Trump will deliver killing blow to the USPS
The USPS is about to declare bankruptcy. Itās at the center of the longstanding plans for disaster recover and has been since the Cold War. Itās the only institution that could (for example) deliver covid meds to every home in America in one day.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/national-emergency-library/#going-postal
But Congress has decided not to bail out the postal service, despite Art 1, Sec 8 of the US Constitution: āTo establish Post Offices and post Roads.ā
Maybe itās because without a USPS we couldnāt have a postal vote in 2020?
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/27/just-asking-questions/#save-usps
The proximate cause of the post officeās bankruptcy is the pandemic, but that is merely the finishing blow. The USPS was murdered in 2006, when Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/04/will-the-united-states-post-office-become-a-victim-of-covid19.html
The Act gave the USPS a mere 10 years to āprefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years.ā That is, to set aside cash to pay medical bills for future employees who hadnāt been born yet.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-6407
The Act gave the USPS a mere 10 years to āprefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years.ā That is, to set aside cash to pay medical bills for future employees who hadnāt been born yet.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-6407
The USPSās murder is straight out of the neoliberal playbook: ā1 Defund, 2 claim crisis, 3 call for privatizatization, 4 profit!ā
As Lambert Strether points out, it was a bipartisan act of murder, cosponored by the ācentristā Democrat Henry Waxman.
Killing the USPS looms large in the Trump adminās (nonmetaphorical, actual) privatization playbook, āDelivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendationsā:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Government-Reform-and-Reorg-Plan.pdf
The proposals are for USPS to become a Wework clone or franchisee, but not to become a publicly owned bank - a common line of business for other nationsā postal services, natural based on the amounts of cash they handle.
The USPS is the nationās second largest employer of veterans, with 630,000 employees. Trump is about to allow it to collapse so that UPS, Fedex and other private firms can skim off the most profitable parts of its business and leave rural Americans totally isolated.
The loss of the USPS would mean the loss of the last truly universal federal program in America and would unduly hammer the people whom Trump claims to love ā veterans and rural voters.
https://twitter.com/lildipshit3/status/1248741868440940544
I read a diary at Daily Kos which suggested that if half the households in America bought 2 sheets of Forever Stamps, for about 16 bucks, it would provide enough funding to keep the USPS alive. How fucked up is this? Weāre trying to save the fucking Postal Service, which is in the fucking CONSTITUTION, from Republican sabatoge. There is no such thing as a moderate, or patriotic, Republican. They are anti-American Fascists.
donāt miss the fact that this is coinciding exactly with the push to increase mail-in voting, which would seriously jeopardize Trumpās reelection. you canāt have mail-in ballots if thereās no postal service, right?
Americans, please text USPS to 50409 and ResistBot will send a message to your senators and congressperson telling them to save the Post Office.
i did it yesterday and it couldnāt have been easier. my senators are both pieces of shit, but that doesnāt mean iām not going to give them an earful about this.
