A Trump administration task force on how to reform the US Postal Service threw cold water on the idea of a return of banking services to post offices.
The report (12/4) echoes arguments that bankers have made in opposition to postal banking, namely that the USPS is ill-equipped to manage the risks involved, Kevin Wack noted at American Banker.
“Given the USPS’s narrow expertise and capital limitations, expanding into sectors where the USPS does not have a comparative advantage or where balance sheet risk might arise, such as postal banking, should not be pursued,” the report states.
Post offices offered banking services from 1911, when William Howard Taft introduced a postal-savings system to serve new immigrants and the poor, through 1966, when Congress eliminated the postal banking service. In 2014 the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General floated the idea of relaunching the banking service.
Postal banking has the backing of several Democratic senators who are mulling presidential bids, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, as well as Bernie Sanders (I-VT), so it could become a more prominent political issue over the next two years.
Supporters argue that the USPS, which operates more than 30,000 post offices, is well positioned to offer more affordable credit to millions of Americans who are underserved by banks and rely on payday lenders, which often charge usurious rates that send people into spirals of recurring debt. They also note that banking services would offer a new source of revenue for the struggling Postal Service, which reported a net loss of $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2018, its 12th straight year of net losses.
In April, President Trump expressed his own suspicions that Amazon was not paying enough for its parcel deliveries through the Postal Service, in a series of tweets that were not backed up by evidence. But he created a task force to make recommendations on how to make the post office financially sustainable. The task force was chaired by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. It also included representatives from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management.
The task force’s report recommends that the Postal Service explore some new business opportunities, such as offering licenses for hunting and fishing, and renting out space to other retailers.
It also suggested more use of contractors to eliminate union jobs and ending the right of postal unions to bargain over pay and benefits.
The report notes that “packages have not been priced with profitability in mind,” but it didn’t find that the USPS loses money on Amazon, the Associated Press noted.
The report is the latest in a long line of proposals to shore up the Postal Service’s finances after years of losses related largely to the shift from physical deliveries to online communications – only partly offset by substantial growth in delivery of packages, FedWeek.com reported (12/10).
It opened the door to narrowing the “universal service obligation” requiring that USPS serve all addresses in the US; greater flexibility in setting prices for mail and packages that are not deemed “essential services”; expanding use of “private sector partners in areas such as processing and sortation”; more flexibility to lower service delivery standards; exploring potential new revenue options including “licensing access to the mailbox” — except postal banking; and restructuring–but not eliminating–the requirement to pre-fund future retiree health insurance costs 75 years in advance, which the USPS has been unable to pay for years, resulting in a $43 billion obligation on its books.
Regarding bargaining, the report said that “as postal employees are part of the US federal civil service, their wages and benefits should be aligned to comparable US federal employee groups, including aligning their ability to collectively bargain for wages and benefits with other federal employees.” It said postal employees are better paid than their federal counterparts, as well as their private sector counterparts – an average per-employee total pay and benefits cost of $85,800 per year compared to $76,200 and $53,900 at two major package delivery firms.
Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, blasted the report, which he said was “based on myth and misinformation that instead of improving mail services, would deliver higher prices and less service for the public.”
He added, “The United States has the lowest postage rates in the industrialized world. USPS doesn’t take a penny in tax dollars and under the universal service mandate delivers to 157 million addresses six days a week at affordable prices.
“This report calls for slashing universal service. Recommendations would slow down service, reduce delivery days and privatize large portions of the public Postal Service. Most of the report’s recommendations, if implemented, would hurt business and individuals alike.”
SUPREME COURT PUNTS ON DEFUNDING PLANNED PARENTHOOD. The Supreme Court handed down a surprising order (12/10), announcing it will not hear a pair of cases asking, among other things, how much power conservative states have to defund Planned Parenthood. The order is surprising because, as Justice Clarence Thomas notes in a dissent joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, the two cases meet the ordinary criteria the Supreme Court uses to determine which cases it should hear, Ian Millhiser noted at ThinkProgress (12/10).
“One of this Court’s primary functions is to resolve ‘important matter[s]’ on which the courts of appeals are ‘in conflict,’” Thomas wrote. And these two cases involve a conflict where five federal appeals courts disagree with a single outlier court.
