One repub senator claimed sorting machines were being removed prior to DeJoy's arrival

[mnmoderatedem]

Can't remember who, but that was his claim.

Can't discount the possibility of some being removed previously but it seems there was a massive uptick since DeJoy arrived.

Anyone have the actual numbers?

[Iliyah]

1. DeJoy has been there for 3 months . ...

BUT, the delays happened in the past month. ????????????????????????????????????????????????

[ok_cpu]

2. Rob Portman from Ohio

Whose only purpose is to provide cover and support for Rump.

Portman's is fighting on two fronts: First, he wants all of in Ohio to believe that COVID is causing the service slowdowns. Second, he'll tell you this is part of some long term plan for the USPS and DeJoy just happens to be the PG today. The second point might be true from his perspective as I believe he was the OMB Director who recommended the funding requirement changes that were the first salvo at privatizing the USPS.

But, as noted upthread, COVID has been around for 6 months. DeJoy three. The trouble the last 4-6 weeks, coincidental to when Rump attacked voting by mail.

[Hoyt]

3. Have not seen sorting machine stats, but I know 240,000 mail boxes have been removed since 1985.

Considering letter mail has declined significantly over the years since the internet -- and decreased another 20 to 30% since CV19 -- seems there is plenty of room to removed unused capacity.


In fact if this statement from the American Postal Workers Union is anywhere near accurate, we could probably cut out half of the 6,000 letter sorters still in place and still have plenty of capacity:

"According to a grievance filed by the American Postal Workers Union and obtained by The Washington Post, the USPS was poised to decommission 671 of the massive machines, roughly 10 percent of its inventory, and capable of sorting 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour. The Postal Service, by comparison, processes as much as 500 million items each day."

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213942587

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/heres-why-the-postal-service-wanted-to-remove-hundreds-of-mail-sorting-machines/ar-BB18bNzo?li=BBnb7Kz