A bit of a false equivalence there. But for starters we could just make the USPS M-F and figure out a way to charge extra for junk mail.
They’ve been profitable at least through 2018 once you remove the pension expense.
I think spending 25B to ensure postal service everywhere 6 days a week is ok when we spend 800B on the military industrial complex.
Good God they have already shifted the Overton Window enough that liberals on this site want to slash services and run it more like a business.
7 Likes
Unless you’re a town/city of decent size your fire department is all volunteer around here. They literally have to buy their own gear. One thing you’d thing people would be okay spending tax dollars on is fire, but nah.
I have no problems with how it’s currently run. I don’t think Saturday deliveries are necessary, but I really don’t care either way. I’d lean towards leaving it the same vs changing it, but I’d be fine with M-F. I would love to get less junk mail, so charging more for it seems like a win.
As a service that delivers traditional mail, Saturday service doesn’t seem very important. Honestly, once a week seems like overkill for most people. But for those outside large cities, the USPS is how they get pretty much everything delivered, not just mail.
The thing that vexes everybody with a conservative POV is that the USPS is out-competing private carriers even with absurd pension funding requirements and no government subsidies.
And the thing I hate most about all these stupid post office attacks is that everybody - on both sides - either ignores or is oblivious to is the fact that the United States Postal Service operates completely on its own revenue with zero point zero taxpayer dollars. If you get rid of the stupid pension funding there is no actual problem that needs to be solved.
5 Likes
Yeah I know the pension thing is the albatross. Maybe it’s different for me in a city but I’m never sending/receiving anything that needs to arrive by a Saturday via USPS anyway.
Priority mail > ups or fedex
Even if you send it by FedEx or UPS, if the recipient is outside a densely populated area (or sometimes even in one), there’s a very good chance the last mile will still be handled by USPS. They’re very good at what they do. Again, the reason the private shippers want to crush them is because they can’t out-compete them. The existence of a successful USPS completely undermines all the bullshit about the inherent superiorty of Teh Free Markets.
10 Likes
Dems should run House hearings into the USPS nonsense head to head against the GOP convention. Run them in the daytime/evening Mon-Thurs, step on the early speakers and end before the keynote if you think the news networks will cut away.
If/when they do cut away you have high level operatives call news directors and rip them a new one, tell them they AT LEAST need to go picture in picture for such a massive story, and put up a lower third graphic. (“PENCE ADDRESSES CONVENTION AS DEMS INVESTIGATE ALLEGED GOP ELECTION SCHEME”)
Then Friday run them into primetime. Make sure the whole story Friday is the hearings. Steal part of the GOP convention news cycle during the week, stop it in its tracks Friday.
As a bonus, it might trigger Trump into some unhinged rants during the convention.
It would be unprecedented, but it makes sense in every way. You don’t want to step on your own convention, so you step on theirs. You don’t want to wait until September, so you move fast.
Ideally the entire party would synchronize efforts, too. Have state AGs announce that they’re filing suit against Trump and DeJoy like an hour before Trump speaks at the convention on Thursday. File Friday.
He might not even get a convention bump.
6 Likes
I said “if” they need to save money, I don’t accept that they do.
It’s awesome if it can be a break evening proposition. No objection if it’s not. Best I can tell they aren’t doing anything stupid and it seemed well run to begin with before all this.
I don’t know what pension rules are in the US but it does seem like a certain percentage of future obligation should be required across the board, both public and private, but 75 years is ridiculous. Of course private pensions are disappearing to ever return outside of union contracts if all.
Great suggestion on the counter programming.
1 Like
Yeah. I’m starting to wonder if a world where political idealogues have enormous personal incentives to destroy anything public that works for people (in order to prove conclusively that nothing public ever works for people) is the best way to run a society.
Allowing a party to exist that wins more the shittier things get seems like an incentive problem to me.
2 Likes
Honestly, first class mail is (was) often faster than the base level UPS or FEDEX services.
1 Like
I dream of a world where the democratic party plays the game this well. And also actually represents progressives, but I’d take good politicking as a start.
2 Likes
It seems like a bad strategy to get tangled up in the legality of Trumps USPS voter suppression and try to stop him that way. The law bros have proven themselves 100% ineffective at stopping Trump from committing crimes in the open for 4 years. Do we really expect them to stop Trump on this is under 100 days? I’d be shocked.
I think the left really needs to put it all on the table and explain that Trump knows he can’t win so he’s making it so that if you vote by mail they’ll be able to not count your vote. Make election day a protest day and come right out and tell people if they don’t go to the polls then their vote won’t count. Complacency hurts the Dems, they need to stop telling people we’ve got this, trust the system, he can’t do that.
2 Likes
That sounds great when there is no pandemic happening. As things stand today I am less sure that’s the way to go.
1 Like
I understand. But the most powerful country in world history with a military bigger than the rest of the world combined is about to have a fake election to install a single party fascist state.
People are being sent to work in minimum wage jobs every day all over the country to prop up the stock market. Liberals can go vote once.
1 Like
The United States Postal Service is planning for a temporary price increase that will go into effect from Oct. 18 to Dec. 27.
The price increase is due to the high demand for online items.
Package shipments will see a rate increase anywhere from 24 cents to as much as $1.50.