Tell President Biden and your Senators to save our USPS!
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
For President Biden:
We voted for you in 2020 for emergency relief from the Republican president’s botched pandemic response, more effective economic policies, urgent action on climate, and to clear out Trump-era corruption from our federal government. We will continue to proudly proclaim #BidenDelivers because you’ve achieved great results in spite of concerted Republican sabotage. We know you need more Democratic Senators in 2022 to achieve the full scope of your Build Back Better agenda, so here’s the deal: there is a lot of Trump-era corruption you could clear out that would give additional inspiration to voters who are hoping for real change.
Devoted Republican donor Louis DeJoy is an easy one. If any of us had done so poorly in our jobs, with such clear conflicts of interest, we would have been fired by now. His continued presence reminds us of the corrosive cronyism we see on corporate boards and we hate to see that in our federal government. We urge you to nominate USPS Board members who will remove him, which is why we also want you to withdraw your nomination of Derek Kan to the Board. As a Republican who worked for the OMB in the Trump administration and a policy adviser for Senator McConnell, Kan seems highly unlikely to hold DeJoy accountable for undermining our beloved USPS.
For your senators:
We were excited to see the House pass the Postal Service Reform Act, which would repeal the 2006 law that’s drained billions from the USPS, enshrine 6-day delivery as law, and add extra transparency requirements to ensure our mail moves as quickly as possible. Please give it your full support.
Background
Louis DeJoy is the poster boy for Republican corruption, so it’s shocking to see him still serving as US Postmaster General, even after USPS board member Ron Bloom has been replaced. It was also disturbing to read that the USPS Board has selected Trump supporter Ronald Martinez, who praises DeJoy’s plans to eviscerate the postal service, as its new chair.
Firing DeJoy would be an easy way to demonstrate the Biden administration’s commitment to competence, transparency, and ethics in government. Biden cannot fire DeJoy himself, and we’re told he can’t ask the Board to do so because he has two more nominees stalled in a Senate committee. However, one of those nominees is Derek Kan, a Republican who worked for the OMB in the Trump administration and as a policy adviser for Senator McConnell, so we are asking him to withdraw that nomination. Republican economic policies (pro-privatization) are not what we need to restore the greatness of our USPS.
Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor, became Postmaster General in June of 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic made the country much more reliant on mail services, including the ability to vote by mail in the November elections. When DeJoy took office, the USPS on-time delivery rate was about 90%. After he implemented major operational changes, service times slowed significantly. For example, in August 2020, on-time deliveries dropped to 63.6% in the northern Ohio postal district, and even lower, to 61%, in Detroit. These dramatic drops in service, particularly in parts of key swing states, took place just before an election during which an unprecedented number of voters would be relying on mail-in ballots. It suggested a deliberate attempt to sow chaos and maybe even provide a pretext for Trump to challenge the results. And, indeed, we saw Trump declare victory on election night, and cast doubt on the millions of mail-in ballots that poured in after that.
DeJoy’s conflicts of interest raised concern even before his nomination was promoted by Steve Mnuchin and confirmed by the Senate in 2020. From 1983 to 2014, he was CEO of New Breed Logistics, a freight company that was found in 2001 to have had a $300+ million noncompetitive contract with the USPS starting in 1992. The audit concluded by saying all of the Postal Service contracts with New Breed "could have been awarded competitively, resulting in more fair and reasonable contract prices overall." It also noted that the USPS inspector general at the time had retired in 2003 after a federal investigation into her abuse of authority, waste of public money, and promotion of questionable personnel practices. XPO Logistics acquired New Breed for $615 million in 2014, and DeJoy served as its CEO and on its board until 2018.
But wait, there’s more: DeJoy allegedly operated a straw-donor scheme where he asked employees of New Breed to make campaign contributions, then reimbursed them with bonus payments. In 2020, Campaign Legal Center and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the FEC about that, but the FEC voted 4-1 in December 2021 to dismiss the complaints on the grounds that most of the donations had taken place outside the period covered by the statute of limitations and that 26 of the 63 individual contributors had denied the allegations.
References
USPS Reform
House passes bill to reform Postal Service operations | TheHill, 2/08/22
About – US Mail: Not for Sale : The US Mail Not for Sale is a worker-led campaign sponsored by the American Postal Workers Union. The campaign brings together labor unions, elected officials, member organizations of A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service, community supporters and the public to fight plans to sell the public Postal Service to the highest bidder.
USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy
Embattled US postmaster Louis DeJoy is still hanging on to his job - Chicago Sun-Times, 1/23/22
Trump's attacks on mail voting, explained - Vox, 8/11/21
Who Is Louis DeJoy? US Postmaster General In Spotlight Ahead Of 2020 Election : NPR, 8/21/20
"Postal contracts awarded to DeJoy-run company were questioned in 2001 Postal Service audit". NBC News. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
CREW files criminal complaint against Louis DeJoy, 8/20/20
FEC dismisses straw-donor complaints against DeJoy, Detroit News, 12/23/21
Louis DeJoy Had More Than A Dozen Potential Conflicts Of Interest Upon Taking Charge Of USPS, Documents Suggest , 10/21/21, Forbes
USPS mismanaged DeJoy's conflicts of interest and tried to cover it up - CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, 10/21/21, CREW Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington
Overall Resources for Ethical, Accountable Government
Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington: “At CREW, we use aggressive legal actions, in-depth investigations, and innovative policy and reform work to achieve the vision of an ethical, accountable, and open government.”
Revolving Door Project, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), “scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement.”