Letters to the Editor: Stop playing politics with the U.S. Postal Service

Support fairness

I know that politics is one of the things that has its basis in feeling, However, this is a time when your vote needs thought as well. If feelings do enter into this presidential election, please examine them closely.

It has been proven, though ignored, that foreign powers have and continue to try to influence our elections. Our president has asked again for this foreign help openly, as in 2016, and has hindered measures to prevent it. He has placed a man with huge investments in delivery services other than the U.S. Postal Service as its head. This appointee is openly trying to slow down the mail to make absentee votes invalid. This action is against all votes, but calculated to hinder those who have issues voting at the polls.

I don’t believe our American values support this kind of action. The Constitution ensures that our vote should count no matter what. If we accept these interferences, then we have let feelings cloud our logical thinking to a point where we are becoming our own enemy and an opponent to long respected American tradition.

Cast your vote, from feelings or logic, but let your representatives know that this election especially has to be decided fairly.

Ed McChord, Lexington

Puppetmaster Mitch

I’ve been wondering why the Postal Service board would name Louis DeJoy to be our new, toxically controversial postmaster general. This, adapted from Mark Sumner, writing in Daily Kos, explains that we have Sen. Mitch McConnell to thank.

Since 1970, Sumner said, members of the board of governors have served in staggered nine-year terms. The idea was to have a board whose membership was spread across multiple administrations and owed allegiance to no particular White House. In 2015, President Barack Obama renominated most of the existing board members for a second term, including some appointed under President George W. Bush.Those six members should all still be on the board. But none are.

That’s because McConnell blocked their nominations. By the time President Donald Trump stepped in, the number of remaining Bush- and Obama-appointed board members was zero. Then McConnell abruptly stopped interfering. That means that every current member of the Postal Service board of governors was appointed by Trump. That board then officially ousted lifelong Postal Service employee Megan Brennan and replaced her with Republican fundraiser DeJoy despite his multiple conflicts of interest.

Now if your prescriptions or bills or payments or Social Security checks are late, you know who to thank.

Joe Glaser, Bowling Green

Pelosi partisan

Let me get this right — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will not call Congress back to discuss help during the coronavirus crisis for American people who are in real need, but is calling back Congress to discuss the Postal Service problems. Guess she really is a partisan hack, who cares nothing for the regular American people.

Jim Wiese, Lexington

Spotlight Duncan

Since the speaker of the House is calling Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Robert Duncan, the chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors, in front of the House, it’s time the Herald-Leader highlights Duncan, a Kentuckian, for his role in degrading service and interfering in the presidential election.

Judy Royse, Lexington

‘Insulting’ scenario

People have no doubt heard the expression, “all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye”, or some similar variation. I bring it up because only a criminal would believe that Americans would turn to crime if given the right set of circumstances. As in committing election fraud with the expanded mail-in voting. Only somebody who thinks like a criminal would put forth such a ridiculous and insulting proposition. Insulting? Absolutely. He’s talking about all of us. Voters. American voters. Assuming each and every one of us would behave exactly as he would behave and commit fraud in order to swing an election. Bad enough that anybody would insult the integrity of the American electorate in this manner. Worse, it happens to be a sitting president of the United States.

Ross DeAeth, Lexington

So many deaths

It was stunning to read Herald-Leader contributing columnist Paul Prather’s recent insightful and compassionate analysis of what constitutes being truly pro-life — basically, caring about the well-being of your brothers and sisters — alongside a letter from a reader who believes we’re debilitating our economy because of “a virus that kills only a small percentage of the population.”

One death is one too many. But that small percentage amounts at this point to well over 776,000 people worldwide, and we don’t yet have validated vaccines or any cure. Three-quarters of a million deaths in six months, with more in the offing, would give most folks pause.

Likewise, most people would try to be less fixated on their rights, which after all do not include doing exactly what you please at all times, and more concerned about others’ rights, which surely include avoiding needless exposure to a possibly lethal pathogen.

And most people would be more sanguine about the effects of the shutdown. Together, we can see to it that when a vaccine and/or cure does arrive, whatever was lost will be recovered. What we built we can rebuild.

Lela Stromenger, Lexington

Untrustworthy judge

In response to Lt. Johnathan Bastian’s assertion that he’s never personally seen overt racism in the Lexington Police Department: Well, we humans are really great at self-justification.

