Postage Due

Louis DeJoy holds on to the office of Postmaster General for the time being.  But hopefully not for long.

President Biden announced that he will appoint two new members of the Postal Service's board of governors to replace a Republican and a pro-DeJoy Democrat, which makes the current Postmaster General's hold on power tenuous and his time likely numbered.  As there are already four other Democrats on the board, Biden can only appoint one more Democrat, so one of his appointees must be a Republican.  The Republican, Derek Kan, is a former aide to Mitch McConnell and now runs an e-commerce fulfillment company.  The Democrat, Daniel Tangherlini, is a former administrator of the General Services Administration under President Barack Obama and also served as the chief financial officer of the Treasury Department.

Tangherlini and Kan replace governors whose terms are expiring, and Biden may have to wait to appoint an additional Democratic postal governor to get DeJoy removed.  That day can't come to soon enough.  DeJoy has deliberately slowed down mail by dismantling postal sorting and routing equipment deliberately, and charging extra for parcels during the holidays.  DeJoy says this is all necessary to keep the Postal Service from losing money, but his cure is clearly worse than the illness.  

I'm just glad he never became a doctor.

Did I happen to mention that the logistics company he founded does business with the Postal Service?

It's getting to the point where we may have to mail Christmas cards this week to ensure they get to where they're going before New Year's.  And if you have Hanukkah cards to mail, well, you're already out of luck, as Hanukkah is next week.  Me, I'm getting tired of all of these mail delays.  I mailed a cable bill payment two weeks ago and it only got to its destination late last week.  Too many people have overdue bills simply because the payments didn't get there in time.  If this is DeJoy's idea of quality service, I'd sure hate to see what he considers substandard. 

Stamping The Future

Linn's Stamp News, the premier stamp collecting magazine in the United States, has reported that U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy (below) has made his first three appointments to the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, the committee that receives, reviews, and recommends topics for U.S. stamp issues.  And the choices clearly indicate that the Postal Service's stamp program is likely to go in a very different direction.  At best, this means the the CSAC will be much less tolerant of stamps for stupid topics such as ice cream sundaes, blockbuster movies, and comic-book characters.  At worst, this could mean a surge of bigotry and narrow-mindedness in the stamp program.  

I say this because all of DeJoy's CSAC appointments are white males with Anglo-Saxon and Celtic names - that is, what Trump supporters call "real Americans."  One, Kevin Butterfield, is an historian who specializes in George Washington, and another, Roger Ream, is an educational executive who is a proponent of free-market values and limited government.  The third, Joseph Kelley, barely qualifies as a nod to diversity; he's a doctor who specializes in women's cancer. 

I have a feeling that when De Joy took over the Postal Service in the summer of 2020, he took a look at some of the stamps to be issued that were already approved - particularly the Hip Hop stamp issue - and said, "No more of that!"  (Full disclosure: I didn't like the Hip Hop stamp issue either, and I steadfastly refuse to include it my collection.)  But while this conservative bent to the CSAC means we'll likely see more stamps with Washington and Franklin on them, as well more stamps for statesmen, authors of classic novels, medical researchers, and landmark historical events - you know, serious stuff - it will likely mean fewer stamps for women and people of color, as well as fewer stamps for the contemporary fine and performing arts.  I'll come right out and say it - we're going to see a lot less diversity in stamp topics.  We'll see fewer stamps for modern artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and more stamps for nineteenth-century landscape painters like George Inness.  We'll still get stamps for scientists, but fewer of the scientists honored will be immigrant women of color like physicist Chien-Shiung Wu,  who was honored by a U.S. commemorative stamp issued on February 11 of this year.  Stamps for popular musicians?  Only for the most middle-of-the-road performers, if even that.  Maybe the DeJoy CSAC will approve a stamp for, say, Karen Carpenter, and a good case can be made for Al Jarreau.  But a stamp for the Allman Brothers . . . yeah, that's not going to happen, and for a Tupac Shakur stamp, that goes double.

By the way, the press release from the Postal Service regarding these appointments does not mention DeJoy's role in them, which suggests that DeJoy is trying to court as little controversy as possible,  But these particular appointments - especially the appointee of Roger Ream - are bound to spark an outcry from women, people of color, and liberals if and when they suddenly find dead white European-American males on stamps  - for the record, no living people are allowed on U.S. stamps, though the rule gets broken sometimes - at the expense of, say, black female authors or Hispanic musicians. That means no more stamps for people like author Zora Neale Hurston or musician Tito Puente, two individuals who have been honored on U.S. stamps already. We'll see some sports figures on stamps, like Yogi Berra, who is being honored by the Postal Service later this year.  But a stamp for Muhammad Ali?  Not going to happen. We'll see a stamp for Republican football star Tom Brady first, and Brady is very much alive.

Perhaps I'm being unfair.  The 2021 U.S. stamp program is pretty much done already (why no stamp for Amtrak on its fiftieth anniversary?), so it probably won't be until the 2022 U.S. stamp program is announced at the end of this year, and that's when we'll see the influence of these new appointments manifest itself.  So let's give these honkies the benefit of the doubt.