The cases are Gee v. Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast and Andersen v. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.
As the presence of Planned Parenthood in both cases suggests, both suits are skirmishes in America’s ongoing war over reproductive rights. Both involve efforts by conservative states, Louisiana and Kansas, to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. That conflicts with Medicaid’s “free-choice-of-provider provision,” which provides that Medicaid recipients may obtain medical “assistance from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required.”
The plaintiffs in both Gee and Andersen include individual patients who receive non-abortive health care from Planned Parenthood. The specific legal issue before the Court in both cases is whether these individual plaintiffs “have a private right of action to challenge” the states’ decisions to defund Planned Parenthood. And, as Justice Thomas notes in his dissent, this issue is much broader than this relatively narrow dispute involving funding for an organization that anti-abortion lawmakers love to hate.
The question is whether any Medicaid patient is allowed to sue when a state “removes their doctor as a Medicaid provider or inadequately reimburses their provider.” A victory for Kansas and Louisiana in these cases could deal a sharp blow to the rule that Medicaid patients, and not their state governments, get to select doctors.
Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent of the Court’s reluctance to take up the cases, “I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood,’” before complaining that “some tenuous connection to a politically fraught issue does not justify abdicating our judicial duty.”
Neither Chief Justice John Roberts nor Brett Kavanaugh joined their fellow conservatives urging them to take up these cases — in the Supreme Court, only four votes are needed for the Court to take up a case, so either man could have placed Andersen or Gee on the Court’s argument calendar.
Millhiser added, “It’s very doubtful that this equilibrium will last — Kavanaugh’s been very clear that he intends to kill Roe v. Wade. But the Court’s decision to not hear Andersen and Gee gives credence to the theory that Roberts and Kavanaugh want to give the nation some time to forget about how Kavanaugh got his current job before they declare outright war on reproductive choice.”
Charles Piece noted at Esquire.com (12/10) that Justice Thomas cited a debunked accusation against Planned Parenthood in arguing the Court should hear the case. “It is true that these particular cases arose after several States alleged that Planned Parenthood affiliates had, among other things, engaged in ‘the illegal sale of fetal organs’ and ‘fraudulent billing practices,’ and thus removed Planned Parenthood as a state Medicaid provider,” Thomas wrote.
In 2015, the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a series of heavily-edited videos claiming to show Planned Parenthood representatives illegally selling fetal tissue for profit, something the reproductive health nonprofit strongly denied. Several investigations in the time since have found no wrongdoing on the part of Planned Parenthood, while CMP’s founder and another member have faced legal consequences, including 15 felony counts of invasion of privacy in California, ThinkProgress noted in 2017.
POWERFUL HOUSE DEM SUPPORTS GREEN NEW DEAL. With more than a hundred climate activists gathered outside his office, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) said he would endorse the creation of a select committee for a Green New Deal. The announcement is the latest success for the youth-led Sunrise Movement’s lobbying efforts, Mark Hand noted at ThinkProgress (12/10).
More than a thousand activists from the Sunrise Movement, a group committed to swift climate action fanned out to several House offices to lobby members to support the creation of a select committee, which would have the authority to create a “detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan” allowing the US to swiftly become carbon-neutral within a decade as proposed under the Green New Deal. It was the largest convergence to date of Green New Deal supporters on Capitol Hill.
It was during their visits to House member offices when McGovern affirmed his support. McGovern is among nearly 25 Democratic House members and three Democratic senators, plus Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), to join the call for a committee to tackle a Green New Deal.
McGovern is in line to become the chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, which oversees all processes for House committees and their jurisdiction. As committee chairman, McGovern will have influence over a select committee on a Green New Deal’s jurisdiction. The office of incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), though, ultimately decides which committees are formed.
The activists view the Democratic takeover of the House in the midterm elections as a perfect chance to set the agenda for climate action in 2019. They singled out McGovern, Pelosi, and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the second ranking Democrat in the House for special attention (12/10).
Capitol Police arrested more than 140 activists who participated in sit-ins outside the offices of Pelosi and Hoyer. The goal of the sit-ins was to get the Democratic leaders to endorse the idea of a select committee.
