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Trump-backed postmaster general plans to slow mail delivery

Trump postal chief pauses service cuts amid outcry, as Democrats ratchet up pressure - Reuters
then
Reuters on Twitter: "Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told a news conference that President Trump's attacks on the U.S. Postal Service is an attack on all Americans (links)" / Twitter
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi called DeJoy’s announcement inadequate and said she would push ahead with legislation later this week to aid the Postal Service.

“This pause only halts a limited number of the postmaster’s changes, does not reverse damage already done, and alone is not enough to ensure voters will not be disenfranchised by the president” in the election, Pelosi said in a statement.

“The House will be moving ahead with our vote this Saturday,” she said. The legislation is expected to contain provisions to prevent the post office from reducing service levels below what they were in January.

...
In a complaint filed in federal court, Washington and 13 other U.S. states accused DeJoy of ignoring congressionally mandated procedures by imposing “transformative” changes at the Postal Service.

“Voting by mail is safe and promotes no partisan advantage,” the complaint said. “The states are entitled to a declaration that the ‘transformative’ changes are unlawful.”

Several congressional Republicans this week had dismissed Democrats’ concerns as a political attack on Trump.

...
DeJoy is scheduled to testify on Friday before a Republican-led Senate committee, and before a Democratic-led House committee on Monday
 
What the map is demonstrating is that they are focusing on blue districts and not red.

See, that's my entire point.

The map demonstrates nothing of the kind.

It simply indicates that sorting machines were located in places with lots of people, rather than in the middle of nowhere.

And (an unrelated fact) that places with lots of people tend to vote Democratic.

Its two crude population density maps. That they show significant correlation is inevitable and unavoidable.

But it would at least stand to reason that the sorting machines are more necessary in higher density population areas than in rural ones - yet they appear to be shutting down the machines that are needed the most. It isn't too hard to infer some kind of nefarious causation.

aa

Well, people send mail, and land doesn't. Also, people vote and land doesn't.

The shutting down of mail services allows you to draw your conclusion; The location of the services that are shut down is inevitable, and tells you nothing.

To put it another way, if you decided to completely randomly close down, say, 20% of hospitals nationwide; And then plotted the loss of hospital beds on a map showing voting patterns, it wouldn't differ from this in any noticable way.

Services are where people are. If you slash ANY service, the shit-downs will inevitably be concentrated in cities and towns. The ONLY thing these maps tell us is that denser populations tend to vote democratic, and less dense populations tend to vote republican. Which we already knew.
 
But it would at least stand to reason that the sorting machines are more necessary in higher density population areas than in rural ones - yet they appear to be shutting down the machines that are needed the most. It isn't too hard to infer some kind of nefarious causation.

aa

Well, people send mail, and land doesn't. Also, people vote and land doesn't.

The shutting down of mail services allows you to draw your conclusion; The location of the services that are shut down is inevitable, and tells you nothing.

To put it another way, if you decided to completely randomly close down, say, 20% of hospitals nationwide; And then plotted the loss of hospital beds on a map showing voting patterns, it wouldn't differ from this in any noticable way.

Services are where people are. If you slash ANY service, the shit-downs will inevitably be concentrated in cities and towns. The ONLY thing these maps tell us is that denser populations tend to vote democratic, and less dense populations tend to vote republican. Which we already knew.

I would agree with all of that - assuming we close services down randomly as you said. But I think that seldom happens in practice. Typically you close down the largest money wasters or services that get the least use. If you are a large corporation with 10 offices in the US and need to close 5, you wouldn't pick 5 at random right? You'd start with remote satellite offices. Wouldn't it be the same for hospitals and post offices? TBH I don't really know much about these sorters. Maybe they only have them in big cities to begin with.

aa
 
Thousands of chicks arrive dead to farmers amid USPS turmoil

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — At least 4,800 chicks shipped to Maine farmers through the U.S. Postal Service have arrived dead in the recent weeks since rapid cuts hit the federal mail carrier’s operations, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree said.

