The House’s turn to grill embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy brought little new insight into how the U.S. Postal Service will approach an unprecedented surge in vote-by-mail this fall, amid turmoil that has been caused, in part, by some of the policies DeJoy has implemented.
From local blogger:
I went to the USPS sorting annex on Patterson to drop off a package this morning. I pulled into the parking lot and saw this red dumpster by the loading docks. When I went inside, I jokingly asked the clerk if that was their high-speed sorter out there in the dumpster. She said “No, that’s our flats sorting machine. We had just gotten it. It took 2 months to set it up and they were just about to do a test run when the Postmaster General ordered us to take it out. Now we’re sorting flats by hand. We really could have used it. No wonder they say we’re losing money when they throw out expensive machines like that.”
DeJoy looks like and acts as arrogantly as that asshole former Acting Attorney Matthew Whitaker, as though he is not accountable and does not need to show respect to members of Congress.
Because letting a “business man” run the government is such a good idea…
As is the case with most of Trump’s appointees, the buck stops with someone else … but nobody knows who that is.
Late 2020, House Rep asks: “Can you give assurances that election mail will be given priority?”
DeJoy: “Sure”
Early 2021: House Rep asks: “Why was election-related mail delayed so much? Was it to help Trump?”
DeJoy: “It is what it is.”
Thanks to Katie Porter for showing this hack to be a hack. But it sounds like he was effectively slippery on the hard issues of his intentional efforts to hinder postal activity. He can still use these efforts as a basis to raise doubts about voting by mail. If the sorting machines – which only the post office can use – weren’t needed any longer as he explained as a rational to remove them, why waste the time and money NOW to remove them?
All businesses run off of annual appropriations subject to the whim of politicians who raise or cut funding at random and often lock in an actual budget halfway through the year if they ever do at all and can’t roll over any savings or “profit” to the next year…
So of course it makes perfect sense that business folks would be the best to run politics and government agencies.
Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) quizzed DeJoy on a series of basic Postal Service questions: What’s the cost of a first-class stamp? The cost to mail a postcard? What’s the postage square envelope?”
Exasperated, DeJoy eventually said: “I will submit that I know very little about a postage stamp.”
So Trump’s Postmaster General doesn’t even know…(wait for it)…the cost of a stamp?!
Pakled GOP Base: “Businessmen are smart!”
Patterson Ave. in Goleta, CA?
Flailing, failing and wailing, Mr. DeJoy.
I’m struggling to find any hope on this issue. It’s gratifying to watch him squirm, but nothing is going to change. The stand-alone bill will fail and the states will not get any extra money to help. Hate being so negative …
First time I saw him on film. What a condescending, smug piece of shit. Don’t matter to him, his friends got him this gig and he will get another, plus he’s already rich.
Do not lose hope. The expression “roads being twisted” is not always a negative one.
DeJoy is just a liar and shill for Trump. He doesn’t give a shit about the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing.
It’s solidly red Grand Junction, Colorado.
The point of Porter’s questioning wasn’t to show that DeJoy didn’t know the price or weight limits of the mail service he oversees, it was to show that he isn’t invested enough in the USPS to find out the basics of how it works. And, that’s the difference between hiring him and a person with USPS experience…the latter would know those things, as well as why certain procedures are followed certain ways, why they sort things using this machine, why they would change out this or that. There are good reasons for all of those policies…the issue is that DeJoy and his lackeys at USPS are making changes that don’t make sense, that are causing interference and problems, and that aren’t beneficial to the people who depend on the USPS.
DeJoy isn’t invested in the USPS working well for everyone, and that’s really the core problem…whether he’s trashing it to cause issues with the election or just follow through on Republican’s desire to turn the USPS into a private entity is secondary. The USPS exists to serve all Americans, not to make a profit or for partisan gains…Republicans hate it because it’s an example of good government, and not caring if it lives or dies is what they are going for. DeJoy is just their man to do the job, the problem is the anti-government attitude.
Thank you, you are always so thoughtful. I’m not hopeless about the election, just the mail delay/screwup issue, which of course is no small thing.
After working for several corporations over the course of my working life, I’ve come to believe that only someone who has never worked for a corporation would believe that business leaders are above politics, they will make decisions based solely on the facts before them. What does seem to be true is that they know nothing about how the political system works from the inside.
Katie Porter’s the only one that clearly asked him who was giving the orders to remove sorting machines and mail boxes, to which he pled ignorance. Why in the hell didn’t someone ask him something like this: You know that Americans are freaking out about these sorting machines being scrapped, and that you would certainly be asked about who ordered that to happen. Yet you sit here and claim that you don’t know where the orders came from? Bullshit! If in these circumstances you honestly don’t know who ordered it (if you didn’t order it yourself) then your obvious incompetence and dereliction of duty requires you to resign now. Of course, if you are the one who ordered it and you’re just lying, then you should be hauled off to prison.
