Current or modern politics in the United States

[DTravel]

‘You've Got Weeks, Not Months, to Fix This': Senate Grills DeJoy on USPS Delays
Sourcing Journal

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/yo...ebe1cdcd&ei=39

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was on the hot seat Tuesday after months of customer complaints of delayed mail deliveries have permeated across major U.S. metropolitan areas.

At a U.S. Senate hearing in Washington D.C., DeJoy fielded criticism from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the recent delivery performance of the United States Postal Service (USPS).

The USPS has been under significant scrutiny for its service in recent months in and around U.S. cities including Atlanta, Houston, Richmond, Va. and Kansas City, Mo.-all areas where the agency's new regional processing and delivery centers (RPDCs) have either been rolled out or are in development.

These RPDCs are large hubs designed to streamline mail processing, reduce transportation costs and make more efficient use of space. USPS aims to build roughly 60 of these facilities nationwide, which sort all mail and packages that are being sent to other regions, and sort packages for delivery in the regional area.

The facilities are a part of the 10-year "Delivering for America" modernization plan, which was meant to save the agency when it was announced in 2021 but has only seemed to make it less efficient. And despite expecting to break even by 2023, the USPS has since lost a whopping $18.8 billion in the first three years of the plan, including $6.5 billion last year.

To avoid running out of cash, the courier is cutting $5 billion in operating expenses through 2025.

DeJoy defended the changes that have been made throughout the USPS in the wake of the cost cuts.

"In regards to service deteriorating, we recognize that, and we apologize to the constituents that we see that service," DeJoy told the committee. "But in the long term, if we don't make these changes, that will be every day, everywhere around the nation."

Postal Regulatory Commission chairman Michael Kubayanda said that in March, only 16 percent of letters and cards were delivered on time in Atlanta. About 36 percent of inbound first-class mail is now being delivered on time in the city's metro area, he said.

This is substantially below USPS' own target for first-class mail, which is a 92 percent on-time rate, Kubayanda pointed out.

One committee member, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), lambasted DeJoy on the performance across Georgia.

"You don't have months to fix 36 percent of mail being delivered on time," Ossoff countered. "I've got constituents with prescriptions that aren't being delivered. I've got constituents who can't pay their rent and their mortgage. I've got businesses who aren't able to ship products or receive supplies."

DeJoy responded to Ossoff's questions with a laundry list of what USPS is doing to restore normal service in metro Atlanta.

"We have engaged over 50 different management executives on site. We are finishing up our staffing at the main three locations. We're revamping our truck schedules. We are stabilizing the operation in terms of machinery we have deployed there," DeJoy said. "We have special teams on soite working on our docks, working on the rest of the transportation aspects of this that are causing a significant amount of problems. The two plants where we did a lot of transfers, within the next ten days, we should have them fully staffed."

DeJoy sought to assure the audience that service would improve in the long run with the changes, DeJoy projecting a 60-day timeline to improve services in the area.

"You've got weeks, not months, to fix this," Ossoff said. "If you don't fix it, 36 percent on-time delivery, I don't think you're fit for this job."

The hearing also featured testimony from USPS Inspector General Tammy Hull, who criticized the operation in Richmond, the location of the first RPDC opened last July. Hull noted that the repurposed facility had "significant problems," one being that insufficient transportation planning resulted in a 700 percent increase in extra trips.

Hull said that first-class on-time service performance in the Richmond region dropped about 21 percentage points to 65 percent after the USPS implemented a new initiative at some post offices, where mail received during the day is held overnight. That initiative was designed to reduce the number of trips and associated costs.

She also mentioned recent problems plaguing deliveries in Houston.

"Following media reports of undelivered packages, we visited a South Houston facility in January and found 384,000 pieces of delayed mail, mostly packages," Hull said. "The Postal Service had moved operations from another plant but staffing, equipment and logistics were not aligned with the new workload."

USPS hikes stamp prices…again

The hearing came less than a week after the Postal Service unveiled it is hiking the price of its first-class Forever stamps yet again.

