Williams called removal of the blue boxes “the most interesting of all,” saying his understanding was that “Secretary Mnuchin wanted that done.” Williams said: “I asked the Postal Service about it, and they said it wouldn’t save anything. And there would be no reason to remove those. I’m not sure how it went from that, several weeks ago, to where they’re being uprooted from all over.”
Williams also explained that the agency saved absolutely no money by dismantling the mail sorting machines, but it did sacrifice its capacity to deal with high-volume surges.
“You don’t save money by breaking down machines and putting them away and storing them,” he said, calling it a “very odd action” to take. Williams noted the reason to keep those sorting machines up and running is specifically to deal with something like a Hurricane Katrina, a 9/11, a pandemic, or an election. “Removing those is thinning out the Postal Service’s ability to redirect mail in an incident like that.”
So in essence, there was no financial benefit to removing mailboxes or dismantling sorting machines—the only upside is the downside of making USPS less efficient.
And that appears to be the motivation behind just about every change Mnuchin has pushed for and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has implemented. According to information uncovered by Citizens for the Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Mnuchin’s goal was to make USPS less competitive in relation to UPS and FedEx.
In Mnuchin’s letter to the board of governors, he had requested an analysis of USPS’s “pricing structure in the e-commerce ground package delivery market.” He mentioned that FedEx experienced a decline in operating results because of the competitive pricing environment. It seems that Mnuchin was angling for higher USPS prices, not just to keep the agency solvent but also to give a boost to UPS and FedEx, companies with close ties to the Trump administration.
Naturally, USPS is supposed to be an independent, apolitical organization, as stated in its charter. So any involvement by Mnuchin or the White House in decisions at the agency is a violation of its charter.
But Williams said Mnuchin has taken an active role in decisions at the agency right from the start, beginning with Donald Trump’s four Republican appointees to the agency’s board of governors having to meet with Mnuchin before confirmation in order to “kiss the ring.” The board now includes six Trump appointees overall: four Republicans and two Democrats.
But following confirmation, Williams said Mnuchin stayed in active contact with the GOP board members, relaying either his approval or disappointment with their performance, according to NBC News.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Williams, who offered his resignation several days before DeJoy was named due to politicization of the agency.
Mnuchin also recruited DeJoy—a major GOP donor with close ties to Trump himself—and pushed for his installation as postmaster general despite the fact that he would be the first postmaster in two decades with no agency experience. DeJoy also has massive financial conflicts of interest, including $30 million and $75 million in assets in other USPS contractors and competitors, according to CREW.
In fact, DeJoy’s financial conflicts and intimate knowledge of the logistics industry he’s worked in for most of his adult life were surely an asset in the mind of Mnuchin, who has also acted very curiously in regard to congressional efforts to shore up USPS financially in the wake of the coronavirus.
Although Congress included a $10 million loan to USPS in the several-trillion-dollar CARES Act approved last spring, Mnuchin personally blocked lawmakers’ efforts to simply grant the money to agency, and then for months he stalled release of the money. When Mnuchin finally did release the funding late last month, he only did so according to terms that required the Postal Service to disclose its proprietary service agreements with Amazon and other companies to the Treasury Department. In other words, Mnuchin held the funding hostage until he could get the proprietary information he wanted from the Postal Service.
Wow. That seems completely legit for a guy who’s obviously intent on kneecapping the agency’s market position and a postmaster general who has every reason to dismantle USPS from top to bottom.
Source: http://feeds.dailykosmedia.com/~r/dailykosofficial/~3/klgl23-k5yI/-Treasury-chief-Steve-Mnuchin-s-paw-prints-are-all-over-the-deliberate-sabotaging-of-USPS