by Walter W. Murray, reporter
Maybe THIS is why your mailbox was overflowing with Hillary Clinton propaganda last year… and why material from conservative candidates never quite found its way to your home in one piece.
Turns out Clinton had some friends in high places helping her out.
The United States Postal Service was just busted for violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal workers from engaging in political activity while on the job. The violations in this case were so blatant that even Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill — a Democrat — called it “shocking.”
Yes, the post office was in the tank for Hillary Clinton!
An investigation by the Office of Special Counsel revealed that the USPS worked in collusion with the National Association of Letter Carriers, the union that represents postal workers, to allow employees to push for Clinton.
“The Labor 2016 program sought to ‘elect Hillary Clinton and pro-worker candidates across the country,’” the report stated, with 97 postal employees sent to campaign for Democrats in the battleground states of Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
This little scam worked by exploiting a union-backed program for unpaid leave. The contract allows for USPS workers to use the time off for union business, including meetings and charity events.
It DOESN’T allow for unpaid time off to work a political campaign.
In fact, the investigation found that if someone simply went to a supervisor and asked for unpaid time off to work for a politician, they would get a quick “No.”
But when the requests came via the union stating that the workers needed unpaid time off for union activity, they were almost never denied.
Since the union endorsed Clinton, that means workers were given time off to support her… but any worker who wanted unpaid time off of his own to work for the Donald Trump campaign would be told to go stick his head in a mailbox.
“The practice also put non-union employees, or union employees who supported other candidates, at a disadvantage,” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican, said in a statement.
That’s not only unfair. That’s ILLEGAL – but supervisors were practically bullied into allowing it. One told investigators he feared a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board if he didn’t allow the time off.
Even worse, many of the requests went from the union to upper management, and then were passed down to lower managers who “interpreted the communications as directives.”
They looked like marching orders straight from Washington!
“When supervisors get the message, ‘You have to let these people off,’ that’s a pretty clear political operation, quite frankly,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a Republican, said at a hearing this week.
Now, federal workers of course have the same rights as every other American when it comes to supporting and working for the candidates they choose.
But they have to do it in their own time and on their own dime.
And while unpaid time off means these workers weren’t paid by the USPS, it still cost the agency big money. They had to hire replacement workers, paying overtime and even penalty overtime (double pay) for them to do the work left behind by those out campaigning for Clinton.
The report finds it cost $90,000 in overtime to pay for the “unpaid” time off. That’s money out of your pocket – money you pay every time you mail a letter – being used to essentially pay for postal workers to campaign for Clinton.
The report finds that the program “goes back many election cycles,” as far back as the 1990s… with one person interviewed for the investigation saying it may have started smack in the middle of the Bill Clinton presidency.
Everything seems to go back to the Clintons, doesn’t it?
It took a while, but it looks like at least one law finally caught up to them.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is a survival expert with decades of experience in prepping and the author of “America’s Final Warning.”