Pingree, a Maine Democrat, is raising the issue of the dead chicks and the losses farms are facing in a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and U.S. Department of Agriculture Commissioner Sonny Perdue, The Portland Press Herald reported Wednesday.

Pauline Henderson, who owns Pine Tree Poultry in New Sharon, Maine, told the newspaper she was shocked last week when all of the 800 chicks sent to her from a hatchery in Pennsylvania were dead.

“Usually they arrive every three weeks like clockwork,” she said. “And out of 100 birds you may have one or two that die in shipping.”

Henderson told the newspaper thousands of birds that moved through the Postal Service’s processing center in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, were also dead, impacting several farms in Maine and New Hampshire.

The Postal Service’s media contact for the Eastern U.S. did not immediately return a Press Herald reporter’s message Wednesday.
 
TBH I don't really know much about these sorters. Maybe they only have them in big cities to begin with.
exactly.
When i post mail from our post office in Pittsfield, to an address here in Pittsfield, the mail goes to Springfield to get sorted, then returns to Pitt for delivery. There are no rural sorters.
 
Thousands of chicks arrive dead to farmers amid USPS turmoil

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — At least 4,800 chicks shipped to Maine farmers through the U.S. Postal Service have arrived dead in the recent weeks since rapid cuts hit the federal mail carrier’s operations, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree said.
Well, Trump'll bail them out like the soybean victims of his trade war, right?

He doesn't care about 170,000 dead Americans, why would he care about a few thousand dead chickens?
 
USPS Headquarters Tells Managers Not to Reconnect Mail Sorting Machines, Emails Show - "We are not to reconnect any machines that have previously been disconnected."
Shortly after USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy issued a public statement saying he wanted to "avoid even the appearance" that any of his policies would slow down election mail, USPS instructed all maintenance managers around the country not to reconnect or reinstall any mail sorting machines they had already disconnected, according to emails obtained by Motherboard.

"Please message out to your respective Maintenance Managers tonight. They are not to reconnect / reinstall machines that have previously been disconnected without approval from HQ Maintenance, no matter what direction they are getting from their plant manager," wrote Kevin Couch, Director of Maintenance Operations. "Please have them flow that request through you then on to me for a direction." A subsequent email sent to individual maintenance managers across various regions forwarded that request along with a single sentence: "We are not to reconnect any machines that have previously been disconnected."
 
Thousands of chicks arrive dead to farmers amid USPS turmoil

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — At least 4,800 chicks shipped to Maine farmers through the U.S. Postal Service have arrived dead in the recent weeks since rapid cuts hit the federal mail carrier’s operations, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree said.

Pingree, a Maine Democrat, is raising the issue of the dead chicks and the losses farms are facing in a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and U.S. Department of Agriculture Commissioner Sonny Perdue, The Portland Press Herald reported Wednesday.

Pauline Henderson, who owns Pine Tree Poultry in New Sharon, Maine, told the newspaper she was shocked last week when all of the 800 chicks sent to her from a hatchery in Pennsylvania were dead.

“Usually they arrive every three weeks like clockwork,” she said. “And out of 100 birds you may have one or two that die in shipping.”

Henderson told the newspaper thousands of birds that moved through the Postal Service’s processing center in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, were also dead, impacting several farms in Maine and New Hampshire.

The Postal Service’s media contact for the Eastern U.S. did not immediately return a Press Herald reporter’s message Wednesday.

Can we arrest His Flatulence and those who helped implement this abomination for animal cruelty?
 
Ana Kasparian on Twitter: "‘Like Armageddon’: Rotting food, dead animals and chaos at postal facilities amid cutbacks https://t.co/luxLDv5KwF" / Twitter
noting
USPS: Dead animals, rotting food, and chaos amid cutbacks - Los Angeles Times
Six weeks ago, U.S. Postal Service workers in the high desert town of Tehachapi, Calif., began to notice crates of mail sitting in the post office in the early morning that should have been shipped out for delivery the night before.