By raising the price of a stamp by five cents-up from 69 cents to 73 cents by July 14-this would mark the sixth time that the agency increased the cost since March 2021. Alongside other price increases for mailing letters and postcards, the proposed hike for all services would raise mail prices by approximately 7.8 percent.

DeJoy said earlier this year that the USPS aims to recover $2 billion in revenue by raising prices on mail products to counteract 15 years of a "defective pricing model."

[Furry Triangle]

Originally Posted by DTravel

Claim of indictments for Bush, Biden, Obama and Clinton is both nonsense and old | Fact check
USA Today

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ebe1cdcd&ei=30

the only one who even came close was Nixon and he skated out by resigning. Thats like one percent integrity but at least he had it. I wish Donald had that much integrity.

[DTravel]

James Comer's Hearing Erupts Into Chaos
Newsweek

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...e5a0b9fb&ei=21

Congressman James Comer's House Oversight Committee hearing erupted into chaos as the Kentucky Republican sparred with Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, on Wednesday.

Raskin has been a vocal critic of Comer's investigation into the Biden family. For over a year, Comer has led an impeach inquiry into President Joe Biden's alleged involvement in his son Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings. Comer claims that Biden benefited from this alleged family scheme, which was conducted while Biden was vice president under former President Barack Obama.

However, the White House has repeatedly denied these claims and Biden has called the probe a "baseless political stunt." Additionally, there has been no sufficient evidence presented against Biden.

As chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Comer led a hearing on China on Wednesday, titled, Defending America from the Chinese Communist Party's Political Warfare, Part I.

During the hearing, Raskin, who is a ranking member of the oversight committee, and Comer got into multiple tiffs, going off into tangents about the Biden impeachment probe.

In one clip shared on X, formerly Twitter, Comer angrily asked Raskin, "What business were they in?" referring to the Biden family.

Comer's question came after Raskin asked the chairman what he thought of Trump receiving $5.5 million from China during his first two years as president. Trump, the presumed GOP presidential nominee, admitted in January that he did receive money from foreign governments including China while he was in office as his real estate business was providing a "service" for them.

"Well, what business is the Comer's in?" Raskin then asked Comer.

Speaking over Raskin, Comer said, "I'm a farmer." The committee chairman then probed Raskin: "What did the Bidens do?"

"I'll tell you what Joe Biden did. He was a senator of the United States. Then, he wrote a book and he said he made the most money he ever made in his life. Millions of dollars on his book. And he gave a million dollars away to charity," Raskin said.

Biden and his wife Jill Biden made $15.6 million in the two years after Biden left office as Obama's vice president. The earnings largely came from speaking fees and a book deal for Joe Biden's Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose and Jill Biden's Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself.

Comer banged his gavel and said "enough" after Raskin said: "Somebody needs therapy here, but it's nobody on our side of the aisle."

After Raskin resisted and asked for his time to be restored, the two of them got into a screaming match.

"Sit down. Everybody come back. This is about China," Comer said while banging his gavel.

When asked about the incident, an oversight committee spokesman told Newsweek via email on Wednesday: "Chairman Comer asked Ranking Member Raskin a simple question: what goods or services did the Bidens provide to receive millions of dollars from China, Russia, and other foreign countries? The Ranking Member failed to answer the question and resorted to his usual talking points on [former] President [Donald] Trump."

Meanwhile, during Wednesday's hearing, Representative Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat, said: "I'm gonna take a minute, just to answer the question you keep asking, which is, what is the business of the Bidens?

"Hunter Biden was a corporate governance lawyer appointed by George [W.] Bush to the Amtrak board, and then served on a number of corporate boards and investment firms. [Joe Biden's brother] Jim Biden is a businessman. Joe Biden is the president of the United States. And has been a public servant and elected official for the better part of 50 years," Goldman said.

The congressman continued: "Now, Hunter Biden, you may want to discuss what his business was and whether he was equipped to be part of an investment firm to provide services based on his experience.

"But that has nothing to do with your jurisdiction or the impeachment investigation, because you cannot link any of his business dealings: A, to any foreign government, which he was never paid by unlike Donald Trump's and Donald Trump's family, or B, to the president of the United States. And that's why your impeachment investigation is a spectacular failure."

