Losing the Postal Service is losing a big part of democracy
COVID-19 is not carved into the stone of the old Post Office building in New York City, along with snow and rain and gloom of night — but it should be. The deadly virus has not stopped postal workers from “the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Pause for a moment and recognize just how remarkable that really is.
Now pause for a moment and ask: Why on earth does the Trump administration want to kill the postal service?
The postal service is in dire financial straits. By some projections, it may go bankrupt by summer. Yet, when Congress wanted to include money for the post office in the $2 trillion-plus stimulus package, Donald Trump and his Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin refused to allow it. The White House hinted at a veto if there was money for the postal service.
For Trump, the reason for this is tediously predictable. It’s about a grudge he has against Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Trump claims that Amazon is “ripping off ” the postal service when it uses the USPS for “last mile” deliveries, and so Trump has refused to give the post office any more money until it starts charging Amazon more.
The issue here is, naturally, more complicated than Trump acknowledges, but there may be some merit to this claim – though it isn’t clear how bankrupting the post office altogether will solve the problem. The real issue, however, is that Bezos owns the Washington Post. Trump hates the Post.
For some conservatives, strangling the postal service is a policy where their economic desires happily coincide with Trump’s politics of personal grievance. Ronald Reagan surrounded himself with advisers who dreamt about privatizing the USPS, and so did George W. Bush.
They claim privatizing the post office will make it more efficient and maybe even profitable. The USPS should be run like a business, these folks insist. But no serious person thinks
The USPS should be r un like a business, some folks insist. But which business, exactly? Boeing? Purdue Pharma? Wells Fargo? No, thanks.
this is true. Adam Hartung pointed out that “there are few organizations as efficient as the U.S. Postal Service,” and that was in Forbes magazine — hardly a liberal publication. It also begs the question: which business, exactly? Boeing? Purdue Pharma? Wells Fargo? No, thanks.
In fact, the only way privatized postal delivery could become profitable is if the foundational purpose of the post office were undermined entirely.
The USPS we have today is the direct descendent of one of the very first creations in our national history. Congress passed the Postal Act in 1792. The act gave newspapers discounted rates and expanded the existing postal routes so that everyone could receive mail. Congress saw mail as essential to a well-informed citizenry. And so they created a federal system to make it work.
By contrast, look at the internet. The entirely privatized, for-profit communications industry has created the “digital divide” which is about class and geography. Large parts of rural America don’t have good internet access, and poor people often can’t afford any. As we’ve all had to shift to the online world, those divisions have only become more acute.
Mail delivery is one the few remaining egalitarian parts of American society. Everyone with an address gets their mail delivered in the same way regardless of how wealthy you are. That’s exactly the way the founders intended it. And as we are forced to contemplate running our elections through the mail, the USPS may prove more vital to democracy than ever.
You really want to privatize democracy itself ?