Rep. Kweisi Mfume tweeted this morning: “It is time for good postal service and the people deserve better. Medicines, Benefits and Pay Checks need to arrive on time! This Audit report is just a start. Postmaster General Dejoy should step down, @POTUS should replace Postal Board Chair Ron Bloom.”
LISA GRAVES, via Evan Vorpahl, evan@
Graves is the executive director of the watchdog group True North Research. Last month, she wrote “Your Mail Is About to Get Slower and More Expensive — Blame Trump’s Men, Seriously.” She said today: “Ron Bloom was nominated as Chair to the Postal Service Board of Governors by President Donald Trump. His term is set to expire in December — unless President Biden nominates him to another term. DeJoy has no term limit. If Bloom is re-appointed, he will keep DeJoy and there will be no way for the American people to get rid of DeJoy before the next presidential election.”
This morning, she attempted to deliver the following statement to a meeting of the Postal Service Board of Governors. But she was only was allowed to give a portion of her remarks because the Board cut the comments from 3 minutes to 90 seconds:
“I am speaking today to express my deep concern of the failure of this Board to supervise Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and to protect the American people from his initial hiring and his poor decisions, despite the rosy picture the Board’s leadership has attempted to paint in the meeting today — despite the reality the American people are experiencing on the ground.
“Every American is facing real, adverse consequences from Mr. DeJoy’s leadership: paying more for slower, less reliable mail and packages. We are grateful for the tremendous efforts of postal employees during the ongoing pandemic to deliver for their neighbors, despite the failures in leadership at the Postal Service.
“The ten-year plan of Trump donor Mr. DeJoy and Chairman Ron Bloom includes mostly abandoning planes for mail and packages, even as competitors, like Amazon, are expanding investments in faster air transport. The DeJoy-Bloom ten-year plan also slashes post office hours in rural communities and cities, and it fails to invest in making them vibrant community hubs for postal banking and internet access. It also appears to prioritize corporate access to postal facilities over the needs of regular people.
“It is presumptuous and arrogant for a majority of the Board to vote for Mr. Bloom to remain as Chair, even though Bloom’s holdover term is set to expire in December, unless he is nominated to a new term. Additionally, Mr. Bloom’s refusal to allow other board members to debate the chairmanship is another sign of how this board operates to protect DeJoy and his backers from criticism and defend him at every turn through pro forma meetings like today’s meeting.
“Mr. Dejoy has no term limit. With Mr. Bloom at the helm there will be no way for the American people to get rid of DeJoy before the next presidential election.
“Mr. Bloom supported DeJoy’s hiring. Investigative reporting since then has raised major concerns about the Board’s failure to vet DeJoy’s track record or to police his conflicts, including the fact that DeJoy continues to receive millions of dollars each year from XPO logistics, which recently received a $100 million contract that outsources some of the Postal Service’s logistics operations, a form of quiet privatization.
“It is also notable that Mr. Bloom’s private equity firm is eager to privatize public assets in the U.S. and abroad. His prior firm aided the privatization of the Royal Mail and profited handsomely from it. The Board Members’ financial disclosures are not public and should be.
“Mr. Bloom has stood by DeJoy, despite several judicial decisions that prevented DeJoy from disrupting voting by mail. Last fall Mr. Bloom and another board member, John Barger, even said they were ‘tickled pink‘ about DeJoy’s performance. They backed him in spite of catastrophic slowdowns in mail delivery before the election and last winter that delayed medical prescriptions and more. (Barger’s term also expires in December.)
“These failures have shaken public confidence in the Postal Service, which had been the highest-rated and most trusted governmental agency.
“Firing DeJoy would help restore public confidence in our mail service. I also call on Ron Bloom to resign from the Board of Governors and DeJoy should resign or be fired.”
See past accuracy.org news release with Graves: “Behind the Attacks on the Post Office.”