USPS Board of Governors Reappoint Ron Bloom Chairman

On November 10, 2021, the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) nine member board of governors, dominated by six of former President Donald Trump’s appointees, reappointed Trump appointee Ron A. Bloom as Board Chairman for another year. The problem is that Bloom’s term as a board member is set to expire December 8, 2021.

Bloom was nominated to the Postal Service Board of Governors by President Donald Trump, confirmed by the Senate and began his service Aug. 20, 2019. Bloom served the remainder of a seven-year term that expired Dec. 8, 2020. When Pres. didn't officially reappoint Bloom for another full term, or appoint someone else for the full term, the USPS Board voted themselves voted to appoint Bloom for a one year holdover term. He was then elected by his fellow Trump appointed Governors, on Feb. 9, 2021, to serve as the 24th Chairman of the Board of Governors.

The Board's action to reappoint Bloom to the Chair position for another year was opposed by Pres. Joe Biden’s three appointees to the board. The six Trump appointee board members refused to allow Biden's three appointees to voice their objections to Bloom’s reappointment as chairman, ruling that their objections were not in order.

The Trump appointees also reappointed current vice chairman, Roman Martinez IV, to an additional one-year term. Martinez, an investment banker who was also appointed by Trump, is serving a seven-year term that will not expire until 2024.

None of the governors discussed the significance of their vote to appoint Bloom to the chair position, however, it clearly signals they intend to reappoint Bloom to another one year holdover term on December 8, if Biden does not appoint someone else to replace Bloom.

Rep. Katie Porter Explains Why Post Master Louis DeJoy Must Go

During a House oversight committee hearing in Chicago, Friday, while questioning a representative of the USPS, Rep. Katie Porter referenced USPS audit statistics to highlight a definite and dramatic decline in on-time mail deliveries from 92% on-time to 61% on-time since the summer of 2020. Porter was leading up to asking the USPS representative about how delivery times have grown significantly slower since Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2020.

"I'm a professor, and I used to do a lot of grading," said Porter. "And 92 is considered widely like an A-minus, 80 is considered hanging on, hanging on to the lowest possible B. 60 percent is at best a D-minus. The Postal Service delivers 48 percent of the world's mail. It is an institution, it is a civic treasure. And we let it get all the way, what you found, is we let it get all the way down to that D-minus level."

As Porter said on Twitter, "On-time mail delivery has plummeted under Postmaster Louis DeJoy—forcing veterans to wait longer for prescriptions, seniors to scramble to pay bills without their Social Security checks, and communities to feel less connected."

The audit found that during the spring of 2020, mail delivery was right around 92 percent — that is 92 percent of the mail got there within the standard of on time,” said Porter in the hearing, holding up a whiteboard displaying the data. “That dropped to 80 percent by the fall of 2020, and by January of 2021 was hovering around 61 percent. I realize this has gone up somewhat since then, but I wanted to ask you, when did Mr. DeJoy take over as postmaster? Do you know?”

“The summer of 2020,” said the witness.

President Donald Trump appointed Dejoy postmaster general for the U.S. Postal Service in May 2020. At the time he held interests of at least $70m in companies that compete w/the Postal Service. Documentation published in October 2021 show that DeJoy had conflicts of interest relating to the company where he served as a chief executive, XPO Logistics, as well as 13 other major companies that have relationships with or compete with the Postal Service.

Rep. Porter is a member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform which has been investigating declining delivery standards at USPS since Mr DeJoy’s appointment.

Watch:

20 State Attorneys General Sue USPS

On October 1, 2021 Postmaster General Louis DeJoy officially implemented his sweeping 10-year USPS restructuring plan that slows mail delivery while making it much more expensive to mail letters and packages. In mid-October twenty state attorneys general filed a complaint over DeJoy’s plan. 

The AG’s suit against the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) argues that the Postal Service didn’t fully vet DeJoy’s 10-year plan. “The Plan will transform virtually every aspect of the Postal Service… rework how the Postal Service transports mail and other products; overhaul its processing and logistics network; enact slower service standards for First-Class Mail and Periodicals and First-Class Packages Services; reconfigure the location of places where customers can obtain postal products and services; and adjust rates,” the attorneys general said in a joint statement.

“Postmaster General DeJoy’s plan to transform the Postal Service will impact mail delivery for everyone in Pennsylvania and across the nation,” said Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro. “This plan is being enacted without any meaningful oversight and review, and the Postal Regulatory Commission, states, experts, and the public deserve to have their voices heard.”

