>> Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was testifying before the House Oversight Committee today.
And there's no question that today's testimony got a little more spicy than what we've seen
before. Members of the House were much more tough on DeJoy. And a good example of that
was the line of questioning that we heard from Katie Porter.
Let's watch. >> Mr. DeJoy thank you for being with us today.
What is the cost of a first-class postage stamp?
>> 55 cents. >> What about to mail a postcard?
>> I don't know, ma'am. >> You don't know the cost to mail a postcard?
>> I don't. I'll submit that I know very little about a postage stamp.
>> Do you know about, within a million or so, can you tell me how many people voted
by mail in the last presidential election? >> No, I cannot.
>> To the nearest ten million? >> I will-
>> Is that a no Mr. DeJoy? >> I would be guessing, and I don't wanna
guess.
>> Later Katie Porter asked if the Inspector General finds that there is a severe conflict
of interest with DeJoy serving as Postmaster General. Would he step down, and he essentially
said no, he doesn't see why he would need to. And by the way, I mean that video didn't
surprise me at all because we already know that during Louis DeJoy's confirmation hearing
for Postmaster General.
He needed help to get through answering very basic questions about the post office, he
has no expertise in the post office. The only thing he knows about it is that the companies
that he has a vested interest in would love to see the post office destroyed. Because
they wanna destroy competition to increase their profits.
And remember, again, Louis DeJoy does have conflicts of interest because he's invested
in those companies, in those competitors. And yeah, I mean, this is such an enlightening
moment because on one hand you have this man deny. That he's single handedly dismantling
the Post Office, before an election where there's gonna be a giant influx of mail-in
ballots.
But then the way he answers the very specific questions that are asked of him, makes it
abundantly clear. That he's trying to dismantle the Post Office for political reasons, political
and also financial reasons. >> What's interesting to me is that when you
look at all of the people who are destroying this country, they all look alike.
They all have something in common in the gender, the race, sexual preference, heterosexual,
straight white males. And when we talk about these things, people think it's a feminism
agenda that wants to take the man down. Or that people of color wanna take people of
color down. I am sure that there are thousands and thousands of white young men in this country
that come from humble beginnings that would be efficient at doing these types of jobs.
But this is a group of people that belong to this elite group based on being grandfathered
into these positions of power. And they all look the same and they all have been in power
so long that they're constantly throwing temper tantrums, and they're quite mediocre. Because
I guarantee you that if any one of us, were the Postmaster General, the Pied Piper, whatever
you want to call them.
We would know every inch of our business and we would have to because, especially you and
I as women, we would have to be twice as good at the job, three times competent, to be able
to hold that position. And we would not be able to afford to not be able to answer a
question cuz it would be an aha moment for whoever was cross examining us.
When you look at these people, they're all in this criminal gang, right? You wanna point
out Bloods and Crips and MS-13, people who are starving for scraps and resorting to crime
as a result of their survival. But you look at this gang, and what are they doing? They
think it's laughable that they're uninformed, they're disconnected with the population.
They don't know anything about what's going on in real life for us cuz they're unaffected.
Look at this smug guy, this is what they call you smug, they call it junk smug, that's smug.
This man does not know what is going on in his place of business. And any person who
belongs to any marginalized group who cannot afford not to know any part of where they
work.
I just think this is a moment in history where it's all, we're now starting to see the faces
of all of the people who have been running us into the ground for profit and benefit.
>> You're so right, you know what people like Louis Dejoy and Donald Trump and every single
member of Trump's family remind me of?
The kinds of people who go to like a Kroger or any type of grocery store where they have
a section dedicated to nuts and candy that you can buy by the pound, right? And they
show up and they're like that's for me and they just raid it, they're just snacking on
the nuts and the candy.
And they think they don't, they think that it's theirs to raid, it's their personal stash
of nuts and candy. While the rest of us have to work real hard to have the means to buy
the nuts and candy. I know it sounds like a ridiculous analogy, but it's the sense of
entitlement, right?
Where they don't care about doing the moral thing or the ethical thing, they don't care
about the general public. They see opportunities to raid resources for their own personal enrichment
and their own personal wealth. And we have seen that happen time and time again. It's
certainly more pronounced in the Trump era because Donald Trump doesn't try to hide it.
He's the least sophisticated person on the planet and so he doesn't have the ability
to hide the terrible corruption and thievery he gets involved in. Same goes for the people
that he helps to push into positions of power within the federal government. And so you
see it happening before your very eyes.
