Stamp Of Disapproval

Democrats are taking aim at the Trump regime's new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor and businessman who is doing everything in his power to sabotage the US Postal Service so Americans turn against it and it can be destroyed and privatized, not to mention that DeJoy is trying assure the disenfranchisement of possibly tens of millions of voters who will attempt cast their ballot by mail this year.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s mail service, displacing the two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations, according to a reorganization memo released Friday. The shake-up came as congressional Democrats called for an investigation of DeJoy and the cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared ballots in recent primary elections.

Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. All told, 33 staffers included in the old postal hierarchy either kept their jobs or were reassigned in the restructuring, with five more staffers joining the leadership from other roles.

The reshuffling threatens to heighten tensions between postal officials and lawmakers, who are troubled by delivery delays — the Postal Service banned employees from working overtime and making extra trips to deliver mail — and wary of the Trump administration’s influence on the Postal Service as the coronavirus pandemic rages and November’s election draws near.

It also adds another layer to DeJoy’s disputes with Democratic leaders, who have pushed him to rescind the cost-cutting directives that have caused days-long backlogs and steady the Postal Service in the run-up to the election. DeJoy clashed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), in a meeting on the issue earlier this week.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), chair of the House subcommittee responsible for postal oversight, called the reorganization “a deliberate sabotage” to the nation’s mail service and a “Trojan Horse.”

David E. Williams, formerly chief operating officer and executive vice president, will take the role of chief logistics and processing operations officer, a new position for a trusted adviser to former postmaster general Megan Brennan and members of the agency’s governing board. A new organizational chart also gives Williams the title “executive vice president,” though that role was not included in the internal restructuring announcement obtained by The Washington Post. The Postal Service’s Kevin L. McAdams, the vice president of delivery and retail operations and a 40-year USPS veteran, was not listed on the chart.

It’s not clear what the impact of all the changes will be. DeJoy wrote in an internal memo to employees obtained by The Post that the new structure would create “clear lines of authority and accountability,” but others are more skeptical. The USPS publicly released a shorter description of the changes that did not include DeJoy’s remarks to postal workers. The agency declined to comment further on the staffing changes.

“One of the things that’s led to a lot of head scratching is how some of these folks have been reassigned. We’re not sure he put the right players in the right spots, but maybe he sees something we don’t,” said one person with deep knowledge of the leadership team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a candid assessment. “We’re all going to wait and see and hope he’s done the right things, but who knows? It looks as if most of the people we’ve all worked with for years and years are still there, just moved around.”

The Postal Service will implement a hiring freeze, according to the reorganization announcement, and will ask for voluntary early retirements. It also will realign into three “operating units” — retail and delivery, logistics and processing, and commerce and business solutions — and scale down from seven regions to four.

DeJoy is destroying the Postal Service so it can be replaced, and that Americans are forced to pay two to three times more for postage.  Why does Trump hate the Postal Service so much? Like most Republican politicians, Trump can't stand the idea of government that actually works.

For years, the USPS has been the most popular government agency in the United States. According to a Pew Research Center study released in April, 91 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Postal Service, and roughly the same percentage of Americans want to bail out the agency. Similarly, countless companies that do business with the Postal Service are fans. Online retailers, including Amazon, even spent millions of dollars on an ad campaign begging lawmakers to save the Postal Service.

These facts leave us with a very curious situation. The Postal Service is seriously struggling, but it’s never been more important. It’s critical to get prescriptions to the homes of people during a pandemic and to deliver ballots to state election boards. It’s even prized by huge corporations like Amazon, who could easily give their money to a competing private company but would rather work with Postal Service. At the same time, President Trump seems to disdain the agency, and the new postmaster general seems to be doing more harm than good.

The upshot of it all is that the USPS has survived difficult moments in the past. The agency can trace its roots back to the days of the American Revolution. Two and a half centuries later, mail service has never been more essential. If anything, a crisis like this could serve to remind the country how much it needs the Postal Service, despite what a handful of powerful people might believe.

Trump is taking advantage of the chaos of 2020 to wreck the Postal Service, a long-term goal of the GOP.  He wants to punish states that conduct safe and effective voting-by-mail with a postal system that's too broken to do the job correctly, and force states to end the practice for all but rich Republicans.

Turning voting-by-mail into a postal poll tax was always the plan.  Ending vote-by-mail for 99% of America is the goal.