DeJoy’s “radical” plan could “destroy the timely mail service that people depend on for medications, bill payments, and business operations in rural parts of the state,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said in a separate statement.

The complaint charges that the DeJoy plan “reflects multiple unprecedented changes in the Postal Service’s operations and service, at a time when reliance on the mail remains at historic levels, and states across the country are grappling with a resurgence of COVID-19 cases caused by the Delta variant.” The AGs argue that “[t]o date, the Postal Service has only submitted two requests for an advisory opinion to the Commission on important but narrow changes that represent only a small portion of the Plan’s scope.”

USPS Board of Governors to Meet 11-10-2021

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors will meet Nov. 10, 2021, in open session at Postal Service headquarters, 475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW, Washington, DC. The public is welcome to observe the meeting beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET in the Benjamin Franklin Room on the 11th floor. The Board is expected to discuss the following items:

Long Past Time to Fire Postmaster DeJoy

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) used to be one of the best-run and most popular agencies in the American government. But under the leadership of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, on-time delivery has plummeted, wreaking havoc on both individuals and businesses. 

Now, as of October 1, 2021, he has imposed additional sweeping changes with his 10-year USPS restructuring plan that further slows mail delivery while making it much more expensive to mail letters and packages. This is supposedly meant to address a substantial operating deficit, but it could very easily lead to a death spiral, as the worse service causes customers to flee to private shippers, cutting revenue further. That may even be intentional — as John Nichols argues at The Nation, it all smells like the start of a plan for privatizing the agency entirely.

Dejoy’s 10-year plan has drawn a complaint from 20 states’ attorneys general against the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), which argues that the Postal Service didn’t fully vet DeJoy’s 10-year plan: “The Plan will transform virtually every aspect of the Postal Service … rework how the Postal Service transports mail and other products; overhaul its processing and logistics network; enact slower service standards for First-Class Mail and Periodicals and First-Class Packages Services; reconfigure the location of places where customers can obtain postal products and services; and adjust rates,” the attorneys general said in a joint statement.

Privatizing the USPS would seem to benefit DeJoy's business interests, as well as the investment banking interests of Ron Bloom who currently serves as Chairman of the USPS Board of Governors.

The U.S. Postal Service Was Never a Business. Stop Treating it Like One

When the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General, our nation had not yet been founded. The Bill of Rights would not be drafted for another 16 years. Now, nearly two and a half centuries later, the United States Postal Service provides every person in America with a private, affordable, and reliable means to exchange information.

From its origins in the U.S. Constitution, it was intended to connect us to one another, so that we could live as one nation. That idea is even written into Title 39 of the U.S. Code:

The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.

The Postal Service even serves as a baseline for the exercise of American constitutional rights through its conveyance of mail in election ballots.

Recent news that the Postal Service’s financial condition is being used as a pretext for degrading its service – including allowing mail to go undelivered for days and scaling back the hours of or closing post offices – threatens to degrade that constitutional baseline as well.

Republicans Setup USPS for Financial Failure

The USPS has been struggling financially fin the 21st century, in part because email has reduced letter mail volume and revenue, but also because of an extraordinary requirement the Republican controlled Congress and President George W. Bush imposed on it in 2006. Unlike any other government agency or private company, the USPS is required to prepay health benefits for retirees 75 years into the future. This means that the Postal Service must have funds in reserve to pay for future workers who have not been born yet. This requirement has been an albatross around the neck of the USPS ever since it was implemented, costing billions of dollars every year and making up nearly all of its operating losses, which totaled $8.8 billion in fiscal year 2019.

Collin Co., Texas 2020 Election Summary

Collin County, Texas, is one of the fast growing suburban counties in Texas and the U.S. Its relatively young population has a high portion of college educated professional men and women, and it has a growing population of Asian-American voters.

Hispanic-American Voters In Texas

The Texas Tribune Reports: Donald Trump made inroads in South Texas this year. Voters in the historically Democratic stronghold of South Texas are left wondering whether this was simply a strange election during moi an unusual year or a sign of a profound political realignment in the region.

