THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON THE POST OFFICE, UNIONS, and DEMOCRACY ITSELF
The Hartmann Report
Thom Hartmann
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2020
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is Trump's Postmaster General trying to starve the Post Office as a part of the Republican war on government and unions? Or are the steps he's taken to slow mail delivery meant to undermine vote by mail? Mark Dimondstein of the American Postal Workers Union joins Thom for the view from the inside.
And meanwhile- is what is going on in Portland a trial run for a much bigger crisis Trump hopes to provoke in cities across the nation?- And will Chicago succeed in keeping Trump's unaccountable goons off their streets?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Tom Hartman program. |
| 0:15.0 | Mark Demenstein is with us. |
| 0:17.0 | He is the president of the American Postal Workers Union, the APWU, their website, appropriately APWU. |
| 0:24.0 | org, part of the AFL-CIO. |
| 0:26.3 | In fact, Mark Demenstein is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council. |
| 0:31.0 | Mark, it's great to have you back. |
| 0:32.1 | Our President Demenstein, it's great to have you back. President Demenstein, it's great to have you back. |
| 0:34.0 | You've got a brilliant article in these times, and I've seen versions of it in other places, common dreams, |
| 0:39.5 | and whatnot, about the Trump administration's plans to privatize the post office and just basically destroy it. |
| 0:45.6 | What's the state of things right now? |
| 0:47.6 | Well, Tom, first, thanks so much for having me and to talk about an issue so near and dear to the American people. |
| 0:56.4 | The Trump administration went on record in June 2018, |
| 1:00.4 | calling for the open privatization, |
| 1:02.5 | meaning selling the post office off the private corporations, |
| 1:06.0 | and therefore whatever mail service we may get, |
| 1:09.1 | and package service would be strictly based |
| 1:11.2 | on whether somebody can make a profit and that's obviously |
| 1:13.5 | counter to the public mission and the universal service mandate that says we go and rightfully |
| 1:19.2 | says we go to everybody's address 160 million addresses a day no matter who we are where we live and it's a great |
| 1:25.7 | small D democratic right in the peoples. But the current state of affairs |
| 1:30.0 | where be indeed the Postal Service is being deeply affected by the pandemic |
| 1:35.0 | induced economic crisis. So mail volume has fallen off. The post office is not |
... |
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