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Unsanitized: The COVID-19 Report for Aug. 17, 2020

Political Tide Begins to Turn in Postal Service Crisis
Plus, the history of an agency attacked from the outside, and now the
inside

 

Postal trucks in New York City (Lev Radin/Sipa USA via AP Images)

First Response

Here's where we're at after an eventful couple days in the Postal
Service crisis:

* Those letters sent to two states I mentioned on Friday
,
warning that voters may not get ballots in time, actually went out to 46
states
.
They're kind of cover-your-ass documents, so the USPS can say they at
least informed states of potential problems and threw the burden back on
them.

* Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) made a criminal referral

to the New Jersey Attorney General over deliberate mail slowdown, a
criminal offense.

* The USPS inspector general is investigating
.

* Protesters showed up in front of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's
house on Saturday and made a ton of noise.

* The House Oversight Committee has called DeJoy to testify
on August
24 and wants to know by today whether he's coming. Presumably
they'll issue a subpoena if he doesn't comply. Mike Duncan, chair of
the Postal Service Board of Governors (DeJoy's bosses, essentially),
has also been called
.

* In a ten-page letter
,
Democrats are seeking key documents from DeJoy, due on Friday.

* Speaker Pelosi is hauling back the House

into session to vote on legislation that would prohibit the Postal
Service from implementing operational changes, and revert it back to the
operations system in place on January 1, 2020.

* There's a "Day of Action" tomorrow, where House members will hold
events in front of post offices in their districts.

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This coordinated response has put the Postal Service and the White House
on the defensive. A USPS spokesman said the agency would stop taking
post office boxes off the streets, first in Western states

and then nationwide
.
(Annual reviews of boxes routinely identify whether they get enough mail
to justify a postal worker going by it on their route, but given the
circumstances the paranoia is justified.) White House chief of staff
Mark Meadows claimed that no more sorting machines will be taken
offline, though documents obtained by Vice and CNN

indicated that this was well underway and workers have seen them taken
out
.

I see no reason to believe these assurances from Meadows and USPS. But
the trajectory is notable, with the USPS rhetorically backing down and
Democrats taking action. This has become the biggest political story in
America, and with the Postal Service generally beloved, from that
standpoint I'd rather be in the shoes of those defending it rather
than destroying it.

But politics, and even elections, are not the biggest near-term
consequence
of
the destruction of the mail. People get paychecks through the mail. They
get 1.2 billion prescriptions per year that way, including all VA
prescriptions. They get billions of critical packages, necessary for the
smooth functioning of commerce and small business. I may have mentioned
once or twice that we're in a pandemic, making USPS services even more
vital. When I said Friday that 182 million pieces of mail go out per
day, I was only counting first-class pieces. Overall it's around

**472 million**, every day. You can't just snarl that and expect no
real-world impact, up to and literally including life and death.

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**** A ridiculous and useless argument sparked on Twitter over the
weekend about whether Bernie Sanders, somehow, is to blame

for Trump's commandeering of the Postal Service, through blocking
appointments to the Board of Governors. This showed a lack of
understanding of how the Board of Governors operates. I wrote this back
in 2014

about the Board of Governors, a nine-member panel whose terms expire on
a staggered basis. Even if President Obama got a full complement onto
the board (and he didn't, not because of Bernie Sanders holds, but
because he didn't fill the vacancies for many years to begin with, and
didn't prioritize the board when Democrats held the Senate), Trump
would have been able to secure a majority by filling expiring seats. I
can't think of a less productive thing to talk about so I'll end
that now.

The USPS has been in trouble for a while, though mostly because of
outside pressures. In 2006, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement
Act (PAEA) forced the agency into a rushed 10-year window

to pre-fund pension and retiree health benefits. The rise of email has
dropped mail volume, though packages have picked up the slack somewhat.
PAEA also restricted new business lines for revenue, a debilitating
circumstance for any business, unable to adapt to changes in customer
behavior. In the Obama years, a rotten partnership with Staples had
non-union workers doing union postal workers' jobs.

Very little of these problems had anything to do with the Postal
Service's actual operations, which are largely in line with historical
practice

on covering expenses, and would be ahead of that absent the pre-funding
situation. They are all outside-directed, from privatizers and enemies
meaning to destroy the agency. Typically they haven't come from inside
the agency itself, with the ulterior motive of disrupting an election.

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**Housekeeping Note**

This week and next, during the two political conventions,

**Unsanitized** will be pre-empted for Unconventional, coverage of the
Democratic and Republican virtual gatherings written by our editor at
large Harold Meyerson. So Tuesday through Friday this week and the week
after is reserved for that. Enjoy the virtual spectacle.

Days Without a Bailout Oversight Chair

144
.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* Here's video
of the
Netroots Nation panel I moderated last Friday on the post-pandemic
economy with Rep. Ro Khanna, Zephyr Teachout, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Joe
Sanberg, and CA State Sen. Holly Mitchell. (YouTube)

* The NBA bubble may have led to a critical breakthrough

on cheap saliva-based coronavirus tests. Let the NBA run everything!
(ESPN)

* Immunity from COVID-19 after infections isn't 100 percent
guaranteed, but it's looking more and more real
.
(

**New York Times**)

* South Dakota becomes the first state to entirely opt out

of the Trump administration's executive order boosting unemployment. (

**Washington Post**)

* A teacher sick-out

in Arizona stops classes, and it could be the first of many. (

**The Guardian**)

* Big testing and tracing program

set for L.A. public schools. (

**Los Angeles Times**)

* What a good time to cut military health care
,
during a pandemic. (Politico)

* The move to remote work could finally ease rents

in the most in-demand areas like San Francisco. (

**Wall Street Journal**)

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