Apart from knocking on some doors for the Democratic Party in
Flagstaff, and helping Brian collect signatures when he was running for an
alderman position in Tucson, I have never been ACTIVE in politics. Up until recently,
I rarely donated money to any political figure, but decided to start this year
because this election is probably the most important of my life.
In 2016, 127 million votes were cast, 97 million registered voters
DID NOT VOTE – and the election was decided by less than 100,000 votes in 3
states. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3,000,000 votes – and lost the
election.
Throughout our country’s history, countless Brennans have served in political offices. Two Brennans that I REALLY miss are former CIA director John Brennan and former Postmaster General Megan Brennan.
John Owen Brennan (born September 22, 1955) is
a former American intelligence officer who served as the Director
of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from March 2013 to
January 2017. He served as chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama, with the title Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security
and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the
President. Previously, he advised Obama on foreign policy and
intelligence issues during the 2008 election campaign and presidential transition.
Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for Director
of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the first Obama administration
over concerns about his support, after defending on TV the transferring of
terror suspects to countries where they might be tortured while serving under
President George W. Bush. Instead,
Brennan was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor, a position which did
not require Senate confirmation.
Brennan's 25 years with the CIA included work as a Near East and South Asia analyst, as station chief
in Saudi Arabia, and
as director of the National
Counterterrorism Center. After leaving government service in
2005, Brennan became CEO of The Analysis
Corporation, a security consulting business, and served as chairman
of the Intelligence
and National Security Alliance, an association of intelligence
professionals.
Brennan served in the White House as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security between
2009 and 2013. Obama nominated Brennan as his next director of the CIA on
January 7, 2013. The ACLU called
for the Senate not to proceed with the appointment until they confirmed that
"all of his conduct was within the law" at the CIA and White House Brennan
was approved by the Senate
Intelligence Committee on March 5, 2013, to succeed David Petraeus as the Director of the CIA
by a vote of 12 to 3.
On August 15, 2018, President Donald Trump announced that he had
revoked Brennan's security clearance, although the White House reportedly did
not follow through with the revocation process. Brennan had harshly
criticized Trump several times since his election and responded to the
revocation by stating "My principles are worth far more than
clearances. I will not relent."
Brennan serves as a senior national security and intelligence
analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brennan_(CIA_officer)
This morning, Brennan posted an article in The Atlantic about
the first time that he met Trump. It was the day after his father died. In his
words, “The tears welled up in my eyes, as the memory
of my father’s life and the example he set filled me with deep pride and
overwhelming sadness at the same time. The mere thought of briefing
President-elect Donald Trump that afternoon and then gathering with my family a
few short hours later at the wake of my father—the moral, ethical, and
intellectual antithesis of Trump—jarred my very soul.
I had decided beforehand that I would share the
full substance of CIA intelligence and analysis on Russian interference in the
election without providing any specific details on the provenance of our
knowledge. The sensitive sources and methods related to counterintelligence and
Russia are among the nation’s most prized jewels, and I lacked confidence that
all the individuals in that conference room had the requisite understanding of
classification procedures and controls—not to mention the personal discipline
and integrity—to avoid devastating disclosures, either inadvertent or willful.
Moreover, given his public praise of WikiLeaks, strange obsequiousness toward
Vladimir Putin, and disdain toward the U.S. intelligence community, I had
serious doubts that Trump would protect our nation’s most vital secrets.
His alertness never faded during the briefing, but
his demeanor as well as his questions strongly revealed that he was
uninterested in finding out what the Russians had done or holding them to
account. Rather, Trump seemed most focused on challenging the intelligence
and analysis underlying the judgment among the CIA, FBI, NSA, and the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence that Russia interfered in the election
and that the interference was intended to enhance his election prospects. It
also was my clear impression—based on the thousands of such briefings I have
conducted over more than three decades—that he was seeking most to learn what
we knew and how we knew it. This deeply troubled me, as I worried about what he
might do with the information he was being given.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/morning-i-met-donald-trump/616556/
Megan Brennan, a 34-year employee of the Post Office, retired on June 12, 2020.
When Megan Brennan became Postmaster General in February 2015, the Postal Service was
already facing some of the greatest challenges in its 245-year history. The
internet was and is continuing to knock mail volume to significantly lower levels.
During most of her tenure as PMG and Chief Executive Officer, the Board of
Governors – the equivalent of a corporation’s Board of Directors – did not have
a quorum.
This,
along with a lack of any serious Congressional postal reform legislation,
significantly constrained what she could do and led to mounting challenges. It
also deprived her of advice and counsel from Board members, which is essential
for any chief executive.
As PMG, Megan
Brennan was also in the political arena from Day 1 on the job. She regularly
dealt with strident and vigorous demands from Members of Congress, the
Administration, labor unions, the mailing industry, and many others, including
the Lexington Institute. ( The Lexington Institute was founded
in 1998 by former U.S. Representative James Courter (R-NJ), former
congressional aide Merrick Carey, and former Georgetown University professor
Loren Thompson. As of July 2018, they are respectively the chairman, chief
executive officer and chief operating officer of the Institute.)