Though, I will be happy to see fewer stamps honoring dessert food.

DeJoy's Money Game

The controversy created by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy just gets bigger and bigger.  During his tenure at the Postal Service, he has diminished mail service all over the country, but it's his past as the CEO of a logistics company in his home state of North Carolina that has raised eyebrows.  The Washington Post recently reported that DeJoy forced employees to contribute money to Republican candidates for office, including Thom Tillis, North Carolina's junior U.S. Senator.  DeJoy would compensate for his strong-arming by reimbursing those employees with large bonuses. 

So what, you ask?  Well, even though the employees got their money back, the GOP candidates in North Carolina still got money they wouldn't have gotten otherwise, and the use of company funds to compensate the employees meant that it didn't cost DeJoy himself a cent.   

That's against the law. 

Plain and simple. 

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) has already called for action in response to the charges against DeJoy, which are not only highly credible but also highly unbecoming pf a Postmaster General.  "It demands a full and independent investigation, Schiff recently wrote.  "And [it] adds another compelling reason that Louis DeJoy should resign. Immediately."

And DeJoy might have to do just that.  North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, reacting to formal complaints regarding DeJoy's actions, may be  going ahead with an investigation very soon.

It's unclear whether DeJoy has perpetrated, or has attempted to perpetrate, a similar scheme in the Postal Service.  But this revelation should prove once and for all that the only place DeJoy belongs inside a post office is as a mug shot on the bulletin board.  

Going Postal

Louis DeJoy, the U.S. Postmaster General (below), took part in hearings before two separate congressional committees - one in the Senate, the other in the House - and he tried to put the best spin on the "reforms" that he has instituted at the United States Postal Service.

He more or less told both committees that his changes are meant to deliver the mail in a leaner, more efficient way, and he added that he would ensure the prompt dispatching of mail-ballots for the fall elections.  He even endorsed mail-in voting, saying he votes by mail himself, and he added that Trump's demonization of mail in voting was "not helpful." 

Neither was DeJoy's testimony.  For all of his rhetoric to bring a more business-oriented approach to the Postal Service, he still defended his wrongheaded efforts to eliminate collection boxes and sorting machines, and his commitment to offering overtime "as needed" to keep the mail moving contradicted his earlier efforts to getting rid of that too. And, this past Saturday, U.S. Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) was quick to point out that the mail slowdowns, which DeJoy blamed on the pandemic, actually started months after the country partially shut down - and right after DeJoy took over the Postal Service.  Also, under questioning from Representative Katie Porter (D-CA), DeJoy revealed that he didn't know the domestic postal card rate (35 cents) Nor could he answer her question of how many people voted by mail in the 2016 presidential election (139 million people).

Even more damning were some documents that came to the attention of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the committee that held this past Monday's heating, showing that mail delivery had indeed dipped after DeJoy took over. The documents had been withheld from public view, and the committee's chair, Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) accused DeJoy of withholding information and "concealing documents and downplaying the damage that you’re causing." Representative Maloney is threatening a subpeona for more inside documented information.

DeJoy, a logistics expert, is actually doing what any business CEO would do to keep a company going strong, but that misses the point.  As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been quick to point out, the post office is a government service.  Maybe a government service that pays its own way, but a government service just the same, and it isn't designed to run like a business like Federal Express (oops, excuse me -FedEx - the name was shortened to appease customers who can't spell) and United Parcel Service (which UPS still stands for).  Those companies ship and send mail for profit and only reach a limited clientele. The Postal Service, which is a directive of the original U.S. Constitution, is a universal institution designed to serve everyone, just like the Food and Drug Administration (another government agency being politicized by Trump) and the Treasury Department.  Because it's not just mail-in ballots that are on the line.  It's also prescription medications, bill payments, paychecks, and, yes, Christmas cards from Aunt Susan (I do have an aunt by that name, by the way, and she not only sends me Christmas cards every year, she sends me birthday cards every year!).  The Postal Service serves the public, not customers.  DeJoy ignores that distinction at the country's peril - and his own.

No DeJoy In Mudville

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy thought he could get away with cutting back post office hours, taking away mailboxes, and cutting back on overtime. He was wrong. The public outcry against his "reforms" has been so great that he now says he will halt his actions until after the 2020 election. Mail processing facilities won't be closed before then, hours at post offices would stay the same, and overtime would be approved "as needed."

DeJoy (above) may have been wrong about being able to do all of this with no opposition form the public, but not as wrong as he will be if he thinks this move will take the heat off him. Nancy Pelosi, for one, isn't satisfied.  She noted that DeJoy's about-face does not restore changes already made, stops only a few of his proposed changes, and does not go far enough to ensure that mail-in ballots for the election will be fairly counted.  So, he can still expect to have to appear before the House Oversight Committee meeting on August 24, and he even has to face a Senate panel.  And the House is going ahead with a vote on a bill to keep the Postal Service afloat.

I don't yet have full confidence that an election can be held with the guarantee that all mail-in ballots will be counted.  But I'm closer to having it after all of this news.

