Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week (usually)
Jake Johnson at Common Dreams writes—Sanders Says Congress Must Stop Trump From Exploiting Covid-19 Crisis to 'Bankrupt and Privatize the Postal Service':
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday urged Congress to act immediately to stop President Donald Trump from using the novel coronavirus outbreak "as an opportunity to bankrupt and privatize the Postal Service," a longstanding goal of the conservative movement.
"Now, more than ever, we need a strong and vibrant postal system to deliver mail 6-days a week," tweeted Sanders, a senator from Vermont. "Congress must act now to save it."
Sanders' call comes as the Postal Service is warning that it will completely run out of cash within the next several months if Congress doesn't act swiftly to provide relief. The USPS has been hit hard by the sharp decline in mail volume caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Postmaster General Megan Brennan told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a briefing Thursday.
"At a time when America needs the Postal Service more than ever," Brennan said, "the reason we are so needed is having a devastating effect on our business."
The Postal Service is calling on Congress to provide $75 billion in cash, grants, and loans, but President Donald Trump is standing in the way of any relief funding for USPS.
As the Washington Post reported Saturday, the president "threatened to veto the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, if the legislation contained any money directed to bail out the postal agency." [...]
During a press briefing last week, Trump went on a falsehood-filled tirade against the Postal Service and said the independent executive branch agency should simply "raise prices" by "a lot." [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women - except, of course—those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape ‘kit ‘n’ stuff, But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. Unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years - whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know - actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.”
~~Tina Fey, “Tina Fey’s Censored Palin Joke” (2010)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Obama, Democrats, privacy organizations still opposed to CISPA:
The White House hasn't actually issued a veto threat over the current House efforts to revive last year's disastrous cybersecurity bill, CISPA, but it's all but done so.
The Obama administration issued a statement Thursday that indicated it's not likely to support a cybersecurity bill approved by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee this week.
While stopping short of an outright veto threat that many privacy activists may have wanted, the statement made clear that the administration does not believe the bill in its current form does enough to safeguard personal information.
The pushback from privacy organizations, the White House, and tech corporations has resulted in some modifications in the bill that will go to the House floor next week. But not enough to satisfy the White House or privacy experts. For example, the bill still would allow information about us, regular Americans, to be shared with the National Security Agency. There's still no requirement that any personally identifiable information about us that is shared between companies and the government is stripped out.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin rounds up a weekend of stupid "reopening" theories & media exposés of Trump’s virus failures. State of the campaign: Just what you thought it was. A few churches hold services, then play the martyr. Real-time virus response A/B test: IRE v UK.
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