Newsweek also reached out to the oversight committee Democratic communications director and the White House via email for comment.

[DTravel]

Supreme Court Is Apparently Fine with the Assault on the First Amendment That Is Mckesson v. Doe
Esquire

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/su...e5a0b9fb&ei=74

Over at Vox, Ian Millhiser prompts a connection I missed while discussing the oral arguments at the Supreme Court the other day. You may recall that the case under discussion was Fischer v. U.S., in which a cop-beating cop named Joseph Fischer challenged the Department of Justice’s use of a statute originally meant as a response to the Enron debacle to bring charges against him and his fellow January 6 rioters. They were charged with interfering and obstructing an official proceeding—to wit, the certification of the 2020 presidential election. During the oral arguments, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas seemed to go out of their way to downplay the magnitude of the insurrection. Also, Justice Neil Gorsuch compared the violence of January 6 to Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s unfortunate encounter with a fire door. Alito took refuge in hypotheticals about protesters blocking bridges in D.C. Meanwhile, Thomas, who, needless to say, shouldn’t be sitting on any case connected to January 6, went full both-siderist.

“There have been many violent protests that have interfered with proceedings. Has the government applied this provision to other protests in the past?”

The Supreme Court really should leave the trolling to the professionals. Denying that January 6 was a sui generis event, which it clearly was (unless you count Second Manassas), is now conservative gospel.

But Millhiser calls our attention to a case that the Nine Wise Souls declined to consider. This one comes out of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal judiciary’s primary petri dish for growing really bad ideas. The case is Mckesson v. Doe. ( Mckesson is civil-rights activist DeRay Mckesson, whom the government has been hassling ever since he helped found the Black Lives Matter movement.) In 2016, Mckesson organized a protest outside the headquarters of the Baton Rouge Police Department in response to the police shooting of a man named Alton Sterling, who got ventilated while pinned to the ground by officers. During the protest, someone—nobody knows who—threw a rock and severely injured an officer. The victim of the rock throwing sued Mckesson for having organized the protest.

This, of course, is all bollocks. Suing the organizers of a protest for the actions of each participant is a none-too-subtle assault on the First Amendment, and also an open invitation for false-flag infiltrators seeking to damage the organizers of a protest. The controlling case—at least prior to the present moment—was NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., a 1982 decision in which the Supreme Court refused to hold the leaders of the NAACP who had organized a boycott of white-owned businesses responsible for losses sustained by the store owners. The business owners claimed that their customers had been threatened by some of the boycotters, and they sought in court to hold the NAACP liable for the actions of unnamed people who had associated themselves with the boycott. One intriguing aspect to the case is that the events in question happened in 1969, but the Supreme Court didn’t rule until thirteen years later.

The Fifth Circuit tossed out some of Officer Doe’s causes of action but left one alive. The court said Mckesson was responsible for the violence because he had situated the demonstration at the police headquarters, and that he should have anticipated that violence would break out. Thus were First Amendment rights curtailed in the three states covered—Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi—and the Supreme Court on Monday washed its hands of the case, so the curtailment is going to be semi-permanent. Perhaps the carefully cultivated conservative majority blew off the Mckesson case so that it could get around to coddling the insurrectionists. Priorities, people.

[jillfan666]

Originally Posted by DTravel

‘You've Got Weeks, Not Months, to Fix This': Senate Grills DeJoy on USPS Delays
Sourcing Journal

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/yo...ebe1cdcd&ei=39

What's the President of the United States, DeJoy's ultimate boss, doing to help remedy this problem? You know, the guy who claims he wakes up every morning thinking about how to make the lives of all Americans better that day. Seems to me getting mail delivered in a timely manner is extremely important to ALL Americans. How about his universal fix for every issue, "A Whole of Government Approach"? Nah, he's dodging this one as he does most issues. If DeJoy can't do the job, fire him and get someone who can. It's part of the basic job description of an executive. But no, he won't do that because the buck never stops on Mr. Biden's desk.