Courtesy of Pam Martens
Billionaire Charles Koch, Chairman and CEO of the Fossil Fuels Company, Koch Industries
Since May, the nonprofit group funded with Koch’s fossil fuels money, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has been mobilizing to defeat the House stimulus bill known as the HEROES Act. In a letter sent to members of Congress, AFP Chief Government Affairs Officer Brent Gardner wrote that AFP wants to see the bill killed and specifically mentions it does not want to see a bailout of the Postal Service.
Today, Aaron Gordon at Vice is reporting that he’s gotten his hands on internal documents from the Postal Service which show that orders have come down from above to destroy approximately 500 mail sorting machines – which cost millions of dollars. Witnesses have told Gordon that they’ve seen the machines “destroyed or thrown in the dumpster.” Gordon’s latest report follows yesterday’s news that mail service has been slowed down in multiple parts of the country.
The order to destroy critical equipment comes at a time when President Trump has launched his own campaign against millions of Americans being able to mail their ballots for the November 3 presidential election, saying there will be massive fraud if ballots are mailed. No evidence has emerged to support that assertion. Democrats see the President’s efforts as an attempt to disenfranchise voters because the President is trailing presidential candidate Joe Biden significantly in the polls.
The changes at the Postal Service come after a major Trump donor, Louis DeJoy, became the Postmaster General in June. According to NPR, “DeJoy has contributed more than $1.2 million to the Trump Victory Fund, and millions more to Republican Party organizations and candidates, according to Federal Election Commission records.”
Gordon’s latest bombshell at Vice comes on the heels of another outstanding piece of journalism in July by Lisa Graves of True North Research for In the Public Interest. Graves traces the long history of Charles Koch and his now deceased brother, David, to privatize the U.S. Postal Service and the insidious means that were used to try to bring that to fruition.
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