Evaluating The U.S. Postal System
In the 2020 election, President Trump appointed a yes-man to head up the mail center. Since he hasn’t yet been relieved of his position, that danger remains a risk - as do other issues.
Hello, friends,
Last week we explored a Republican attempt to not-so-subtly shift the language used to refer to convicted and imprisoned January 6th terrorists. Since then, Democrat Dan Goldman has called for her to be censured, and, sure, that sounds reasonable. Republican Marjorie Taylor-Greene has attempted to insert nuance, calling them “political prisoners” instead of “hostages,” which invokes to me a certain Cuba-esque vibe and still implies that they are the oppressed instead of terrorists.
This week, we’re going to cover something a little more broadly, then we’re gonna go deeper, and we’re gonna examine some ongoing issues with the US Postal Service. We’re gonna talk a little bit about its history, a little bit about its present tense, and provide a case study for what some of its current circumstances are.
Let’s explore.
A Very Brief Explanation Of The United States Postal Service (USPS).
If you want more detail, either for the history of or other facts about the USPS, my first suggestion is a dive down the Wikipedia rabbit hole on the topic.
The Post Office is actually a feature of the U.S. Constitution, which is explicitly placed within the hands of Congress. That’s how important a functioning mail system was to the framers. It was so important it’s in our founding document, unlike things like water resource management and the framework for most regulatory bodies that we depend on for day to day life, such as the Food and Drug Administration.
Its organizational structure is a bit weird. It begins with nine board members appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. They appoint a Postmaster General (Currently Louis DeJoy; we’ll get to him) as both the office’s boss, and they in turn pick a Deputy Postmaster general who is the eleventh and final board member.
Because the Post Office is a government-sanctioned entity, it has enjoyed something similar to a monopoly on mail services. If you want to send an official notification of some sort, like a paper bill, chances are you’re sending it through the post office one way or another. There are options for shipping actual parcels, such as FedEx, DHL and UPS, but for many folks the Post Office is their primary means of shipping.
The Postal Service is not, unfortunately, a free service. It has costs associated with it’s maintenance - you know, like paying their workers, transporting materials, and maintaining vehicles for workers to transport materials in - so it’s laughable to think that in a late-stage capitalist system we’d have a free postal system.
But as someone who recently used the postal service to ship out copies of my new book, I can say that it honestly isn’t that expensive compared to times when I’ve shipped things using UPS. I particularly love flat rate envelopes: If it fits, it ships for one predetermined price.
But Let’s Talk About Costs - particularly, to voters.
Postal Service Isn’t Free, But It’s Of Public Interest
In June of 2020, at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, President Trump saw to it that Louis DeJoy was appointed as the new Postmaster General. This precipitated an event with a Wikipedia headline of “2020 United StatesPostal Service Crisis.”
See, rather than having any prior experience in the USPS, DeJoy was formerly the founder and CEO of New Breed Logistics (later acquired by XPO). And, in theory, it’s reasonable that someone well-versed in the logistics industry might be brought in to help run a logistics-heavy business like the Post Office.
Unfortunately, his heavy involvement in the logistics industry has left DeJoy in a position whereby he’s invested in competitors to his own Post Office.
Now to the 2020 Crisis.
DeJoy engaged in such ‘cheerful’ activity as dismantling mail sorting machines, removing street mailboxes in neighborhoods, and - of course - jacking up how much the USPS relied on a certain XPO logistics company. For example, during the same window of time between 2019 and 2020, a 2019 value of around $3.5 million became a 2020 value of around $14 million. He also did things to slow the mail down in general, which - wouldn’t you know - might make delivery alternatives more attractive.
Now, on to why this really mattered at the time:
After taking over in June, 2020, DeJoy - an outspoken Republican - was slowing the mail down at a time when mail-in ballots were essential in allowing us to have a safe, functioning election. If you cut down where people can drop their mail off, you make it harder for them to vote. If you don’t sort mail quickly and effectively, sometimes it gets there late - and their votes aren’t counted.
