Bernie Sanders blocked postal board nominees in 2015 at the urging of postal unions who wanted to stop the privatization of the postal service and the degradation of mail service. Two of the five nominees were selected by Mitch McConnell and those nominees were so toxic that postal union leaders concluded that they would be better off with no postal board than the board they would get if all 5 nominees were approved. That’s why Bernie blocked the Obama-McConnell nominees.
This story was reported in the Washington Post in 2015. www.washingtonpost.com/...
The board doesn’t have high visibility outside the postal world, but it approves high-dollar capital investments, sets mail prices, long-term strategies and legislative policies and signs union contracts. One nominee, James Miller III, advocated to privatize the Postal Service when he led the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration. The other, Mickey Barnett, is a lobbyist for the payday loan industry. The candidates are anathema to the postal unions, which urged Sanders to block them.
Because of the hold, Congress has not voted on Miller, Barnett and three other nominees to fill expiring terms. As of December, the board will be left with one member and no quorum when two of the last remaining members’ terms expire.
Warren Gunnels, Sanders’ policy director stated explicitly why Bernie blocked the nominees.
“No board is better than a bad board,” he said. “Senator Sanders doesn’t believe we should have a board that supports dismantling and privatizing the Postal Service.”
No matter what Bernie did in 2015 we would have a Republican dominated postal board now because Trump would have put his nominees in place with the backing of Mitch McConnell. Bernie’s actions in 2015 have little or no bearing on the devastation to the Post Office under Trump, McConnell and Postmaster DeJoy. A full board would not have stopped DeJoy from degrading postal service because it would have been dominated by pro-privatization Republicans.
A simple google search “why did Bernie block postal nominees” found this article in seconds.
That’s why I was surprised this morning when I read this post by Markos Moulitsas.
www.dailykos.com/...
The United States Postal Service Board of Governors is all white men, and Republicans. It was a clean slate for Trump and company because Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders blocked appointments by President Barack Obama for reasons that remain uncertain.
The reasons are certain and they were published at the time in 2015. Note also that Bernie had the support of postal unions in his run for president. Bernie has advocated tirelessly for the Post Office and stopped service cuts during the Obama years (from the Post article.)
He spearheaded a non-binding “sense of the Senate” resolution to restore the standards, which passed 85 to 11. Under similar pressure from House lawmakers, Postmaster General Megan Brennan agreed this summer to halt future plant closures.
Democrats need to stop the circular firing squad and focus on what Trump is doing to the Post Office. We need to unite behind our nominees Biden and Harris. We need to win the Senate and send Mitch McConnell packing. What we don’t need is pointless fights about what Bernie Sanders did in 2015. And if we are going to fight over history at least let’s get our facts straight.
