The Antics of a Postal Union Worker

Right From the Start

Last week, a moron flew his gyrocopter onto the White House grounds without incident. He penetrated the heavily fortified defenses of the White House with ease and without triggering an armed response. The pilot, Doug Hughes, was arrested and subsequently released on his “own recognizance” – which means without being required to post bail. He is under modified house arrest meaning that he has to wear an ankle bracelet that records his movements.

Despite the enormity of his actions, Mr. Hughes is in no danger of being jailed now or in the future for two simple reasons:

1. His actions are in furtherance of the far left’s political agenda and that far left currently controls the presidency and the Justice Department (Attorney General Eric Holder) who will determine what charges, if any, Mr. Hughes faces.
2. Mr. Hughes is a member of the public employees unions that provide an unlimited amount of campaign cash and services to the Democrat Party.

And the responses were predictable. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) (Mini-Me to Senator John McCain (R-AZ)) raced to the microphones, puffed himself up for his newest outrage and declared, as reported by TPM LiveWire on April 16:

“Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he didn’t understand why the man who flew into restricted airspace and landed his gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol wasn’t shot down, The Washington Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.

“Graham said during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt that shooting down a rogue plane was justified because of the real threat presented by Islamist terrorism.

“’He should have been subject to being shot out of the sky,” Graham said. “I don’t know why he wasn’t, but our nation is under siege. Radical Islam is a threat to our home land. There are probably radical Islamic cells in our backyard already.’”

[I refer to Mr. Graham as Mr. McCain’s Mini-Me, because he, like his good friend Mr. McCain, courts the press and publicity by stabbing his fellow Republicans in the back. The latest such incident is a gratuitous swipe at Sen. Rand Paul (R-TN) over President Barack Obama’s shortcomings as a negotiator in dealing with Iran. As reported in the Huffington Post on April 5, 2015:

“Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took a shot at the foreign policy of his Republican colleague Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday, saying that the Kentucky senator was the only potential presidential candidate that could not get a better nuclear deal with Iran than the one that President Barack Obama negotiated.

“Graham, who is considering his own campaign for the White House, said that he favored leaving current sanctions against Iran in place and then letting a new president negotiate a deal with Iran in 2017.

“’The best deal, I think, comes with a new president. Hillary Clinton would do better. I think everybody on our side, except maybe Rand Paul, could do better,’” Graham said on CBS’ “’Face The Nation.’”]

And this, by the way, is how a gratuitous swipe should look – supported by facts.

Leaving aside Mr. Graham’s bloviating, the idea of downing Mr. Hughes’ gyrocopeter, bearing the emblem of his employer, the United States Postal Service (USPS), with anti-aircraft missiles installed on the roof of the White House is a little extreme given that Mr. Hughes’ intention to do precisely what he accomplished was the worst kept secret since Rosie O’Donnel came out of the closet.  Mr. Hughes had informed members of the press of his intentions as long as two months before the incident. He had said that he was outraged at the amount of “big money” in politics and that he intended to use his gyrocopter to deliver a message in the form of letters to President Obama and “all 535 members of Congress.”

Of course when Mr. Hughes and his fellow members of the public employee unions complain about “big money in politics” they are talking about corporate or business money and exclude the massive amounts of money spent on politics by the public employee unions. In Mr. Hughes’ letter that he intended to deliver he states:

“A corporation is not ‘people’ and no individual should be allowed to spend hundreds of millions to ‘influence’ an election.”

(Public employee union money is gathered at taxpayers expense as a mandatory deduction from all public employees regardless of whether they support the union’s political decisions or not.) The restriction or elimination of corporate and business contributions have become the latest “cause celebre” for America’s liberals with no less than presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D) proposing a constitutional amendment to limit the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. And not surprisingly that is precisely what Mr. Hughes in his letter demanded:

“Fortunately, a solution to corruption is not complicated. All the proposals are built around either reform legislation or a Constitutional Amendment. Actually, we need both — a constitutional amendment and legislation.”

Mr. Hughes’ protest against corporate money was music to the ears of the mainstream press that continue in lock step with liberal groupspeak.

Mr. Hughes filed a flight plan. They knew he was coming. Nothing was done to stop him. Why? Precisely because it would provide free publicity for “the cause.” While Mr. Obama’s White House denies any knowledge of Mr. Hughes’ plans, they have lied about everything else and it is safe to assume that they are lying about this.

Mr. Hughes made his initial appearance in court wearing his USPS jacket. The Tampa Bay Times reported in its online posts that a fellow postal union member stated:

“On a day in which our union president has asked union members to show up on tax day to remind the public the PO gets no tax dollars and pass out info in general, and pathetically most members will not, Doug Hughes steps up big time. Great job Doug!!!”

The American Postal Workers Union has contributed over $1.5 Million each election cycle for congressional races – the vast majority of it to Democrats – for the past decade. It joins the AFL-CIO (and its affiliates), The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the National Education Association (teachers union), American Federation of Teachers Union (AFT) as the backbone of the Democrat money machine.

And Mr. Hughes is in no danger of losing his job with USPS because it is almost impossible under public employee union contracts to fire an employee. In this instance, Mr. Hughes would have to have been told by management specifically not to fly his gyrocopter with the USPS logo into restricted airspace and land on the White House lawn. Absent those specific admonitions he is golden.

And so America has been treated to another pointless distraction while it should be focused singularly on the continuing war on extremist Islamic terrorism and Mr. Obama’s sell out on the Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. What perfect timing.