As a writer, I depend on the United States Postal Service (USPS) to deliver and carry my mail to and from publishers and others in the book business. I also use it to correspond with my friends and family, though far less these days than I did before email came along. Because of problems with the service caused by the Trump administration, I no longer take the USPS for granted. I did some research to learn more about it. Here’s what I found:
The USPS has an annual revenue of over $73 billion. It employs some 644,000 workers and operates 34,000 retail locations across the country. Most amazing, it delivers 48 percent of the world’s mail.
The current Postmaster General, that is, the head of the USPS, is Louis DeJoy, a multimillionaire named to job by the Board of Governors of the USPS in May 2020 at the behest of then-president Donald Trump. DeJoy was a generous contributor to Trump’s election campaign, and, as we learned, more than willing to sabotage the USPS operations in an effort to cripple vote-by-mail in the 2020 election in hopes that it would help Trump get reelected. That effort failed, but the damage to USPS operations was widespread and continues to this day.
President Biden can’t fire DeJoy. His removal from the job of Postmaster General can, by law, only be accomplished by the Board of Governors of the USPS. The majority of board members are still Trump supporters and refuse to fire DeJoy. Congress can appoint and dismiss USPS board members, but Republicans in Congress, who still support Trump, have so far blocked all efforts to change the composition of the board.
End result for me: mail to me is regularly delivered late; some days I get no mail. More than once, I have had to pay a late fee because a bill did not arrive on time or my payment delivery was delayed. Books sent to me for review are slow in transit. Copies of my books sent to others reach their destination late.
So we citizens of the U.S. are still paying the price for our election of Donald Trump to the presidency. Apparently, it will take a number of years to clean up the mess he created.
Tom Glenn, Writer 