Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

The lights are all blinking red.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

The revolution will be supervised.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

People are weird.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

We will not go back.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night ‘Good News, If We Can Hold It’ Open Thread

Late Night ‘Good News, If We Can Hold It’ Open Thread

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Per the Washington Post, “Federal judge temporarily blocks USPS operational changes amid concerns about mail slowdowns, election”:

A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday granted a request from 14 states to temporarily block operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service that have been blamed for a slowdown in mail delivery, saying President Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy are “involved in a politically motivated attack” on the agency that could disrupt the 2020 election.

Stanley A. Bastian, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, said policies put in place under DeJoy “likely will slow down delivery of ballots” this fall, creating a “substantial possibility that many voters will be disenfranchised and the states may not be able to effectively, timely, accurately determine election outcomes.”…

In a written order released Thursday night, Bastian laid out more than a page of specific prohibitions on the Postal Service until a final judgment is reached in the case — restrictions that could broadly affect the agency’s services. He connected the USPS policies to Trump’s broadsides against mail voting, saying the actions amount to “voter disenfranchisement.”…

The suit, filed by Washington and 13 other states, sought a broad injunction prohibiting the Postal Service from implementing operational changes, distribution center closures and removal of mail-sorting machines, among other changes, absent an opinion by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

In his decision, Bastian largely granted that request, ordering the Postal Service to reverse any instructions for mail carriers to leave mail behind at postal facilities, to stop requiring trucks to leave at set times regardless of whether the mail is ready and to allow return trips to distribution centers to ensure “timely delivery.”

The USPS must also treat all election mail according to first-class delivery standards and replace or restore the equipment required to do that. Any request to “reconnect or replace any decommissioned or removed sorting machine(s)” must be directed through the court for approval, unless the USPS has already approved it…

Reader Interactions

26Comments

  1. 1.

    Jay

    This is my great-aunt, Alice Isaac, who survived the Holocaust. This portrait was made in Amsterdam after she was liberated from Bergen Belsen. She was 20 years old.Alice was never able to have children because of what the Nazis did to her in the camp. pic.twitter.com/AvUoow2MXG— Ming Lauren Holden, PhD (@minglishmuffin) September 17, 2020

  5. 5.

    Mary G

    @Major Major Major Major: Cool! Very Dan Brown!

    The LA Times has been doing some great investigative reporting on the post office.

    This article on August 20:
    ‘Like Armageddon’: Rotting food, dead animals and chaos at postal facilities amid cutbacks
     

    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.

    Yesterday:
    Empty trucks, falsified records: How Louis DeJoy’s changes at the Postal Service brought chaos

    Workers who spoke to The Times described troubling details about how the rigid schedules have played out: Some trucks have traveled empty, and mail left behind has accumulated at massive processing centers, creating backlogs in a system that is not designed to store mail. Loading dock managers have falsified records so it appears that trucks are departing earlier, some mail has been sorted twice, and in at least one case, a large shipment from Amazon was turned away because facilities had no space to process it.

    At a post office in Carmichael, Calif., near Sacramento, employees ran out of storage space and refused to accept about 1,500 packages from Amazon drivers Aug. 29, said Saintil Perry, president of the local chapter of the American Postal Workers Union.
    “That’s a no-no. That’s revenue, regardless of how heavy the shipment is,” Perry said about refusing incoming parcels. “But they literally don’t have space. The letter carriers don’t have space. If they take on this mail, they won’t have time to leave because they would have to process it.”

    At a massive mail facility in Santa Ana, tractor-trailers began pulling away from the docks even if workers were in the middle of loading them, said Will Khong, president of the postal union’s Orange County-area chapter.

    Farenthold style investigation that’s not just talking on the phone:

    Times reporters who mailed 100 letters to five cities in late August found that at least 22 of the envelopes arrived late or were never delivered. One letter sent from Sylmar took 11 days to get to Austin, Texas. Another item mailed from Malibu sat in the Los Angeles processing center for three days before being delivered to a San Francisco suburb four days later.

  6. 6.

    Mary G

    @Mary G: More from the LA Times story:

    In the San Diego area, postal employees have seen managers falsify records to make it look like tasks are being finished on time, said Bob Waterhouse, executive vice president of the San Diego chapter of the American Postal Workers Union.

    Managers use scanners to read bar codes that signify when certain duties are complete, such as when mail has been sorted and when trucks leave from the loading docks. Some managers are deliberately scanning the codes early to make it look like sorting is finished more quickly and trucks are leaving earlier than they actually are, Waterhouse said.

    “This is a way to show that the policy is working when it is not actually being practiced,” Waterhouse said. He said employees are being threatened with discipline if they override the false scans.

    Robert Bockman, a tractor-trailer operator and vice president of the Puget Sound-area union chapter in Washington state, said he’s also been made aware that managers are trying to scan trucks out early.

    He said the mandate to be punctual is so overplayed that he and other drivers are being told to leave the loading docks five minutes early, regardless of whether all the mail is on board.

    “I feel like I’m in a day care,” Bockman said, noting that someone has put signs up in Seattle and Tacoma processing facilities that feature clip art of a stopwatch and say “5 Minutes Early Is The New ON TIME!” with the phrase “NO EXCEPTIONS” in bold red type.

    “The micromanagement has really caused issues in the workplace,” Bockman said. “It’s stressful. You don’t want to be late, and you sure as hell don’t want to be talked to by supervisors” about it.

