“I don’t know about you, but I vividly remember how bad mail delivery got in the weeks and even months after he got appointed… This might seem like small stuff, but it’s emblematic of so many other political appointments.”

I read Joyce Vance’s July 29th Civil Discourse regarding the Postmaster General appointed by the bipartisan USPS Board of Governors, all selected by Trump and confirmed by the Senate. On May 6, 2020 they announced DeJoy’s appointment as postmaster general and CEO, despite concerns about conflicts of interest. I had no idea DeJoy was still pulling the strings in July 2024! I don’t know about you, but I vividly remember how bad mail delivery got in the weeks and even months after he got appointed. 

Besides getting rid of all sorting machines, no overtime was allowed, no matter how much mail wasn’t delivered!!! Just getting rid of the sorting machines was disastrous. Hand sorting mail is time consuming and prone to lots of delivery mistakes. I had mail for people in completely different neighborhoods showing up in my mailbox!!! And things I mailed took 1-2-3 days longer to reach folks until people were able to improve their sorting skills. 

This might seem like small stuff, but it’s emblematic of so many other political appointments. Think judges with no experience or decent credentials getting appointed to positions that needed better legal experience and background. Judge Cannon in Florida isn’t the only one… Appointing folks to things like the courts and other government positions where knowledge of the basic function of the office… That’s like having someone who’s not a doctor the head of an ER Room!!! When they don’t know the basics of triage and there’s been a major wreck on the interstate…sigh.

Enough for today’s rant. Tell others and read Joyce Vance’s opinion as regards what President Biden has been doing to correct this travesty. It’s not a quick fix but he has been handling it step by step as required by our laws. 

Connie Byrne

From Joyce Vance – 7/29/24 – In good news:

Joe Biden nominated former Florida Congresswoman Val Demings to the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) Board of Governors. He also nominated Republican businessman William Zollars.

The USPS Board of Governors consists of eleven people, nine of whom are nominated by the President and must be confirmed by the Senate before taking office. The Board is rounded out by the Postmaster General and the Deputy Postmaster General. In March, President Biden appointed former Labor Secretary and Democratic mayor of Boston Marty Walsh. All three of the recent nominees are still pending Senate confirmation. Governors serve seven-year terms.

The good news is that this is an essential stop towards replacing Louis DeJoy, Trump’s Postmaster General, who is still in place. DeJoy is a Trump loyalist and donor who was appointed with no qualifications to run the Post Office effectively. And he hasn’t. DeJoy put measures in place that he claimed were designed to cut costs but that, in practice, seriously impaired mail delivery. In one notorious move, he dismantled sorting machines. This resulted in massive backlogs and serious delivery delays. It just so happened that led to major slowdowns in swing states just ahead of the 2020 election that resulted in tens of thousands of ballots arriving too late to be counted.

Read the entire article at: https://open.substack.com/pub/joycevance/p/the-week-ahead-c60?r=195qp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email