Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
President Biden fired the Social Security Administrator and forced his
assistant to resign late this afternoon. The President’s action came after a second Supreme Court ruling in June saying that the Executive Branch could get rid is single heads of Agencies.
The Agency will be temporarily run by a Black woman, Kilolo Kijtakazi. Saul has promised to fight his firing, but he faces an uphill battle given two recent Supreme Court rulings.
Good riddance to bad trash.
42 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Plus Trump's admin sold off a ton of govt property so there isn't a lot of space for people to return to, including the SSA.
A lot are going to be on permanent telework now. 
He did serve under Obama and was apparently trusted, and was more of a "behind the scenes" type pragmatist. But as with any partisan Commissioner under a particular Administration, you have some who "go with the flow" and others who are very vocal and combative when serving under the opposition party's Administration.
So it remains to be seen given the outcome of the election, where he will eventually stand.
However in this particular case, he had been nominated to fill a Board slot that eventually expired this past December and the option to extend that slot's term for 1 year was exercised. So he is only going to be there for another 5 months and then absent any renomination, either for that slot or another that comes up (there's a slot occupied by a Republican currently up this December), he will be gone. In general, no more than 5 of the 9 members can be from the same party.
USPS 10-year strategy will address ‘unacceptable’ service delays, DeJoy tells board
Jory Heckman | @jheckmanWFED
February 9, 2021 12:19 pm
4 min read
(snip)
The USPS Board of Governors elected Ron Bloom, a former senior Treasury Department official during the Obama administration, to serve as its next chairman.
Bloom, one of two Democrats on the board, is serving the remainder of a term that expired in December, but is eligible to stay on the board for an additional holdover year.
The board elected Bloom to its top position after former chairman Robert “Mike” Duncan, a Republican, announced that he wouldn’t opt for re-election, but will stay on the board through the end of his term, which ends in December 2025.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2021/02/usps-10-year-strategy-will-address-unacceptable-service-delays-dejoy-tells-board/
Jory Heckman | @jheckmanWFED
February 9, 2021 12:19 pm
4 min read
(snip)
The USPS Board of Governors elected Ron Bloom, a former senior Treasury Department official during the Obama administration, to serve as its next chairman.
Bloom, one of two Democrats on the board, is serving the remainder of a term that expired in December, but is eligible to stay on the board for an additional holdover year.
The board elected Bloom to its top position after former chairman Robert “Mike” Duncan, a Republican, announced that he wouldn’t opt for re-election, but will stay on the board through the end of his term, which ends in December 2025.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2021/02/usps-10-year-strategy-will-address-unacceptable-service-delays-dejoy-tells-board/
I do recall the reporting of the Board's "confidence vote" in DeJoy - but that was before having all the positions filled on the Board. In fact I had read that from 2011 until I think 2019, the Board never obtained full membership (mostly because the GOP blocked all of Obama's Postal Board nominations, pre-"nuclear option", so I expect the push under Obama (with Reid's help initially) was then to at least get judges confirmed rather than jump up and down about the Postal Board) -
How the Postal Service Became Donald Trump's for the Taking
By Alana Abramson
Updated: August 20, 2020 4:21 PM EDT | Originally published: August 20, 2020 3:48 PM EDT
(snip)
But Trump’s impulsiveness doesn’t explain everything, according to experts on the USPS and postal union representatives. When the President took office three and a half years ago, he inherited an empty Board of Governors. For years, Congress had refused to confirm any of Barack Obama’s nominees to the Board, due to infighting on both sides of the aisle. Trump was therefore handed the opportunity to fill the Board of Governors with a majority of members—many of whom are business executives with ties to the Republican party—who shared his cost-cutting vision.
“I had never heard of anything like it in the U.S. government,” says James Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers, of the empty Board of Governors. “It was pretty extraordinary.”
There are nine slots allotted for the USPS Board of Governors. They function in a capacity akin a corporate board of a company, collectively appointing a Postmaster General and Deputy Postmaster General. The board is designed to be bipartisan by nature. While a sitting President appoints members when vacancies arise, no more than five members can be from the same party, and all nominees are subject to Congressional confirmation. Members are also elected to serve for seven year terms, ensuring that their tenure lasts through at least one Presidential administration.