Texas 2020 vs 2016 Turnout - EV Day 18

Texas currently has 16.95 million people, or about 78% of the state’s voting-age population, registered to vote for a net gain of 1.85 million voters over the 15.1 million Texans registered for the 2016 general election. However, there are more than 3 million Texans currently registered who were not registered in 2016. Most of those new registrations are in the 12 most populous and rapidly growing urban/suburban counties that are increasingly left-leaning. (See table below)

Collin Co. TX Bellwether - EV Update

Collin County, Texas, is one of the fast growing suburban counties in Texas and the U.S. Its relatively young population has a high portion of college educated professional men and women, and it has a growing population of Asian-American voters.

Since the 2016 election, the county net voter registration count has increased from 540K to more than 654K, a net registration increase of 114K registrations. The median age of all registered voters is 47 years with slightly more females (321.4K) than males (290.8K) registered to vote.

Colorado Early Voting Turnout - Oct. 26

With one week left before Election Day, more than 1,790,827 Colorado voters have already cast their ballots, far outpacing ballot returns compared to the same time period before the previous two federal elections.

As of late Monday, the latest figures available, 1.79 million of the 3.7 million active voters in the state have cast ballots, Democratic voters slightly leading Unaffiliated voters in ballots returned.

Statewide, 37% of the ballots that have been cast so far are from registered Democrats, 35.5% are from Unaffiliated voters and 26.4% from Republicans.

Across in the 29 counties that make up the 3rd Congressional District, where the ultra-right Republican Lauren Boebert and moderate Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush are campaigning for that now open seat, 217,242 ballots have been cast through Monday, which makes up about 47% of all active voters in the district.

Banking Early Dem Turnout Eliminates Election Night Drama

Daily Kos — An army of early Democratic voters just might kill Trump's chance to sow chaos on election night:

White Men W/O College Dump Trump

According to a report from MSNBC, the single largest segment of Donald Trump's base — non-college-educated white men — are fleeing the president's camp at an alarming rate and admitting that they have become embarrassed by his actions and his bullying. This was a key 2016 voting bloc for Trump nationally and in Texas.

Colorado Voter Turnout 24 Times 2016

As with voters across the U.S., Colorado voters seem to have decided how they will mark their ballot, and they are motivated to get the job done. During the first week of early voting more than 576,705 ballots we’re cast (mostly by return mail and drop boxes)  through Friday, October 16th, according to data report by the Secretary of State’s office. For the 2016 election, Colorado voters had cast only 42,416 ballots by the 18th day before the November 8th election day that year.

Biden Leads Trump By 15 Points In Colorado

A Keating-OnSight-Melanson survey survey of likely Colorado voters, conducted Oct. 8-13, found Democrat John Hickenlooper up 10 points over Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, 51% to 41%, with 7% undecided, confirming similar results from the two nonpartisan polls released in the last week by Colorado Politics/9News and Morning Consult. The Keating-OnSight-Melanson survey also found Donald Trump trails Joe Biden among likely Colorado voters by 15 points, 54% to 39%, with 4% undecided.

3 Million New Texas Voters Since 2016

While limiting voting using drop boxes is certainly good news for Republicans, because many more Democrats than Republicans are expected to use that voting option, not all Texas news is good for the GOP. Since 2016, 3 million voters have registered in Texas. That means that about 1 in 5 (20%) of all current Texas voters were not registered in 2016.

Polling Difference From 2016

The popular notion that the polls were way off in 2016 is wrong. If a poll says that "Smith" is ahead of "Jones" 49% to 47% with a margin of error of 4 points, what that means is that the pollster is predicting that there is a 95% chance that Smith will score in the range 45% to 53% and that Jones will come in between 43% and 51%. Victory by Jones, 50% to 44%, would mean the pollster still got it right. In 2016, the national polls had Hillary Clinton winning by 3%. She won by 2.1%, which is close to perfect. The state polls weren't as good. The worst state was Wisconsin. We had Clinton ahead 46% to 41%. She indeed got 46% but Trump got 47%, so he was slightly outside the predicted range of about 37% to 45%. The final predictions for Michigan and Pennsylvania were correct in terms of the ranges predicted.

Polling - GOP Risk Losing Texas

With Texas early in-person voting starting tomorrow, and mail ballot returns already flowing into county election offices across the state, it’s a dead-heat race between Biden and Trump, and Hegar and Cornyn for the state’s U.S. Senate seat. A poll released by Civiqs last Wednesday that surveyed likely voters during October 3-6 found Trump and Biden dead even at 48-48 percent all.