Forbes has a nasty little piece today attacking Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for introducing legislation to protect the US Postal Service and six day mail delivery. The article, written by self-proclaimed “right wing crazy” Carrie Lukas, is loaded with the kind of tea party talking points and misinformation you’d expect:
To the average citizen, limiting the chore of transferring unwanted junk mail from the mailbox to the recycling bin to Monday through Friday would be very welcome news. Yet the average person also doesn’t have much pull in Washington. That’s because— unlike the paper industry and businesses that create all the mail, as well as the union workers who sort and deliver it— normal people don’t hire lobbyists to tell Congress to stop wasting money subsidizing the delivery of unwanted paper to their homes.
What I really found amazing about Carrie’s rant, though, was the brazen chutzpah she demonstrated in claiming to speak for “the average person”. Carrie, based on her bio, is most certainly not “the average person”- and I seriously doubt she is acquainted with many “normal people”. Her bio says that she is “a contributor to National Review Online, a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute, and graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Princeton University.”
She is, in other words, a very well-connected, and no doubt, well off, lobbyist- a card carrying member of the elite who gets huffy when actual “average persons” who work for a living have the nerve to lobby their elected representatives. But wait- there’s more! Where does Carrie practice her own brand of grass roots All-American activism from?
Belgium.
Yes, that Belgium- you know, the one next to France? Not only that, but this scourge of the alleged “subsidizing” of the USPS lives in Belgium at the expense of the American taxpayer!
From Carrie’s bio: “My husband is a Foreign Service officer and I currently live in Belgium.”
How nice for you! Hope your accommodations are up to snuff! I do like to know that my tax dollars are being well spent. And of course, thanks for maintaining an interest in what’s going on back here in the states!
Au revoir!
Read more: Why Are Environmentally-Conscious Senators Fighting For Junk Mail? – Forbes.