At a mail processing facility in Santa Clarita in July, workers discovered that their automated sorting machines had been disabled and padlocked.

And inside a massive mail-sorting facility in South Los Angeles, workers fell so far behind processing packages that by early August, gnats and rodents were swarming around containers of rotted fruit and meat, and baby chicks were dead inside their boxes.
Rep. Mark Pocan on Twitter: "What did @USProgressives just learn from our USPS hearing?
📫USPS was ready for vote-by-mail—until this administration manufactured an intentional crisis
📫DeJoy was the only candidate interviewed unqualified to lead the USPS
📫Steve Mnuchin wanted the removal of blue boxes." / Twitter


Seems like the Trump Admin is acting like the classic example of chutzpah: killing one's parents and then begging for mercy because one is an orphan.
 
I wonder how old these sorting machines are. Have they, like many neighborhood mailboxes been sitting largely unused for a couple decades due to the decrease in letter mail?
It is quite possible these sorters are no longer needed but left in place due to a lack of funding to have them removed.
If so, why now, would be the question? Distraction & confusion, perhaps.
 
USPS Sorting Machines Are Still Being Dismantled Despite DeJoy’s Promise to Stop

In spite of promises from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy earlier this week to suspend radical changes to United States Postal Service (USPS) facilities that resulted in slower mail delivery, some post offices in Michigan appear to be continuing to dismantle their mail sorting machines.

DeJoy had wanted to decommission more than 600 machines across the U.S. used to help workers more efficiently sort mail, but after reports that machines were being removed — and a potential lawsuit from 20 states’ attorneys general against him — the postmaster general announced on Tuesday that he would suspend what he claimed were efforts to improve the USPS.

“I believe significant reforms are essential … and work toward those reforms will commence after the election,” DeJoy said.

In spite of assurances from DeJoy that he would suspend his sudden changes to the USPS, reports out of Michigan after his announcement was made seem to suggest mail sorting machines continue to be decommissioned and tossed out. Heather Walker, a reporter with Grand Rapids, Michigan, television station WOOD-TV, tweeted a video on Wednesday noting that machine parts still appear to be leaving the local post office facility.

[TWEET]<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/USPS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@USPS</a> GR Patterson location has pieces of the mail sorting machines out in the parking lot. <a href="https://twitter.com/WOODTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WOODTV</a> <a href="https://t.co/OuugjhTbfE">pic.twitter.com/OuugjhTbfE</a></p>— Heather Walker (@_HeatherWalker) <a href="https://twitter.com/_HeatherWalker/status/1296122043772133382?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>[/TWEET]
 
Massachusetts is allowing mail-in ballots for all voters. Just yesterday the Sec of State advised that those who have not mailed in their ballots yet for the Sept 1 primary do not mail them but drop them off at the early voting location or at the polls. This is because of the slow mail. So I will fill mine in and take it to the town hall drop box next week.

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/08/21/massachusetts-mail-in-ballot-drop-box
 
USPS Sorting Machines Are Still Being Dismantled Despite DeJoy’s Promise to Stop

In spite of promises from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy earlier this week to suspend radical changes to United States Postal Service (USPS) facilities that resulted in slower mail delivery, some post offices in Michigan appear to be continuing to dismantle their mail sorting machines.

DeJoy had wanted to decommission more than 600 machines across the U.S. used to help workers more efficiently sort mail, but after reports that machines were being removed — and a potential lawsuit from 20 states’ attorneys general against him — the postmaster general announced on Tuesday that he would suspend what he claimed were efforts to improve the USPS.

“I believe significant reforms are essential … and work toward those reforms will commence after the election,” DeJoy said.

In spite of assurances from DeJoy that he would suspend his sudden changes to the USPS, reports out of Michigan after his announcement was made seem to suggest mail sorting machines continue to be decommissioned and tossed out. Heather Walker, a reporter with Grand Rapids, Michigan, television station WOOD-TV, tweeted a video on Wednesday noting that machine parts still appear to be leaving the local post office facility.