Hoyer tweeted support for the protesters, calling climate change “one of the most pressing issues of our time.”
“Speaking out is exactly what our democracy is all about, and I appreciate their passion. The new Dem Majority will #ActonClimate,” he tweeted, without officially backing the Green New Deal.
UNEMPLOYMENT UNCHANGED AT 3.7%, BUT WAGE GROWTH STAYS WEAK. The US economy gained 155,000 jobs in November, and unemployment was unchanged at 3.7%, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (12/10). Soft wage growth. at 3.1% over the past year, has been accompanied by weaker auto sales than typical for this low level of unemployment, leading General Motors to plan plant closings, and slowing home sales point to stresses for workers and the household sector of the economy, the AFL-CIO labor federation noted as it urged the Federal Reserve “to move with great caution and hold off on more rate increases.”
HOUSE GOP LEADERS RESIST REINSTATEMENT OF NET NEUTRALITY. Supporters of “net neutrality” were still scrambling to get Congress members to sign a “discharge petition” to force a vote on repealing the Trump administration’s regulations killing net neutrality, over the objections of Republican leaders.
Trump’s FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, dealt a serious blow to net neutrality when he issued regulations earlier this year gutting the Obama-era rules that regulated the internet like a utility, with all parts of the internet equally available to access. Pai cited millions of public comments supporting the repeal of net neutrality, which turned out to be overwhelmingly fake, organized campaigns, or bots that falsely gave the impression of a tidal wave opposing net neutrality.
A Stanford researcher found that almost 21 million of the 22 million comments sent to the FCC were not unique messages from real people. Of comments from real people, the researcher found, 99.7% supported net neutrality.
Buzzfeed News reported (12/8) that the Justice Department is investigating whether laws were broken when millions of people’s identities were posted to the FCC website in a false attribution of opinions about net neutrality rules.
In May, under the Congressional Review Act, the Senate voted 52-47 to overturn the FCC’s proposed rules that would gut net neutrality. The House has not acted on the bill to overturn the rules, and with the bill stuck in committee, it has very little time remaining before the end of this Congress. The only chance is to force a vote on the floor and bypass the committee by a majority of the House signing a discharge petition.
As of 12/10, 178 House members had signed the discharge petition. If 40 more members sign the petition, that would mean a majority of the House — 218 members — supported it, requiring the chamber to hold a vote.
The House has until the end of the year to pass the resolution, Marguerite Reardon reported at CNet.com (12/10), as a showdown between Democrats in Congress and Trump over a federal spending bill keeps Congress going until at least 12/21.
TRUMP BOOSTING THE COAL INDUSTRY HAS CONSUMPTION DOWN 4%. Americans are consuming less coal in 2018 than at any time since Jimmy Carter’s presidency, a federal report said (12/4), as cheap natural gas and other rival sources of energy frustrate the Trump administration’s pledges to revive the US coal industry.
A report by the US Energy Information Administration projected that 2018 would see the lowest US coal consumption since 1979, as well as the second-greatest number on record of coal-fired power plants shutting down.
US coal demand has been falling since 2007 in the face of competition from increasingly abundant and affordable natural gas and renewable energy, such as solar and wind power. Tougher pollution rules also have compelled some older, dirtier-burning coal plants to close rather than upgrade their equipment to trap more harmful coal emissions.
Trump and other Republicans frequently attacked former President Barack Obama for waging what they called a “war on coal” through increased regulations that Republicans said killed jobs and harmed the industry.
Trump’s enthusiasm for coal has helped to make Appalachian “coal country” one of Trump’s most fervent bases of support as Trump racked up big wins in West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and other states.
“The coal industry is back,” Trump declared at one rally in West Virginia last summer. But the Energy Information Administration says coal consumption by the country’s power grid will end the year down 4%, and fall another 8% in 2019.
And the relaxation of pollution controls has barely moved the needle on coal mining jobs. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated the US added about 2,000 jobs since Trump took office, including 1,100 jobs in 2018 through September, when there were an estimated 52,800 jobs in coal mining. Over the last three decades, the coal sector has shed more than 100,000 jobs, as mechanized mining has made fewer workers necessary.
