Our public mailing system has been the crown jewel of the world for decades! For less than a dollar, the USPS will ship your letter anywhere in the country! And it won't take weeks or months to get there either, truly a stupendous piece of public infrastructure processing over 140 billion parcels each year! The American people agree with this assessment, they recognize the USPS for the vital services it provides, and think favorably of it in truly staggering proportions:
Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of the US Postal Service?
Favorable: 91%
Unfavorable: 8%
Of course, as with anything positive and popular done by the public sector, the Republicans have been hard at work trying to destroy it. This particular effort has been on going for decades and features many strategies. One of the favorite tricks austerity minded politicians like to play is the so-called "starve the beast" method, in which a functioning government agency is underfunded until it begins to fail, at which point these failures are used to justify further underfunding and dismantling the agency.
The USPS in particular has been hit hard by ridiculous legislation requiring it to fully fund its pension plan decades into the future, and unheard of and unprecedented legislative burden which robbed this vital organization for years the funds it needed for infrastructure investment, proper staffing, and modernization.
Most recently, Trump has continued his spree of appointing people to positions of authority over
agencies they are uniquely suited to destroy, by Louis Dejoy as Postmaster General. Louis, who ran a logistics company, and thus spent his life competing directly with the post office, has implemented sweeping changes to mail processing procedures, slowing down deliveries to a crawl, as well as firing many of the top career federal employees. All this would be bad enough in a vacuum, we should be expanding the USPS budget, not cutting it, and it should start offering new services, like postal banking, instead of slowing down mail deliveries, but we are also living in the middle of a contagious pandemic, during an election year where voting by mail is going to be essential! The survival of the USPS is the frontline battle in the fight for democracy. Trump and his goons have already shown they will do everything in their power to destroy this agency, and with it, any chance of a fair election. The rulers are clearly unfit to rule, they know it, and the American people know it. Rather than step down and pass the levers of power into more representative hands , they seek to cling to power by voter suppression, gaslighting, and outright cheating. The only question is whether the American people are going to let them get away with it. Critical junctures, especially during election years are just the moments when people power can force big change: either from politicians looking to keep their jobs, or from public servants who replace the ones that weren't responsive. That's no easy task, but if we are to emerge from beyond COVID-19 as a nation not in ruin, but in rebirth, one that prizes its amazing institutions, like the USPS, and gives our people the foundations and time to flourish as humans and create a more socially conscious society, it's going to take an enduring collective movement of commensurate size and power, to the forces of economic oppression, ignorance and bigotry we face! to create that better future will require the stamina to outlast the powers that be, and convince them that there is no choice but to change or lose everything. Don’t miss this chance to join us every Tuesday, in growing solidarity and power until we take back our democracy from amoral special interests, and greedy politicians: Don't Shop on Tuesdays!
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