We rarely recognize our own prejudices and injustices. Bastian is disappointed by discussion that the police cannot be trusted to police the police.

It is a basic human truth that we are rarely the best judge of our own actions. And we should never be allowed to be the only judge. That which motivates us will later justify us.

We never feel guiltier about what we’ve done than when we fear someone saw us.

One tactic to bolster self-judgment is secrecy. No one else is capable of judging me if they don’t know what I did. Disagree? Well, you just don’t know the facts of the situation.

Society and the courts can’t blame you if they don’t know the facts.

Another tactic is lengthy investigation of very short timeline events. Ever notice that when police violence is clearly justified that the details seem to be released quickly?

In other cases, an event that lasted 10 minutes will take literally years to investigate and little or no information is released.

Memories fade; outrage fades.

When we judge ourselves, we do no wrong.

Hal S. Midkiff, Mount Sterling

Is Trump a citizen?

According to President Donald Trump, if one of your parents was born in another country, you might not be a U.S. citizen, even if you were born in the United States of America. That’s the argument he used against Obama and now Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential candidate.

If we use his reasoning, then Trump might not be a U.S. citizen. His mother was born in Scotland. His father would be iffy as a U.S. citizen since both of his parents were born in Bavaria.

Where are the birthers? Oh, wait, that’s right, Trump is white. How silly of me to forget. Birthers only question non-whites’ citizenship.

Glenna Brouse, Lexington

A manifesto

For liberty lovers: Your rights end where mine begin. For anti-maskers: I don’t want to play Russian roulette with you.

Richard Peter Taylor, Lexington

Payroll tax crucial

The payroll tax is the U.S. federal payroll tax (FICA), in place since the 1930s and dedicated to funding Social Security and Medicare.This is the only retirement plan for many senior citizens, and typically the entire amount is reinvested in the economy when those seniors buy their groceries, etc.

The reason Republicans dislike the payroll tax is because the farsighted Congress at the time of President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided the employer should pay half because most employers do not provide a pension to their employees. Unfortunately, many employers now classify employees as “contractors” because they don’t have to pay FICA for contractors.

The tax requires that 6.2% of the employee’s wages go to Social Security and 1.45% to Medicare. Then the company pays a matching amount to double the contribution. FICA has a yearly upper limit of $139,500, so most CEO’s only have FICA taken out of their first paycheck each year.

Reducing the payroll tax will be very popular at Mar-a-Largo. It won’t be helpful for the future of middle-class retirees. Any angry old people still wanting to vote for President Donald Trump should opt out of Social Security and Medicare to leave it for those who care.

Kevin Kline, Lexington

Keep tax intact

These are the words that President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to Congress about Social Security in 1934: “Three principles should be observed in legislation on this subject. First, the system adopted, except for the money necessary to initiate it, should be self-sustaining in the sense that funds for the payment of insurance benefits should not come from the proceeds of general taxation. Second, excepting in old-age insurance, actual management should be left to the States subject to standards established by the Federal Government. Third, sound financial management of the funds and the reserves, and protection of the credit structure of the Nation should be assured by retaining Federal control over all funds through trustees in the Treasury of the United States.”

President Donald Trump is trying to destroy the program by separating it from its dedicated funding (6.2% FICA tax paid by both the employee and the employer) and transferring the funding to “general taxation.” If that happens, a future administration and Congress could cut the program to nothing, leaving many elderly Americans destitute. Make no mistake about it; this is their plan. Trump has promised to cut the FICA tax that funds Social Security and to make those cuts permanent if he is re-elected.

James R. Porter, Danville

Mob rule

As violence rages in burning American cities, people should ask themselves if this is what they want for the future of their families, businesses, and homes. The rule of law has broken down as big city mayors sit idly by and do absolutely nothing to protect property, restore order, or enforce constitutionally sworn duties.One has to wonder if these leaders have ever read the Preamble to the Constitution as mob control reaches new levels. The leaders of mobocracy promise nothing but destruction, economic decline, and metropolitan paralysis. Their lack of action threaten fundamental principles that have safeguarded our democracy for more than 245 years, and nothing good can come from this disorder. Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and Minneapolis offer a picture of what this lawless philosophy portends as it endangers every American citizen with chaos.

In the early republic as similar disorders simmered, Massachusetts politician Elbridge Gerry, sensing the danger of mob rule, stated, “The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.” If not stopped, disorder is coming.

Robert Adams, Lexington