Historians: …well, we can’t really say these historical figures were “gay,” because “gay” and “homosexual” are very modern identities. In different times people had very different views of sexuality.
Me: …so, by that same idea, I guess we can’t say they’re straight either, right?
The USPS is the fastest, cheapest, and most accurate mail service on the planet last I heard, and is the biggest employer of veterans in the entire country.
On top of that, mail carriers: -have wages that top out at over $30 an hour (and their wages go up in predictable steps based on how long they’ve been with the USPS) -have excellent benefits, including a shit-ton of vacation time, plus a pension, and they can retire after thirty years
But they also have one of the oldest, biggest, strongest unions in the country. That must piss off Republicans so much.
Also, side note: they take zero taxpayer dollars. They’re entirely funded by postage.
(”But I heard they were doing terribly!” They’re not. Congress saddled them with pre-funding their retirement 75 years out to intentionally put them in the red and make them look bad. I’m not joking or exaggerating. There’s tons of info, but here’s the USPS’s own info: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/fy2010/ar2010_4_002.htm )
Yes, I was told, in the United States, mail gets picked up from your house, six days a week, free of charge.
I told my friends in Turkey about all this. They shook their heads in disbelief, wondering how easily I had been recruited as a C.I.A. agent, saying implausibly flattering things about my new country. The United States in the world’s imagination is a place of risk taking and ruthless competition, not one of reliable public services.
I bit my tongue and did not tell my already suspicious friends that the country was also dotted with libraries that provided books to all patrons free of charge. They wouldn’t believe me anyway since I hadn’t believed it myself. My first time in a library in the United States was very brief: I walked in, looked around, and ran right back out in a panic, certain that I had accidentally used the wrong entrance. Surely, these open stacks full of books were reserved for staff only. I was used to libraries being rare, and their few books inaccessible. To this day, my heart races a bit in a library.
The Supreme Court just issues a ruling allowing Ohio and other states to purge voters from their election registration rolls due to their failure to cast a ballot in previous elections.
This is a major victory for the Trump administration and the GOP, and a direct consequence of the Supreme Court being stacked with more conservative judges (the votes were 5-4). This is also a huge part of what Trump/the GOP were counting on to save them in the 2018 midterm elections, which is where Democrats have been hoping to take back a majority in the House, giving them more power to combat Trump’s abuses of power and Republican legislation.
What this means is YOU CAN NOT ASSUME THAT YOU ARE REGISTERED for the 2018 elections, just because you SHOULD be. Thanks to this decision, red states can purge voters’ registration based on their not having cast a ballot in even just previous federal elections, NOT just the national Presidential elections. Effectively, if you haven’t voted in previous senate races or for congressional representatives in the past few years, that’s all they need now to say you’re no longer registered and need to register again.
They’re deliberately counting on people assuming they’re still registered and so not checking until after registration deadlines have passed, or showing up to vote this November and only then finding out they’re no longer registered, when its too late to do a damn thing about it.
And this is absolutely targeted at marginalized communities, low income voters, disabled voters, and basically anyone who simply can’t always AFFORD to keep on top of every federal election and show up to vote in every senate race, etc. Which not so coincidentally happen to be all the communities and voters who have the most to gain from Democratic victories in the 2018 midterms and are the least likely to cast votes for GOP candidates at this point.
This was absolutely a calculated effort aimed specifically at keeping the GOP in power with a majority control of the government come November, and unfortunately, it has a DAMN good chance of accomplishing just that if it goes by unacknowledged. I’m not looking to alarm or panic anyone, simply to say:
If you are a registered voter in a red state at this point, please please please do not take your registered status as assumed. Check on your registration status, look up all relevant voter registration deadlines for your state and district, CIRCLE THAT SHIT ON YOUR CALENDAR, and check your registration status AGAIN right before those deadlines pass, so you can be sure of it before its too late to do anything about it til the next voting cycle.
use vote.org to check your registration status. use the form, or scroll down to find the resources for the state you live in.
Thoughtfulfangirling 