By 2014, there were fewer than six members on the Board of Governors, which meant the body lacked a quorum and was unable to perform key functions. But while Obama nominated seven people to fill those vacancies, according to a 2018 report from the Congressional Research Service, none received a vote in the Senate.
https://time.com/5882006/usps-board-governors-trump/
By Alana Abramson
Updated: August 20, 2020 4:21 PM EDT | Originally published: August 20, 2020 3:48 PM EDT
(snip)
But Trump’s impulsiveness doesn’t explain everything, according to experts on the USPS and postal union representatives. When the President took office three and a half years ago, he inherited an empty Board of Governors. For years, Congress had refused to confirm any of Barack Obama’s nominees to the Board, due to infighting on both sides of the aisle. Trump was therefore handed the opportunity to fill the Board of Governors with a majority of members—many of whom are business executives with ties to the Republican party—who shared his cost-cutting vision.
“I had never heard of anything like it in the U.S. government,” says James Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers, of the empty Board of Governors. “It was pretty extraordinary.”
There are nine slots allotted for the USPS Board of Governors. They function in a capacity akin a corporate board of a company, collectively appointing a Postmaster General and Deputy Postmaster General. The board is designed to be bipartisan by nature. While a sitting President appoints members when vacancies arise, no more than five members can be from the same party, and all nominees are subject to Congressional confirmation. Members are also elected to serve for seven year terms, ensuring that their tenure lasts through at least one Presidential administration.
By 2014, there were fewer than six members on the Board of Governors, which meant the body lacked a quorum and was unable to perform key functions. But while Obama nominated seven people to fill those vacancies, according to a 2018 report from the Congressional Research Service, none received a vote in the Senate.
https://time.com/5882006/usps-board-governors-trump/
And that's an interesting thought about the "Independent" (Amber McReynolds) -
Prominent vote-by-mail advocate is Biden pick for Postal Service board
David Hawkings
Feb. 25
The reversal of voting by mail's standing and credibility, with Donald Trump gone and Washington newly in Democratic hands, appears complete.
A symbolic capstone on the transformation — from obscure second-tier cause of democracy reformers before the pandemic, to the heart of Trump's crusade of lies about the election, and now to an established aspect of good governance — was delivered Wednesday by President Biden. He said he wanted to put Amber McReynolds, the most prominent evangelist for absentee balloting as head of the National Vote at Home Institute, on the board that oversees the Postal Service.
Assuming she is confirmed by the Senate, which seems likely given initial positive reaction to the nomination, McReynolds would bring several types of diversity to the job. She would become the only woman on the board, and also its first member with expertise about how the beleaguered USPS could become a lasting force for good in the electoral system.
Of the three Biden proposed for the board of governors, McReynolds is also the only political independent. But her tiny nonprofit advocacy group has gained outsized influence among the mainly left-leaning voting rights organizations that pushed last year to make access to the ballot box easier because of Covid-19 — and are now working to protect those gains from a barrage of Republican efforts in state capitals to roll back the rules.
https://thefulcrum.us/amber-mcreynolds
David Hawkings
Feb. 25
The reversal of voting by mail's standing and credibility, with Donald Trump gone and Washington newly in Democratic hands, appears complete.
A symbolic capstone on the transformation — from obscure second-tier cause of democracy reformers before the pandemic, to the heart of Trump's crusade of lies about the election, and now to an established aspect of good governance — was delivered Wednesday by President Biden. He said he wanted to put Amber McReynolds, the most prominent evangelist for absentee balloting as head of the National Vote at Home Institute, on the board that oversees the Postal Service.
Assuming she is confirmed by the Senate, which seems likely given initial positive reaction to the nomination, McReynolds would bring several types of diversity to the job. She would become the only woman on the board, and also its first member with expertise about how the beleaguered USPS could become a lasting force for good in the electoral system.
Of the three Biden proposed for the board of governors, McReynolds is also the only political independent. But her tiny nonprofit advocacy group has gained outsized influence among the mainly left-leaning voting rights organizations that pushed last year to make access to the ballot box easier because of Covid-19 — and are now working to protect those gains from a barrage of Republican efforts in state capitals to roll back the rules.
https://thefulcrum.us/amber-mcreynolds
IMHO, Biden should play that card of her not being associated as a member of the Democratic Party and thus be able to seat a new Democrat in December. She was sworn in June 15th of this year (and her slot's term goes until 2026). It's a long game requiring a couple month wait to get it done, but it might (hopefully) reap our objective of getting DeJoy out.
And regarding sifting through the government and finding the booby-trap appointees, as we can see, that has taken time. They are landmines needing to be detected and detonated, and as each one is "outed", we hear the "explosive" squealing as it happens.
I do know that there are certain "Commission" members (from designated "independent agencies" ) who by law cannot be removed "at the pleasure of the President" nor "for cause", and those types are relatively few. But Presidents can "remove" a sitting member from the Chair position and install a new one (depending on statutory authority for that Commission), while retaining that previous Chair in their termed position in a non-leadership role (assuming they don't go on and resign), which would at least shift the balance.