The institute's political philosophy is center-right, peace
through strength, defense of U.S. economic interests, energy independence,
and market-driven solutions to social needs. Although the organization's
mission statement does not describe it as "conservative" or
"libertarian," it opposes tax increases, the creation of entitlements,
and federal intervention in the daily lives of citizens.)
Megan
Brennan has consistently addressed these matters with grace and poise and won
widespread respect. For example, Dr. Peter Navarro, Director of The White
House’s Office and Trade Manufacturing Policy, commended her “strong leadership” which was essential
in overhauling the worldwide system of international package pricing, a
formidable and important accomplishment as the previous system led to job
losses and other economic costs in the United States. Dr. Navarro called Megan
Brennan “one of my favorite people in this town.”
Megan Brennan
announced her retirement on October 16, to be effective January 31. It was soon
clear she would not be easy to replace.
The search for a
new PMG is a challenging and arduous process. If the Postal Service were a
business, it would be one of the 40 or so largest companies in the United
States. The PMG must also deal with many politicians, given that the Postal
Service serves all Americans and is part of the federal government.
As the Postal
Service discussed in a May 6 news release, the extensive nationwide search for a
new PMG was done with the help of two outside consulting firms and the Board of
Governors “reviewed the records of more than two hundred candidates for the
position before narrowing the list to more than fifty candidates to undergo
substantial vetting.”
https://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/thank-you-postmaster-general-brennan/
Louis
De Joy (who had NEVER worked for the Post Office) was not one of the 50 names,
so how did he get elected Postmaster General?
1) DeJoy has served as
a major donor and fundraiser for a number of high-profile Republican Party
politicians. He helped fund President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, co-chaired Rudolph Giuliani's North Carolina fundraising
campaign in 2008, and donated a combined $27,700 to Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign. He
donated $1.2 million each to Donald Trump's 2020 campaign, and to the Republican
Party since 2016.
In April 2017, DeJoy was named one of three deputy finance
chairmen of the Republican
National Committee, along with Trump's then-lawyer Michael Cohen and
the venture capitalist Elliott Broidy In May 2019, DeJoy became
local finance chairman for the 2020
Republican National Convention, then-planned for Charlotte, North Carolina.
In September 2020 The Washington Post and The New York Times reported
that according to former employees at DeJoy's logistics company New Breed, he
participated in a straw donor scheme,
reimbursing employees for making political donations. Employees, particularly
managers, were expected to contribute to fundraisers for Republican candidates
and organizations; they would then be reimbursed in full through the company's
system of bonuses. Campaign finance records show that
employees at New Breed gave substantial sums to Republican candidates and
negligible amounts to Democrats.
Between 2000 and 2014, when New Breed was sold, 124 employees
gave a combined total over $1 million. Many of these people had not donated
before they worked at the company and have not done so since leaving. Pressuring
employees to make campaign donations, reimbursements for such donations, and
use of corporate money to support individual politicians are in violation of
both North Carolina and federal election laws, although some statutes of
limitations may have expired. At an August congressional hearing DeJoy
emphatically denied having engaged in such practices. The House
Committee on Oversight and Reform has opened an investigation
into the allegations and
the possibility that DeJoy lied to the committee, and has called for the Postal
Service to suspend him. North
Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said that reimbursing someone
for a political contribution would be a
violation of state law and that "Any allegation that’s this
serious merits investigation."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy
2) The Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service is comparable to a board of directors of a publicly held corporation. The Board normally consists of up to nine governors appointed by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The
nine governors select the Postmaster General, who becomes a member of the
Board, and those 10 select the Deputy Postmaster General, who also serves on
the Board. The Postmaster General serves at the pleasure of the governors for
an indefinite term and the Deputy Postmaster General serves at the pleasure of
the governors and the Postmaster General.
Currently,
there are 7 members of the board, one of whom is Louis DeJoy. The
governors are chosen to represent the public interest generally and cannot be
representatives of special interests. Not more than five of the nine may belong
to the same political party. They shall be chosen solely based on their
experience in the field of public service, law or accounting. However, at least
four of the governors shall be chosen solely based on their demonstrated
ability in managing organizations or corporations (in either the public or
private sector) that employ at least 50,000 employees.
All 6
of the current board members were nominated by Trump, and only 2 (Bloom and
Moak) are Democrats.
https://about.usps.com/who/leadership/board-governors/
Louis
DeJoy does not have a term limit, and the earliest date that any of the governors
will leave the board is December of 2021.
3) Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman was forced out on June 1, because he was a strong advocate of voting by mail.
If I were president Biden, I would IMMEDIATELY fire Louis DeJoy, ask Megan Brennan to fill in until another QUAILIFIED candidate is found, and nominate two more DEMCRATS to the Board of Governors.
God bless the Irish
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