    Bockman said the pressure to leave five minutes early means that about four times a week he has been driving down freeways with an empty trailer.

  7. 7.

    Bruce K

    Not-quite-unrelated good news: my family in exile received emails from the New York State government instructing them them how to download PDFs of their absentee ballots. They’ll be sending them in with a courier service (probably DHL); I checked, and New York County had no problem with accepting three sealed ballots in one courier envelope.

    I’m going to fill mine out today, as well. I don’t have any state-level choices to make: only President and Representative. My choices are clear, as the only way I could ever again be made to vote for a Republican is for someone to give that command to my zombified corpse (and because I wouldn’t put it past the GOP to try that, I’m leaving instructions that my body is to be cremated and the ashes scattered on two different continents).

  8. 8.

    James E Powell

    I’ve given up hope that the revelations by Miles Taylor, Olivia Troye, or even Trump himself on tape will cause his approval to drop. I have to be satisfied that they are keeping his approval from going up.

  9. 9.

    opiejeanne

    @Major Major Major Major:  That’s a really cool shirt. I saw a very sunukar design recently, but it was something to do with Qanon or Soros or some other conspiracy theory. If I run across it again I’ll email it to you.

  12. 12.

    John Revolta

    This is good news. But, how long before another judge blocks the blockage of the stoppage, thereby allowing the stoppage to restart?
    I’m practically crosseyed from all the legal chicanery these assholes keep running on us instead of actually, you know, governing.

  16. 16.

    satby

    This is good-ish news, but since several mail sorting machines were already removed in key states and deliberately destroyed in the process, I’m not sure if it’s been done in enough time to completely reverse the clusterfuck that mail delivery has become.

    And since DeJoy is a rich fucker, I hope he’s held personally responsible and made to pay financial penalties for violating postal tampering laws. Jail time would be sweet too.

  18. 18.

    different-church-lady

    FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PEOPLE, DROP YOUR BALLOT OFF AT CITY HALL INTO A BOX YOU’VE DETERMINED IS LEGIT!

  19. 19.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @satby:

    With DeJoy, it’s hard to determine how much destruction is planned malevolence or whether it is just a happy byproduct of rich white-boy sheer incompetence and being over-focused on meaningless metrics that feign efficiency or achievement.

    I mean, look at the failure point – “our trucks go out on time or earlier, regardless of whether they’re full”.  This is pure MBAism, and looks like something done to “wring out the inefficiency” by making the lazy moochers on the sorting  and handling end of the inefficient government behemoth work harder.

    With conservative business practice, it is never about the service, product or experience you deliver. It is all about being able to pretend like you’re on top of things while making a stack.

  20. 20.

    geg6

    @different-church-lady:

    Easy to say, but only as of yesterday were those of us in PA allowed to even have drop boxes, per a PA Supreme Court ruling against Cheetolini’s lawsuit to disallow them here.  Also, the GOPer ratfucking case to a get the Greens on the ballot, even though they didn’t meet the ballot requirements was dismissed.  They are finally printing our ballots and, hopefully, be in the mail next week.  Living in a battleground state is living on the electoral edge.

  21. 21.

    Morzer

    @geg6: We really should start calling the creature Cheatolini.  It sums up the entirety of his education, business and political career.

  22. 22.

    evap

    My local rag (Atlanta paper) had an article about the forced hysterectomies and it sounds like it’s all about a privately run camp and one particularly corrupt/evil doctor making money rather than specifically aimed at immigrants.  This particular doctor has been involved in Medicaid fraud in the past and the subject of lawsuits for  incompetence.    I imagine he gets paid for each surgery and I’m betting he saw an opportunity to line his pockets.   Why this guy hasn’t had his license taken away is not clear.  It’s a heart-breaking and horrifying story in any case.

  23. 23.

    Chyron HR

    @evap:

    Oh, well, that’s fine as long as they have such a convincing excuse.

    “Chimneys billowing smoke?  No, that’s steam, from the steamed camp we’re running.”

  24. 24.

    evodevo

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yes. This. As a 23-yr veteran of the Postal Service, this MBA crap from the “suits” is very familiar….this scanning crap was instituted years ago, and was laughable then.  Even in our tiny facility, they called/emailed immediately if the scans were missed or late….didn’t matter if the work was actually performed or not, NO LATE SCANS lolol.  The clerk wasn’t allowed to start earlier to effectively sort the incoming mail (by hand) when you knew the day would be a clusterfuck because “holiday mail”, when we usually get 3 times the normal daily load…you weren’t allowed to come back after “dispatch time” and possibly delay the outgoing truck because the number of Amazon packages was overwhelming and impossible to deliver in the usual time allotted, etc etc.  As the years have gone on, hiring has failed and the number of available subs has dwindled to a shadow of former years…hiring freezes and overtime bans haven’t helped…I finally had had enough and quit last Dec.  I’m so glad I did…

  25. 25.

    The Oracle of Solace

    @James E Powell:

    Given how frustrating it’s been to see Trump weather a hundred presidency-ending scandals, I think your assessment is correct, and a useful change in perspective.

    (I had my own change in perspective early in summer, when I realized Trump wasn’t acting like a politician who wanted to win an election, but a despot trying to cling to power. Perversely, it made me feel better knowing that even he realized he couldn’t win).

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