[TWEET]<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/USPS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@USPS</a> GR Patterson location has pieces of the mail sorting machines out in the parking lot. <a href="https://twitter.com/WOODTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WOODTV</a> <a href="https://t.co/OuugjhTbfE">pic.twitter.com/OuugjhTbfE</a></p>— Heather Walker (@_HeatherWalker) <a href="https://twitter.com/_HeatherWalker/status/1296122043772133382?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>[/TWEET]

Heather dear, When large machinery is scrapped, it is disassembled into dumpster size pieces and the wiring between these pieces is cut. It is a rough process done for expediency. Many parts are damaged in the process because, who cares? It's all going in the dumpster anyways.
Is what you're showing me machines that have already been disassembled sitting outside and perhaps partially disassembled machines inside that should be moved out? What should they do with it? No one is putting this crap back together. No time soon at least. They'd be better off getting new machines in if they are needed. Working at the speed of government, good luck with that.

Talk to the person in charge of that post office and get the story instead of showing us a picture and basically having a caption contest and someone may just call you "reporter".
 
USPS Sorting Machines Are Still Being Dismantled Despite DeJoy’s Promise to Stop





[TWEET]<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/USPS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@USPS</a> GR Patterson location has pieces of the mail sorting machines out in the parking lot. <a href="https://twitter.com/WOODTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WOODTV</a> <a href="https://t.co/OuugjhTbfE">pic.twitter.com/OuugjhTbfE</a></p>— Heather Walker (@_HeatherWalker) <a href="https://twitter.com/_HeatherWalker/status/1296122043772133382?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>[/TWEET]

Heather dear, When large machinery is scrapped, it is disassembled into dumpster size pieces and the wiring between these pieces is cut. It is a rough process done for expediency. Many parts are damaged in the process because, who cares? It's all going in the dumpster anyways.
Is what you're showing me machines that have already been disassembled sitting outside and perhaps partially disassembled machines inside that should be moved out? What should they do with it? No one is putting this crap back together. No time soon at least. They'd be better off getting new machines in if they are needed. Working at the speed of government, good luck with that.

Talk to the person in charge of that post office and get the story instead of showing us a picture and basically having a caption contest and someone may just call you "reporter".

So TVacc, dahling, are these decommissioned machines going to be reassembled to expedite the sorting of US mail-in ballots? And why was the disassembling apparently continuing, my little frisky squirrel, after the Postmaster Gen of his fair, sweet nation said that the the disassembling was going to stop. Disingenuous, dearie, dissembling?
 
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "In preparation for Monday's hearing, ..." / Twitter
In preparation for Monday's hearing, where @RepAOC will question Postmaster DeJoy, we asked NY-14 constituents how the Trump administration's sabotage of the Postal Service has impacted their lives. Here's what they shared.....

'In late June, we sent time-sensitive notarized legal documents by priority mail. They never arrived and they appear to still be sitting in a distribution center. We had to travel to another state to re-sign and re-notarize the documents in person at the lawyer's office.'

'Medication was mailed on 7/20 and a month later it has not yet arrived. The tracking shows no updates since 7/28. I had to request a replacement shipment, which arrived but not before I had to buy a small quantity of the medication out of pocket.'

'I rely on USPS for my small business. In the past month, several packages never arrived to customers, even with tracking. The mailboxes outside my local post office have also sometimes been locked.'

'My building pays rent by mailling our checks to the landlord. Now, those checks are taking longer & longer to clear. Our landlord's been patient, but how many others will see a late rent check as an excuse to evict a tenant when the moratorium is over?'

'I requested a mail-in ballot more than a month in advance of the primary election. I did not receive the ballot until the day before the actual election, so I decided to vote in person instead, which was risky since NYC's numbers were still relatively high.'
 
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