Congressmember Katie Porter Whiteboards the Postmaster
You’d better slip a Valentines Day card into your holiday mail, because it’s gonna be slow getting there. Don’t blame your mail carrier for the delay; bad decisions about postal operations are coming from the top.
The United States Postal Service is the government institution that touches the most Americans on a regular basis, and it’s in big trouble. I’m only going to say this once, so pay attention: USPS is a government service. It is not a business, nor was it ever intended to be by the framers of the Constitution.
Ron Bloom, the chair of the USPS Board of Governors—the body with the power to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—is up for reappointment, and it’s up to President Biden to replace him.
Without Bloom, who --excuse the contradiction-- is a Trump Democrat, DeJoy’s ten year plan to slow mail and increase prices will continue to wreak havoc in the lives of millions of Americans (especially outside big metro areas).
As the Postal Service is cutting the use of airmail and restricting how far mail can travel within a day, it’s raising rates. Cutting staff, removing mailboxes, and closing small offices will disproportionately hurt low-income people and those who live in rural areas. What part of serving All Americans does he not understand?
DeJoy's certainly being paid enough.
The U.S. Postal Service paid its top executives more in bonuses and perks last year than at any other point in the past decade, adding up to $370,622 in extra income for Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and four of his deputies, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of the agency’s financial disclosures.
DeJoy got a $75,000 performance bonus in fiscal year 2021, plus about $56,000 in other perks, which includes membership in two airline clubs, retirement counseling and financial planning services, according to the Postal Service’s newly released 10-K report. DeJoy earned this in addition to his $305,681 salary, the highest ever paid for the top job at USPS. In all, DeJoy earned about as much as President Joe Biden.
At a special hearing on Tuesday focused on the results of a USPS audit by its Inspector General, Rep. Katie Porter highlighted the plummeting percentage of on-time deliveries largely beginning under DeJoy's tenure.
The DeJoy administration got “whiteboarded.” It was a political work of art by a Congress member who did her homework, kept the questions simple, and left no room for wiggle.
https://twitter.com/HappyBitchFace/status/1460579981562634248?s=20
There is a future for the postal service, but it’s just not enriching its leadership and their friends, nor is it becoming a symbol of despair of the lost hopes of our national aspirations.
While the communications landscape has changed in recent years, USPS has become an ugly stepchild. Hobbled by a Congressional mandate requiring the agency to pay now for future retirement costs, and lacking a sense of strategy, its reputation is declining, and the future is in question.
And that’s a good thing for the forces seeking to drown the government in a bathtub. The erosion of trust in public institutions is a fundamental building block of the movement towards corporate authoritarianism.
Via Daily Kos:
As The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman noted in an August 2020 column, the reason for this is likely that the USPS represents everything Republicans hate, and getting rid of it serves a goal they all tend to share.
If you were a highly ideological conservative, the Postal Service would be a problem. It serves every American, no matter how far-flung, with a low-cost, reliable service — and provides secure employment with good wages and benefits for a blue-collar, unionized workforce, many of them Black or members of other minority groups. Americans love it, which almost inevitably makes them feel warmer toward the government in general. Why, it’s positively socialistic!
So there’s a vision underlying these changes. It’s of a Postal Service that no longer treats all Americans equally, but charges some more than others. It charges everyone more than it does now for some services, which would be a gift to its competitors such as UPS and FedEx. It values “efficiency” over getting the mail out to every address every day. It’s less reliable, less certain, and eventually, less highly regarded.
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The movement to privatize government services got serious six decades ago, after the publication of economist Milton Freidman’s Capitalism and Freedom.
By placing societal functions within the realm of the marketplace, the door was opened for selling off or contracting out large chunks of what effectively was government power.
Smaller government meant more freedom, more efficiency, and more competition, we were told. What it means in reality is a concentration of wealth, the destruction of much of the social safety net, and --most of all-- less involvement of the federal government in societal change.
The economic ‘miracle’ of Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet is a prime example of where this approach leads. Gross Domestic Product soared, so for those who chose to define the economy in that fashion, I guess it looks good.
For the non-investment class, things were not so good. In one decade the unemployment rate went from 4.3% to 22%. Real wages declined by 40%. In two decades the number of Chileans living in poverty was at 40%. Even today, Chile has the widest inequality gap of any nation in the OECD.
Donald Coen’s The History of Privatization is a good place to start for readers interested in learning more about how we got on the road to becoming an oligarchy.
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October, which is traditionally a slow month for mail, marked the start of USPS new, slower delivery standards. They failed to meet their target.
If there was one thing the Biden Administration could do that would materially affect the lives of millions of Americans in a good way, it would be to announce a new day for the government agency (that was, before DeJoy) held in esteem by 91% of the American people.
Here’s one take, via the Boston Herald:
There are ways to make things better that are more creative and sustainable. For starters, Congress could pass the Postal Service Reform Act that would eliminate the unwise requirement that the agency prepay its retirees’ health benefits. That change would allow the agency to diversify its pension investments, as is done in most advanced countries, and would do a lot to fix its financial problems.
Other suggestions include taking advantage of the Postal Service’s presence throughout the country, in otherwise isolated or depressed areas. Possibilities include using the Postal Service to process hunting and fishing licenses, register voters, help census workers and do contact tracing for health agencies.
One promising idea is reviving the postal banking system, being tried as a pilot program in four cities. That would bring in revenue while helping disadvantaged people who have little or no access to banks and often pay exorbitant fees for basic services such as check cashing.
What’s clear is that there are solutions to embrace, should lawmakers take this seriously. The postal service has been and should remain a vital part of America.
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