The Hatch Act gets tossed around a lot these days. But there might actually be a Hatch Act violation finding now.
The United States Postal Service violated federal law by letting employees do union-funded work for Hillary Clinton's campaign and other Democratic candidates while on leave from the agency, according to an Office of Special Counsel report obtained by Fox News.
The OSC determined the USPS "engaged in systemic violations" of the Hatch Act, a federal law that limits certain political activities of federal employees. While employees are allowed to do some political work on leave, the report said the Postal Service showed a "bias" favoring the union's 2016 campaign operation.
The investigation was launched months ago after Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., brought constituent complaints to the OSC in October. The constituent, identified as a USPS employee, was concerned the Postal Service “incurred unnecessary overtime costs” and “improperly coordinated” with the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) when it released members for several weeks of “union official” leave without pay to participate in campaign work.
According to the report, 82 percent of the work took place in 2016 battleground states: Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
According to OSC Acting Special Counsel Adam Miles, the NALC provided lists of letter carriers to participate in campaign activity to a senior headquarters USPS labor relations official, who then emailed the lists to other USPS officials across the country. According to Miles, the local officials “interpreted the communications as directives” from USPS headquarters to release the carriers on union official leave without pay.
According to the report, local supervisors raised concerns about the impact this would have on postal operations and initially objected to releasing them, but USPS managers instructed local supervisors to let the workers participate.
Because the two are rather thoroughly intertwined. As is the case across much of the government bureaucracy and its relationships with government unions. That's always been the game back to the Tammany Hall era. The unions and the bureaucracy are both part of the same political machine. And the political machine is a Democrat operation.
This is all the more true in agencies and organizations like the Post Office which are run largely on behalf of the union and whose reasons for existing remain increasingly dubious.
But all the officials expected Hillary to win. And to be rewarded for their dilligence in helping her win. The machinery of government has been thoroughly politicised now in ways that are far more frightening, as the rash of leaks show, that this seems like innocent child's play.
Compared to using the NSA as a tool in a political campaign. Not to mention the IRS. This seems almost innocent.