As with most political debates we are being presented with a false choice.
We either give up the post office or make it profitable. Really?
Maybe if we focused our attention on the service that the post office provides and made it more likely to be even more indispensable to our lives, we would also find ways to offset the expense of this service in addition to taxes. The current political decision to knee cap the post office isn’t helping matters. We need it for lots of reasons and privatizing or monetizing essential services makes money the object instead of the service.
The Post Office is a governmental service. The conversation about the post office has lately been all about what it costs to produce this service. Whether it is self sustaining or not is irrelevant. We depend on it. We expect it as citizens. We don’t expect the military to be self sustaining. We don’t expect Medicaid to be self sustaining. Why single out this long standing governmental service as a target for converting it into a business model?
There is only one explanation — it is serving the the ambitions of someone who will profit from its extinction.
This is like the privatization of prisons. It converted the service to money. With money as the object, private prison companies obviously were incentivized to lobby to make more things that people do illegal and punishable with prison time.
Presto we had crime bills that put more people in U.S. prisons per capita than any other country on earth — costing the states and federal government hundreds of billions of dollars to put away people who were found guilty of possession of some illegal substance. Each prisoner costs $30,000 per year on average. Politicians fly under cover of law and order, but they are actually conserving nothing and simply responding to campaign contributions from people who want to get more rich by receiving taxpayer money for something that ought not to exist at all.
The recent suggestion of making the post office into a banking institution or a vehicle for banking institutions to offer services is a false choice. Like privatizing other essential government services it seeks to convert the essential service into money. The service will thus suffer and along with it everyone who depends on it for sending and receive communications, voting, prescriptions, packages etc.
Most people do not know that if you send something by US Postal Service it is legally presumed to have been received. Private carriers enjoy no such presumption because, simply stated, they have not proved they are worthy of that presumption. But the USPS has done so since the first Postmaster was installed in 1775. Do we really want to screw around with that? It IS dependable and any suggestions that it is not, are just now arising after nearly 250 years because someone is afraid of losing an election if all the ballots are counted.
Bottom Line: USPS was not started (pursuant to specific mention in the US Constitution) because it would or could be a profit center. It was started as an essential trusted governmental service that enhanced trust in government to provide that service. It credentialized the new US government and gave it credibility and strength. So whatever it costs, we need it as much as we need the military.
The current banking suggestion has some merit — only if it enhances the strength and competition in the marketplace by community banks and credit unions. Contrary to another popular myth that is pushed by the mega banks, the smallest bank has access to all of the technology and backbones for electronic funds transfer as the largest. There is no difference.
If using the postal service offices as extended branches capable of providing services to community banks and credit unions is the result, then competition will re-enter the marketplace and control by the mega banks will decline. This could have the effect of allowing real securitization of debt to be explored rather the the current fake and fraudulent scheme.
Here is another idea I recently heard from a postal employee. The current service of Certified Mail Return Receipt Requested could be digitized with the same fee because of its intrinsic value. That would reduce the cost of the service to nearly zero and probably increase demand for the service producing more net revenue for the post office.
But what we should NOT be doing is providing the mega banks with yet another vehicle to control the financial marketplace which in turn cedes control over the economy and thus society and government. That needs to stop and there is no better place to start that resistance than the preservation of the constitutional imperative of the US Postal Service.
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Whoops – think Emu is Allstate? Love Emu.
Brian and Summer– have to agree. First of all, even if the USPO got additional funding – it would not set in place in time for the election to weed through the fraud in potential votes. Won’t happen. Impossible. .
And, yes, look at Paterson NJ. – Bada Bing. Already under investigation. That’s NJ for you – always under investigation. Anyone who know NJ – knows what to expect. And, sure other states.
Now, this should not be an issue in an election so CLOSE. Maybe down the road – years from now. Fine. Not now. Too little time to weed out the kinks. Or potential fraud as you may. Have to be realistic – nothing set in place of the mass potential fraud in less than three months. Won’t happen to alleviate potential fraud.even with additional funding to USPO. Won’t happen.
Love postal workers. Dear friends are postal workers. Take my walks – no where else to go with COVID. . And, new postal workers are now my new friends. But, — change the election voting process by funding for election via USPO in less than 3 months? Won’t work. Give the raise to USPO workers without the burden of highly potential voter fraud!. I am all for giving raise to USPO — RIGHT NOW – they are great and they deserve!!!! Changing to vote by mail? Maybe – five years from now. Valid process will not be implemented overnight. Sorry. Not equipped to decipher fraud.in three months. Sorry. Simply not realistic.
But will say – nice try by Dems. And, USPO funding should not hold up stimulus to those in great need. Why is this even a part of COVID stimulus to the American public?? Fraud has no boundaries by certain people. They don’t care. Give the increase to USPO – without stimulus withholding. In the end, the economy matters.
And, as to BLM — have very dear friends too. They are family. I get it. I get what has been done. But also have to understand what happened to you with the Great Financial Crisis and not back down. You have to speak out on this. I don’t see it. Where is it? Minorities were first targets by the banks for financial fraud. We can get there. Need to understand what happened to you and how to defend. We love you BLM — we love you. We want you to know all the dirty financial crisis details that happened to you. And, we love you Blue too. Let’s get on track.
Black and Blue – Matter!!!!. Lets get what matters up front. Restitution is deserved to you BLM. Financial fraud was to you. Not acceptable. Not hearing from anyone so far in DEM convention on this. NO speak of financial fraud. Let us get the financial fraud truth told. We need much work on this. It is not happening. Silent. Shocking it is silent.
Media? Here for you. Where are you? Heads in sand? Geico Emu? .
Lol, its true. BTW, its a normal tactic for IL Democratic Judges (Elizabeth Karkula for example) to submit forged Petitions to keep judicial seats.
The mail-in ballots of more than 84,000 New York City Democrats who sought to vote in the presidential primary were disqualified, according to new figures released by the Board of Elections.
The city BOE received 403,103 mail-in ballots for the June 23 Democratic presidential primary.
But the certified results released Wednesday revealed that only 318,995 mail-in ballots were counted.
That means 84,108 ballots were not counted or invalidated — 21 percent of the total.
One out of four mail-in ballots were disqualified for arriving late, lacking a postmark or failing to include a voter’s signature, or other defects. The Post reported Tuesday that roughly 30,000 mail-in ballots were invalidated in Brooklyn alone.
The high invalidation rate provides more proof that election officials and the Postal Service were woefully underprepared to handle and process the avalanche of mail-in ballots that voters were encouraged to fill out to avoid having to go to the polls during the coronavirus pandemic
“The current political decision to knee cap the post office isn’t helping matters.” Sorry Neil , you’ve fallen for the false narrative coming from DC…. The post office isn’t under attack… it’s just the [D] party fighting for their life, their preferred cheat methods have been nullified and they are demanding that we vote by mail and that all registered voters be mailed a ballot… no verification of the voters id , ballots sent from rolls that haven’t been cleaned in decades, a single apartment receiving many dozens of ballots because the address has turned over that many times… Los Angeles is a good example , there are 117 people on the voting roll for every 100 actual adults in the county… it’s a fraud free for all if we vote in that way… NY and NJ just had elections that failed spectacularly for that reason…