the Postal Workers’ Union could not sell access to mail, sell services of great need like picking letters out of the system and hiding them; redirecting overnight letters to foreign distribution centers: how could its members make extra cash? How could the Postal Workers’ Union hold so much power over politicians if they did not have the keys to manipulation of the nation’s mail?
Then this year, President Trump issued an executive order just a week before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on a package of cases out of the Phoenix, Arizona District Court that involved mail theft. During 2016-17 a person or persons remaining nameless for this exercise; caused to take place the theft of 3 pieces of mail from the 9th Circuit Court sent properly with sufficient postage . THREE TIMES the mail was stolen or redirected to an international distribution center headed for who knows where. All three times the stolen letters were found and eventually delivered to the clerk’s office then to the court then placed on the court docket to make that theft public knowledge.
“Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress ‘To establish Post Offices and post Roads’.” [6] It does NOT compel the congress to FUND the postal service it has created, nor does it compel the country to run the postal service. It simply creates the existence of a post office and routes to deliver the mail.
In 2018 mail was stolen TWO MORE TIMES from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The second one of those was a sting [7] . It set up what letter, what envelope, what postage, what time, what it looked like, what postal box to be put into and it had postal inspectors able to take an entire day to set up the surveillance of the postal theft. The document linked at #7 below was placed on the appeals court docket after the sting took place but it was received beforehand as is indicated by the dates on the document. It took using Fedex to even manage to get anything delivered to the court so they could be aware of this illegal disaster and FEDEX did a wonderful private sector job doing it.
It is time for the United States Postal Service and its deeply corrupted union to be removed from the public’s responsibility and made to survive through innovation and competition or get out of the way.
Why have you not heard about these mail thefts [8] [10]?
The court is not done yet. Opinions soon [9].
“If you steal mail, you could be facing serious punishment under US Code Section 1708. Because the USPS is a federal agency, mail theft is charged as a federal offense. Conviction of any federal crime, even mail theft, can result in significant federal prison time and fines.” [11] “Theft or Receipt of Stolen Mail Matter Generally (United States Code 18 Section 1708.) Under US Code 18 Section 1708, mail theft is defined as taking any piece of mail that is not your own for any purpose. A piece of mail can be any letter, postal card, package, box or bag. Mail theft can result from stealing from private mailboxes, collection boxes, postal workers or mail trucks.” [11] What does that really say?
US Code Section 1708:
“Whoever steals, takes, or abstracts, or by fraud or deception obtains, or attempts so to obtain, from or out of any mail, post office, or station thereof, letter box, mail receptacle, or any mail route or other authorized depository for mail matter, or from a letter or mail carrier, any letter, postal card, package, bag, or mail, or abstracts or removes from any such letter, package, bag, or mail, any article or thing contained therein, or secretes, embezzles, or destroys any such letter, postal card, package, bag, or mail, or any article or thing contained therein; or Whoever steals, takes, or abstracts, or by fraud or deception obtains any letter, postal card, package, bag, or mail, or any article or thing contained therein which has been left for collection upon or adjacent to a collection box or other authorized depository of mail matter; or Whoever buys, receives, or conceals, or unlawfully has in his possession, any letter, postal card, package, bag, or mail, or any article or thing contained therein, which has been so stolen, taken, embezzled, or abstracted, as herein described, knowing the same to have been stolen, taken, embezzled, or abstracted— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” [12]
Knowing the content of a stolen piece of mail and acting upon that knowledge where three ELECTED OFFICIALS all do the same thing (a high likelihood that such coordinated actions would not have happened save for the content of the stolen mail) is strong circumstantial evidence that the mail being acted upon; not delivered to the court, was known to all three: and that is the same as stealing it. [13]
It is highly doubtful that any mail theft could have happened at the direction of VERY HIGH PROFILE REPUBLICAN ELECTED OFFICIALS SEEKING RE-ELECTION IN ARIZONA if the postal service was private and the union did not run it from within.
PRIVATIZE THE POSTAL SERVICE NOW!!!
References:
[1] https://hotair.com/archives/2018/09/20/bipartisan-push-block-trumps-plan-privatize-usps/ .
[2] https://www.govexec.com/management/2018/04/trump-creates-task-force-fix-postal-service-though-congress-already-has-its-own-ideas/147433/
[3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-task-force-united-states-postal-system/
[4] https://www.nalc.org/
[5] https://www.apwu.org/issues/fighting-privatization
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause
[7] https://leehempfling.com//pinalcountyjustice.com/Lee_Hempfling_et_al_v_Kent_Volkmer_et_al__09cae-17-16329__0027.0.pdf
[8] https://www.uspsoig.gov/investigations/internal-mail-theft
[9] https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/opinions/
[10] https://www.cbs58.com/news/cbs-58-investigates-several-postal-workers-fired-after-reports-of-stolen-mail
[11] https://www.wklaw.com/mail-theft-a-federal-offense/
[12] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1708
[13] https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=191