#In a Senate hearing in August this year, the head of the Postal Service, Louis DeJoy, was asked by Senator Hassan of New Hampshire if he was aware that in a Northeastern postal center, 4 postal sorters were removed -- one sold for scrap -- and there was no replacement when the one sorter left malfunctioned.
DeJoy is committing to many things that he is not doing. He says that election mail will be sent in 1 to 3 days. He says he is committed to "stabilizing service, " but he embraces "Six-Day Postal Service." He had no answer when Senator Enzi asked him why mail in his state goes to Denver to be sorted. When several senators told him that they are getting thousands of complaints about delayed mail, DeJoy replied that part of the problem is that mail carriers are getting Covid-19. Senator Hawley of Missouri asked DeJoy if he could promise that his rural constituents in Missouri will get their mail on time. DeJoy tried to assure the senators raising such questions by denying that he had curtailed overtime, although the record shows the opposite.
Committee chair Ron Johnson of Wisconsin tried to shift the blame by saying that there was an organized campaign on the part of Democrats to create a false issue on the postal service malfunction. DeJoy took Johnson's lead to claim that Democrats are "ginning" up stuff.
Louis DeJoy made a big point that mail trucks leave on time, and he had time sheets in hand at the hearing. There are reports that many of the trucks leave empty because there are not employees available to fill them. A recent photo taken inside a postal service center shows mail strewn around in tremendous disarray. Contrary to a DeJoy claim that election material will be delivered within three days, the Postal Service sent out communications last week with a warning that ballots received within seven days of November 3 might not be delivered on time.
#Madison Pauly, "Buy the Book," Mother Jones, September/October 2020.
A policy written by a company called Lexipol, states that officers "could use deadly force to protect themselves or others from any 'imminent' threat of serious injury or death." "Lexipol says it has provided policies, training, or services to 8,100 public safety agencies." "As many as 95 percent of law enforcement agencies in California have purchased Lexipol policies, or received them through their insurers.
"The ACLU has contended Lexipol rules for handling immigration violations, which in some states include a provision allowing cops to consider 'a lack of English proficiency' when deciding whether someone may have entered the country illegally. "In the South Lake Tahoe case, a federal judge has spent more than a year considering the argument that Lexipol's expansive definition of an 'imminent' threat violated the Fourth Amendment's protection from unreasonable searches or seizures. In the meantime, California's legislature passed the Act to Save Lives, which promised to hold officers to a higher standard by allowing them to shoot people only when 'necessary,' not just when 'reasonable.' "
"There are policies that ought to be shaped with input from community members, and instead they're being written by a private corporation that very clearly aligns with the police narrative that use of force is justified and acceptable, even in cases where it's unnecessary."
#Seth Freed Wessler, "Cold as Ice," Mother Jones, September/October 2020.
"In the last decade, Conway's agency has identified more than 21,000 people to hand over to ICE. Since 2017, Gwinnett, Georgia's second-most populous county, has helped to detain more immigrants than any other county, except five counties in states along the US-Mexico border." "About 267,000 noncitizens were deported by ICE last year." "In Gwinnett and more than 140 other counties, ICE has authorized and trained sheriff's deputies to assist it."
"California's 2017 'sanctuary state' law set new limits on ICE's ability to use local jails to identify and detain noncitizens." "Jail's role in detaining immigrants has thereby become a local political issue." "Conway has even let ICE set up its own office inside the jail to supervise and streamline its work."
"At a 2018 visit to the White House, Conway boasted about the tens of thousands of 'illegal aliens' that had been identified inside his jail." "In 2015, he [Conway] said anti-police violence activists were 'domestic terrorists' who advocate murdering cops."
""For generations, Gwinnett County has been a bastion of white conservative political power"; however, many immigrants in the county avoid the cops under any circumstances."
#Lyz Long, "America is failing moms. Let's start over," TIME, August 17/24, 2020.
"We have built an entire economy on the backs of unpaid and poorly paid women. Even as gender roles have shifted in the U.S., the expectation that the mother will be the parent primarily responsible for maintaining the household, and taking care of the children, no matter what else she has on her plate, is still true today as when Bombeck wrote her column." "Although in 2017, 41% of mothers were the sole or primary breadwinners for their families, and an additional 23.2% brought home at least a quarter of their total household earnings, the loss of most outside support--from school, from camp, from day care -- has meant that mothers are the ones picking up the slack. A recent study of about 60,000 U.S, households published in the academic journal 'Gender, Work & Organization' showed that in heterosexual couples where both partners were employed, mothers 'reduced their work some four or five times more than fathers.' "
"First, we need to normalize women receiving help with children. We are the only industrialized nation without guarantied, paid parental leave, and for half of Americans, full-time day care costs more than in-state college tuition." "As economist Betsey Stevenson pointed out to 'Politico': 'We gave them less money to the entire childcare sector than we gave to a single airline, Delta.' " "America has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world (a number that rises significantly for people of color)."
"According to the National Women's Law Center, for every dollar white dads made in 2018, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders moms made 89 cents, white moms made 69 cents, Black moms made 45 cents, Native moms made 47 cents, and Latina moms made 45 cents."
"In 2017, Michelle Budig, professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, published a report entitled 'The Fatherhood Bonus and the Motherhood Penalty,' in which she explained that women's wages decrease after they have kids, while white men's tend to increase though their shifts are not equal across income distributions." "First, there is a wage penalty for motherhood of 4% per child that cannot be explained by human capital, family structure, family-friendly job characteristics, or differences among women that are stable over time,' she wrote. 'Second, this motherhood penalty is larger among low-wage workers, while the top l0% of female workers incur no motherhood wage penalty.' "
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