I gotta hand it to Trump, though, because even though the Postal Service was created out of the old Post Office Department in part to take the power of appointing the Postmaster General - a position that pre-dates American independence and first held by Benjamin Franklin - out of the hands of the President, Trump simply appointed sycophants to the Postal Service's board of governors to ensure the selection of his right-hand man for the job.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy is sending mail-in ballots out to all of the stat's registered voters as soon as possible.

Playing Post Office

It makes sense that, in the wake of a pandemic, Donald Trump would conspire to get his own choice for Postmaster General - a prerogative no U.S. President has had since 1969, when Nixon appointed Winton Blount before the Post Office Department became the Postal Service - into office, and then Louis DeJoy, said Postmaster General, would start making "reforms" to slow the mail down and make mail-in voting more precarious as Trump keeps shouting out loud how ripe for fraud it is.

The idea is that if DeJoy slows the mail down enough, the ballots mailed in for the 2020 presidential election won't arrive in time to be counted and that some ballots sent out for filling in won't make it back at all.  So now we have to worry if the Postal Service leadership is in cahoots to get Trump returned to office in a sham election.  I'm as worried about this as I am about the tropical storm due in my area tomorrow, not to mention catching COVID-19.

I've already seen the mail slow down.  I seem to get magazines I subscribe to a little bit later than usual, and, as I'm paid by mail for my job, I'm getting those much later.  My boss mailed my most recent check a week before it was postmarked.  This is the challenge anyone who votes by mail this year due to of COVID-19 faces.    

I went third party for President in 2016, my first time ever, and now in 2020, I hope to again do something for the first time ever by voting by mail.  I haven't ruled out voting in person, because COVID-19 is pretty much under control in my state and my town, but if I do vote by mail, I want to get my ballot as quickly as possible and I want to mail it as quickly as possible so it gets to its intended destination - I assume that would be my county court house - before November 3.  If it takes ten days to get there, I'll mail it twenty days before Election Day. DeJoy is smart.  Voters supporting Joe Biden have to be smarter.

There is a silver lining to Trump's war on mail-in voting: Republicans are likely to be at a disadvantage given that his supporters tend to be older and whiter and likely more afraid to vote in person due to a pandemic.  And there are a lot of young people in the Democrats' rainbow coalition who are ready to vote in person even if they have to camp out at the polling places to do so.  But with three months to go, anything can still happen.  Like maybe another late-October superstorm like Sandy.  Don't think meteorological history can't repeat itself.

I'm worn down by Trump fatigue.  A lot of us are.  I think people are ready to do the heavy lifting to send him packing.       

Oh, DeJoy!

Louis DeJoy is the new Postmaster General of the United States.  And that's not good.

DeJoy is a Trump donor and a Republican Party hack who is likely to do more harm than good to the United States Postal Service, which has been losing money and has been getting closer to possible bankruptcy.  Although he serves at the pleasure of the U.S. Postal Service's board of governors, he acts like he serves at the pleasure of the President, something no Postmaster General has done since the post office went from being a Cabinet-level department to an independent agency in 1971.  And Trump has repeatedly called the post office a joke, calling for the Postal Service to raise rates on packages since his arch-rival Jeff Bezos' Amazon firm, which would pass the costs onto the consumer.

Although President Nixon's push to have the post office pay its own way and be weaned off taxpayer support has largely been seen as a qualified success, to say the least (the very least), one good thing about the Postal Service being a separate agency is that the executive branch has no direct control over the agency anymore.  This means that, up to now at least, the White House has never had one of its cronies in charge.  Before then, there were numerous examples of that.  President Benjamin Harrison give the job to Philadelphia department store owner John Wanamaker, who showed favoritism toward Republican postal employees and banned a Tolstoy novel from being sent by the U.S. mail - on obscenity grounds - because he couldn't get a big enough discount on copies for his department store.  Wanamaker also ordered postal uniforms from a company he had a financial interest in.  (I still love his store [now a Macy's], the most beautiful edifice in all of Philadelphia.)  I need also mention Lawrence O'Brien, a Postmaster General from the 1960s who was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson.  O'Brien's background was in real estate and public relations. A former director of the Kennedy and Johnson presidential campaigns, O'Brien is best remembered as the Postmaster General who canceled postal contracts with railroads, which relied on them to keep their passenger trains going, and had the mail delivered only by air and highway transport.  The result?  The decline of passenger trains in the United States.  This led President Nixon to nationalize intercity rail transport and create Amtrak, but O'Brien's idiotic move led to many passenger rail routes across America bring terminated.

Oh yeah, O'Brien went on to become the commissioner of the National Basketball Association.  I fail to see the connection between mail and sports.

DeJoy's background is in logistics, but he has no direct experience with moving the mail.  And as a Trump loyalist, he can be expected to carry out various "reforms" that can cripple the Postal Service more than any presidentially appointed Postmaster General did back when it was called the Post Office Department.  Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing voting by mail at the same Trump - and, likely, DeJoy - are trying to stop it.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(Although, if DeJoy intervenes with the U.S stamp program and gets rid of some of the more trivial stamp subjects the Postal Service has embraced of late - stamps for ice pops, pickup trucks, and, being issued this week, hip-hop - ! - I won't be offended.)