NEBRASKA FARMERS SAY TRUMP TRADE WAR COST THEM $1.2B. The Nebraska Farm Bureau said in early December that the tariffs triggered by President Trump’s ongoing trade war have cost the state’s agricultural sector $1.2 billion in revenue, specifically affecting soybeans, corn and pork, the Omaha World-Herald reported (12/4).
“To put a $1.2 billion loss into perspective, every person in the state of Nebraska would need to contribute $632 to cover that volume of lost dollars. That’s a significant hit to our state’s economy,” Jay Rempe, a Nebraska Farm Bureau senior economist, told the World-Herald. The Farm Bureau expects Nebraska farmers to receive $300 million in the first half of $12 billion in federal payments intended to offset the loss of revenues as a result of trade disruptions.
Khorri Atkinson of Axios dot.com noted that the effects of Trump’s trade war with China and other US trading partners has forced farmers to store mass quantities of their crops until prices improve. Demand in China, the biggest market for American soybeans, has dropped nearly 90%.
TRUMP’S AG PICK HAS A SPECIAL RECORD ON SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS. Charles P. Pierce of Esquire spent some time in the penalty box after he reminded observers that “the presidency of the late George H.W. Brush was not all sunshine and lollipops, especially if you were a Kurd, or someone living in Central America. So, I’m willing to accept this latest completely horrible idea from *El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago* as merely a sophisticated attempt to get me in trouble again. But, seriously, holy hell, is this ever a bad idea.”
He referred to the emergence of William Barr, who served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 under President Bush, as Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
“OK, to begin, return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, again, when everybody was covering everybody else’s ass, and the shredders of Washington were humming like the starting line at Daytona. William Barr was an assistant attorney general and, Lordy lord, could this guy stonewall.
“You see, under President Poppy, there was this thing called Iraqgate—which is not to be confused with the Iran-Contra scandal, in which President Poppy also was hip-deep. In this episode, a tangled mess if there ever was one, it was suggested that the Poppy Bush administration was helping to arm Saddam Hussein’s Iraq through a complicated scheme involving allegedly misused US agricultural credits and a corrupt bank in Atlanta. This was somewhat embarrassing to Bush, as his administration was being accused of helping build the war machine that he’d sent American troops to destroy in Kuwait. The House Judiciary Committee asked that a special counsel be appointed. William Barr, then the Attorney General, refused to do so.
“(Earlier, Barr also had refused to appoint a special counsel to look into the monumental money-laundering operation of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, a massive scandal that only then-Senator John Kerry had the stones to take on.)
“Soon, however, the charges morphed into accusations that the CIA and the Justice Department had meddled in the investigation into the aforementioned Atlanta bank. Now enmeshed in the controversy himself, Barr stepped aside and agreed to appoint a special prosecutor to look into that specific aspect of the situation. Nobody was satisfied and nothing ever came of the investigation. Once Bill Clinton became president, his DOJ closed the book on Iraqgate. It is not unfair to say that Barr’s record is that of a Republican retainer, and not a disinterested law-enforcement official.”
As for current events, Barr toid the New York Times in November 2017 he sees more basis for investigating the Uranium One deal approved by a committee in 2010 when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state than any supposed collusion between Trump and Russia. “To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility,” he said.
Barr and current Special Counsel Robert Mueller worked together at the Justice Department back in the day, Pierce notes. But Barr also has unburdened himself of some interesting thoughts regarding how Mueller’s been doing his job as well. The Washington Post reported
“Barr shares at least one of the president’s views on the probe being conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. In 2017, when asked by the Washington Post about political donations made by lawyers on the special counsel’s team, Barr said ‘prosecutors who make political contributions are identifying fairly strongly with a political party’ and added: ‘I would have liked to see [Mueller] have more balance on this group.’”
“Barr also wrote last year that the administration’s decision to fire James B. Comey as FBI director was ‘quite understandable’ because, in his view, Comey had usurped the power of the attorney general when he publicly announced his recommendation not to charge former secretary of state Hillary Clinton during the investigation of her private email server.”
Pierce concluded, “The emails live forever, and so, apparently, does the instinct for ass-covering.”
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2019
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