The frustrating thing is to hear Republican lawmaker consistently gaslight you and make
you think that you're not seeing or try to make you think you're not seeing what you're
two eyes are seeing. Now luckily there were some very, very strong Democrats who asked
some pretty tough questions during this hearing.
One of them was Ro Khanna and so I wanna take a look at those highlights.
>> Our defense department, we don't tell them you have to go sell weapons to make revenue,
to serve the American people. We don't say that about our health service or the National
Institute of Health.
Why should we have a different standard for the Postal Service? Why do you have to go
make a profit instead of just serving the American people?
>> Sir, that's a interesting and good question. And it's not that we need to make a profit,
it's to be self-sustaining, which means at least cover your costs.
>> But why? It's such a small, I mean- >> I'm not a legislator, I'm the Postmaster
General. >> Do you know the history, do you remember
the time in the Postal Service history where that wasn't a requirement?
>> I do, in the 70s. >> Actually it was from 1840 to 1970, we funded
the Postal Service.
We didn't require them to make a profit because we thought people should in rural America,
other places and our veterans should serve. And one of the reasons people serve in the
Postal Service, who've served in our military is they view it as public service.
>> I mean, does Louis DeJoy know anything about the Post Office, anything at all?
And I know, he's right, Ro Khanna, of course, is the one who's right in this conversation.
Because the Post Office is a government agency, and the fact that it's being thought of as
some sort of business that needs to turn a profit is absolutely ridiculous. We don't
think of any other government agency as something that needs to have a profitable business model.
>> Only the social programs that benefit them are the programs that they wanna keep in place,
right? Not just mailing votes but benefits for elderly people, social security benefits,
people who are on food stamps, people who have medical staff that they tend to. There
are people who, I mean you can be privilege enough where your whole life is online and
you can do everything digitally.
But there's a great number of people in America who have to depend on the Post Office for
basic necessities and survival. And so only people that talk about socialism and communism
in this country how it's always being. It's being poked at people just to scare them because
of what happens in places like Venezuela and China and Cuba.
But we all know that in America we have a lot of socialist programs, but these programs
are only here to benefit these people. Our tax payer dollars fund the salaries of people
who send their kids to the better schools, have the best healthcare. And while we struggle
and wonder where our funds are being misappropriated to.
So when you see someone like this in the Post Office saying this is because they're not
thinking about a lot of those people who actually vote for Donald Trump. Who are poor and don't
have resources and have to wait on things from the Post Office. Unfortunately many of
those people don't have the education because they also are in areas where their education
systems suck.
Because, again, those programs don't matter because Ivanka gets to go to an Ivy League
school. And Eric even though he looks confused all the time can go to a good school. So here
we sit here and talk about these social programs, but these social programs are benefiting who?
But poor people, marginalized people, average people, who don't have trust funds. So of
course they wanna do away with it and make profit for it like they do everything else.
While the people who don't have jobs and are worried about getting evicted. Are funding
and lacing the pockets of the people who are selling us vitamins and all the things they
scare us and telling us that we need right now because of this pandemic.
And the great big circle of BS continues to go around and around. While those of us at
the bottom keeps struggling, and then they wonder why people say that one day the poor
will eat the rich. >> There's never any call to dismantle the
Federal Reserve. Which printed literally trillions of dollars during the pandemic and handed
it over to banks and corporations.
I mean when it comes to that kind of cash giveaway, there's never any call to dismantle
it or to stop it. But when it comes to the crumbs that the American people are fighting
for, because they just need something to survive. Then we talked about dismantling it, we talked
about the cost effectiveness of the agency.
And make no mistake, okay. Yes, Republicans right now, absolutely, wanna dismantle the
Post Office because there are political reasons to do so. There's a way of disenfranchising
voters during a pandemic by making it increasingly difficult for people to vote by mail. But
in the past, during the Obama era, there were plenty of Democratic law makers who wanted
to defund the Post Office, who thought that it needed to be privatized.
Kevin Drum, who's a liberal writer in the media, still thinks it's a good idea to privatize
the Post office. It's absolutely disgusting. Matthew Yglesias, back in 2012, okay? Was
in favor of privatizing the Post Office. So, now all of a sudden the chickens came home
to roost, and they're like, this isn't so good, this is not a good idea.
Of course, it's not a good idea. This is a government agency that provides a fundamental
important service not just to Americans living in big cities, but Americans living in rural
areas. Where delivery services, privatized delivery services refuse to deliver anything
because it's too costly for them. So let's just keep that in mind, and the Post Office
is expected to fund pensions 75 years in advance.
That was something that was implemented by the Bush administration to make it increasingly
difficult for the Post Office to stay afloat.