Last week I wrote a diary asking people to support the US post office, and I promised I would do another this week, with what updates I could find. So, here we are!
Now, for some good news (NBC CT, Anthony Iziguirre):
All three of President Joe Biden’s nominees to the governing board of the U.S. Postal Service have been approved by the Senate, increasing Democratic influence over the agency as its leaders move to overhaul mail operations.
Lawmakers on Friday approved the nomination of Anton Hajjar, former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union. Ron Stroman, a former deputy postmaster general, and Amber McReynolds, who leads the nonprofit National Vote at Home Institute, were approved earlier this month.
The additions mean that five of the board's nine members are Democratic appointees.
Still, I beg everyone to keep reading and to do something. We can’t assume something has been taken care of until it is truly taken care of.
Nearly everyone here has heard of the postmaster who was installed by tRump. His name is Louis DeJoy, and because of the way the USPS organization is structured, President Biden has not been able to get rid of him yet.
Biden is working on the problem, installing people who will be able to fire the saboteur, but DeJoy is working to do even more damage to the USPS. On Friday, May 21, Rachel Maddow had on several people from Iowa who brought attention to the intended damage. Here are several relevant paragraphs from the transcript of that show:
MADDOW: The man President Trump installed atop the U.S. Post Office, basically to try to break it, is still there in that job. After everything he did last year, including before the election to slow down and screw up the mail, Louis DeJoy is now pushing a ten-year plan to slow the U.S. mail even further to offer less services -- excuse me, to offer less service and to close post offices all over the country.
Right now, though, it`s just a proposal. It`s actually up to something called the Postal Regulatory Commission whether or not DeJoy`s plan formally gets adopted. Right now is the magic window of time where the general public gets to tell the postal regulatory commission if they should do that. Right now is when the public gets to tell that commission how they feel about Louis DeJoy`s plan to cut back and slow down the postal service even more than he already has.
The public comment period is open right now, but it`s only staying open for the next month. It`s only open until June 22nd. As Iowa postal workers rallied this week to try to let people know this is happening and to try to get people to public comment against DeJoy`s plans to further mess with the post office, the president of the Iowa Postal Workers Union said this, quote, if we don`t get DeJoy`s plan stopped, the avalanche will begin, and irreversible damage may be done.
Basically, DeJoy is trying to slow down first class mail and to remove post offices. He has a 10-year plan to do great damage. However, this plan won’t become the rule until June 22 of this year, so there’s time to act.
There’s a more complete description of the situation in this Washington Post article (Jacob Bogage), with some of the actions intended — raising rates and slowing deliveries -- and the current situation, which no longer warrants DeJoy’s abuse.
Some experts are skeptical that the Postal Service needs to raise prices to generate revenue. The agency forecast nearly $10 billion in losses in the current fiscal year, but halfway through the marking period, it is down only $448 million, according to its most recent filing with the PRC. Mail volume in 2021 is up 11 percent over internal year-to-date estimates.
Marketing mail, a crucial driver of volume that fell sharply in 2020, has roared back as businesses restart advertising campaigns. Volume rose 56 percent in April compared with the same period in 2020, and revenue jumped 61.2 percent. The agency’s package business also remains brisk: Revenue is up 32.7 percent year-to-date compared with the period a year ago.
Here are several actions you can take:
- The Postal Regulatory Commission is in charge of the post office. You can contact them here. Let them know you do not approve of DeJoy’s plan to slow the mail and to remove post offices. Oh, you might as well tell them to get rid of DeJoy as well, as the USPS was performing well before he got there.
- Contact your representatives and let them know you don’t want the mail service to deteriorate.
- Let your reps know you support the legislation below.
- Contact friends and get them to act as well.
- There’s a Daily Kos petition to protect the post office in this diary (which details some of DeJoy’s other abuses). Go ahead and enter your name.
💜 The post office is actually an area where we have some agreement between Rs and Ds! From the Washington Post (Jacob Bogage)
A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation Wednesday to lift significant financial burdens off the ailing U.S. Postal Service while tightening accountability requirements for mail delivery, a major stride for an agency that has tussled with its balance sheet and reputation for the better part of a year.
The bill, identical to a version that has advanced in the House, would repeal $5 billion a year in mandatory retiree health-care expenses and require future postal retirees to enroll in Medicare. Advocates say the measures would save the agency $30 billion over the next decade.
The bill would also see the Postal Service develop a public online mail delivery performance dashboard where customers could view the agency’s on-time delivery metrics by Zip code each week.
Pushed by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who lead the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee, the legislation has enough bipartisan co-sponsors to give it a pathway to passage in the bitterly divided chamber.
Let your reps know you support this legislation.
If you want to write them by using the mail, here’s a comment from last week from Mollybs:
Mail or deliver written comments to the Manager, Product Classification, U.S. Postal Service, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Room 4446, Washington, DC 20260-3436. Email comments, containing the name and address of the commenter, may be sent to: PCFederalRegister@usps.gov, with a subject line of “Service Standards for Market-Dominant Mail Products.” Faxed comments are not accepted. All submitted comments and attachments are part of the public record and subject to disclosure. Do not enclose any material in your comments that you consider to be confidential or inappropriate for public disclosure.
Here is a comment from snowball2015 about how to support the post office in general:
As someone who lives and breathes the USPS daily here are some easy items you can do to save the USPS:
1. Stop griping about the USPS. The vast majority of mail is still getting to its intended location on time. Yes it sucks when it happens to you that something gets there late or gets lost but any entity that handles as much 173,000,000 pieces of mail a day things are going to get lost. And a great majority of the time the “lost” item turns out to be the fault of the sender or receiver who has not addressed the item correctly.
2. Learn your proper mailing address. You would be shocked how many adults don’t know their correct mailing address.
3. Learn how to address your mail so that it is easily scannable with the optical scanners that the USPS uses. Every day I get “lost” mail at work because people write their zip code numbers in a funky way or their account # is showing through the window of the envelope (the scanner reads that as the zip code).
4. Always keep your tracking # for items. Again, every day people call my office looking for an item that was “supposed” to be delivered but when I ask for a tracking # it takes them 10 minutes to get it and then many times the item has not even been given to the USPS yet.
5. When you move let people know your new address and put in a COA with the USPS.
6. Accept that during the worst of covid things were bad. But they were bad for everyone.
7. Thank your USPS employees. They never got a chance to telework. Never got the chance to socially distance. And have to deal with all this on a daily basis.
8. Also, as the diarist noted please call and encourage your reps to support this bill.
If you have suggestions or updates regarding the information I’ve got above, please put them in the comments! And thanks!
🐦 I do a lot of other writing. A recent offering: Hunters of the Feather, a story about a thinker-linker crow who wants to save birdkind from extinction. (It’s really good! It’s really cheap! Buy it! Review or rate it positively! Now available on Audible!) Other stories, based on Jane Austen novels — including a new one for lovers of Pride & Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet’s Advice to Young Ladies — and others on Greek mythology, can be found here.