OK, I know there is a lot going on. And I know Biden hasn’t finished his third week. But the postal service is still really messed up — INTENTIONALLY — and the main saboteur is still on the job and possibly planning further chaos and destruction. Clearly this is not Biden’s top priority and the media is fixated on the impeachment hearings — but mostly obsession on minutia. They are going to do what they do, but I thought it might be a good time for us to get a better sense of what might be happening at the USPS.
I am not an expert on the USPS. I know very little, actually. But there are some basic pieces of information that will make it easier to understand. I can’t swear everything I am going to say here is correct. It is the best of my limited understanding, and I will happily stand corrected if necessary.
Let’s cover some of the basics. Some of this is very rudimentary, but I want to include it in case not everybody is familiar.
- The USPS is a quasi-government agency. While it may receive taxpayer subsidies and is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, it is really rather independent from the main power centers of government. Nobody in government has direct control over anything at the USPS.
- The top executive is the Postmaster General (PG). Currently that person is the notorious Louis DeJoy, who has significant conflicts of interest that seem to give him every incentive for the USPS to provide terrible service. His decisions seem to reflect a strategy to “keep the corpse just barely alive” so as to push its business to private companies, where he has had major investments. This is the same gentleman who conspired with Trump to paralyze the USPS ahead of the fall elections in order to subvert Democratic efforts to widely utilize vote-by-mail as a safe response to COVID-19. He directed the destruction of vast amounts of valuable equipment in order to achieve these saboteur’s goals. He was also on the wrong end of multiple lawsuits, yet he keeps his job. How can that be? Here is an article that talks about his conflicts of interest: www.cnn.com/...
- The PG is hired and serves at the pleasure of the USPS Board of Governors, and evidently they have been very pleased with this sabotage. Every person on that board was appointed by Trump. The President cannot fire the PG.
- During the sabotage period, the Chairman of the board was Robert Duncan, who is a severe partisan, and has operated that way, allowing the USPS to flaunt all attempts at oversight. www.theguardian.com/…
- There have been three vacancies on the board unfilled throughout Trump’s term. The rules of the board are that no more than 5 members can be from the same party, and 6 members are required to have a quorum, which explains why Trump would have nominated 2 Democrats. So the current composition of 5R + 2D allowed DeJoy to conduct his wrecking operation without any real resistance from the board. One wonders why Biden’s transition team did not have three qualified nominees ready to appoint on January 20. That probably gives us a clue into Biden’s thinking.
- The board has a strange composition. Normally a person like the PG would be considered ex-officio, without any voting rights. Instead, it appears that the PG is a full board member, just as if appointed by the President. Moreover, the Board also hires the Deputy PG, which also seems to be a full voting member. So a fully staffed board has 9 Presidential nominees plus two people hired by the board for a total of 11. The Deputy PG position is vacant, and obviously wasn’t filled because Trump already had the maximum number of Republicans on the Board.
- Combining all of the above, if Biden were to nominate (and the Senate confirmed) three Democrats to the vacant positions,
that would result in a 5-5 board with the Deputy PG slot remaining vacant. Therefore, if the board were to act in a partisan way, reducing everything to party line votes, they would have an impasse.
(Updated 3/27/21) that would result in a board with 4 Democratic Governors, 4 Republican Governors, one unaligned Governor (Amber McReynolds) plus the PG. Only the Governors (and not the PG or Deputy PG) can vote on hire/fire decisions of the PG. However terminating the PG requires the votes of 7 Governors, so Biden could either convince two of the Republicans to vote to terminate Dejoy, or else terminate some or the Republicans and replace them with people who would fire Dejoy.
- One final, and possibly significant detail is that the President can fire any of the appointed Board members for cause. Given what was done in 2010 under the direction of Chairman Duncan, there seems ample basis for his termination for cause. Some people are advocating firing the entire board and start with a fresh team. But Biden has not done any firing, which is probably another clue. See www.forbes.com/… and pascrell.house.gov/...
There has been a significant development this week whole the cameras were focused elsewhere.The board unanimously voted to elect Democrat Ron Bloom as the new Chairman. www.yahoo.com/…
The former chairman Duncan remains on the board, at least for now. I don’t know if there are board rules that require the chair alternate between parties from time to time. That is entirely possible and might entirely explain this development. Nonetheless, Bloom seems to be a person of some stature with a good resume from the Obama administration. What doe all of this tell us?
I think the implication is that Biden probably wants DeJoy out, but wants to do it in a quiet way that won’t cause an uproar on all the RW media and Congress. Soon enough there will be a 5-5 board. And with Bloom in charge, I expect he won’t put up with any crap from DeJoy because there is always the option to bring down the hammer and fire one or more of the R members, enabling the firing of DeJoy,. I expect DeJoy sees the writing on the wall and won’t stay around to clean up any of his mess.
My prediction, therefore is that DeJoy will resign by the end of March. And if he doesn’t Biden will move him out by this summer. If Biden doesn’t have the spine for that (and how much spine does it take to fire the people who F-ed up the USPS for all Americans?) Barger-R comes off the board at the end of 2021, giving a 5-4 Democratic majority on the board. But why waste a year while the USPS is still in horrible shape?
This is likely to come to a head sooner rather than later, as rumors are that DeJoy is trying to kill the 2-day Priority Mail service, which of course would be a great favor to Fedex and UPS. I expect that will show is where Bloom stands. Let’s hope Bloom is one of the good guys, but I wouldn’t assume that.