Eventually, DeJoy suspended further changes until after the election, but the damage was done. Sorting machines which had been taken apart weren’t put back together, and many mailboxes that were “Vandalized” (you know, in those “impolite” neighborhoods) weren’t replaced. The seeds of doubt were sown: If you voted by mail, it might not have been counted. I doubt anyone could say with certainty that no votes went uncounted because of these changes.
And you wonder why it was so easy for Trump to argue that mail-in ballots were fraudulent, even though he uses mail-in ballots?
So what’s the story now?
The Post Office Is Trying To Cut Costs When It Should Be Fully Funded
According to the Government Accountability Office, in 2021 the post office released a ten-year plan in the hopes of breaking even or even becoming profitable. On the surface, this sounds silly: Why should a publicly-funded service have to break even or turn a profit to survive? Shouldn’t it just be funded by the government and we call it a day?
Like I said earlier: Late-stage capitalism is unpleasant, and it has disastrous effects.
Take the case of an attempt by the USPS to relocate its Buffalo, New York mail processing center to Rochester, New York. I found this on Reddit, by the way. Apparently, this plan echoes a 2011/2012 era attempt to do something similar, only this time the post office is going about it in shady ways. Whereas in the 2012 attempt a public hearing was held at a reasonable time in a high school auditorium, this time it was meant to be held during working hours at a much smaller local library.
The idea is obvious: They wanted to squelch the voice of the people who disagree.
Speaking of people, think of how this impacts the workers: While my understanding is that nobody is going to be outright fired because of this move, the truth is that many people would lose their jobs. After all, right now they live in Buffalo, and they’d have to commute or move to Rochester, which is an hour and a half away. Either workers upend their lives to move to a different city, or they have to entirely rearrange their daily lives to commute to a city that’s an hour and a half away - and in a geographic location known for heavy disruptions due to lake-effect snow.
The bottom line is that many people would lose their jobs, allowing the Post Office to hire new people at bare-minimum salaries, thus saving them a few bucks. Or, they simply don’t rehire those people at all, and they’ve saved on their labor costs. No longer do they have to worry about pensions for these workers, since they’ve left “on their own!”
All of this is a sideshow to the fact that DeJoy wants to run the Post Office like a business when, in all honesty, it’s up to us to pressure the government to fully fund the post office.
So What Do We Do?
Well, let’s see: The usual stuff, I’m afraid. Write to your Congresspeople (both Representatives and Senators), write to your county and state Representatives, and write to the Executive Branch. Tell them that you want the post office fully funded by the Federal government, and that you want it to be a service instead of a business.
After all, it’s not as if there isn’t an ongoing movement to privatize the Post Office entirely. We have to make sure that shit doesn’t succeed, and that public services remain public.
Thanks for reading. Now, it’s time for some In Other News.
In Other News…
Did you know Joe Biden’s been canceling student debt? No? Here’s a New York Times article about how he’s just canceled another $5 billion. He may not have axed all of it, or even the $50,000 per-person we set as our expectation in 2020, but it’s progress, and it’s only fair to note it.
We’ve talked here before about how art is being corrupted by hyper-capitalism. Here’s probably another example of it: The winner of a major Japanese literary award confessed to having used AI to write part of her book. As a writer, I can’t tell you how much that frustrates me. Or, maybe that’ll be my topic for next week…
The leader of a church in Ohio decided it would be a good idea to open his church doors to the unhoused population and let them have a warm place to sleep during some of the worst cold we’ve had in a while. Naturally, he was charged with a crime. It’s almost like “Freedom Of Religion” is great right up until that religion actually wants to help the indigent out. Then, it’s illegal.
There are significant Supreme Court cases shaping up, in this example having to deal with the Chevron Doctrine. This one is apparently a big one, and while I can’t promise I understand it completely, if I’m right it has to do with the Executive branch’s ability to regulate certain things - like the aforementioned Food and Drug Administration’s authority to regulate those things.
To wrap up with something positive: Israel has become the first nation on Earth to allow the sale of cultured beef to customers. In other words, we are getting closer to a time when you can get a cruelty-free steak or cheeseburger. One of the things I hate the most about myself is how carnivorous I am, so I can’t wait until this technology migrates to the U.S..
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a former hyperlocal journalist and sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.