The dissembling of the United States Postal Service is beyond outrageous. The Postal Service is an important thread contributing to the tapestry of American identity over the now centuries of our history The Postal Service was founded by Benjamin Franklin and it has been a strong institution that is valued by the American citizen. The Postal Service, until now, has not been the focus of political conflict.
I do believe the appointment of Louis DeJoy was calculated by Donald Trump, that DeJoy would begin, as he has, to unravel this steady stream of reliable service for the people of this country. It is also part of the Republican plan to privatize the Postal Service. This is the backdrop of this drama.
I urge the people within the domain of the publication of The Daily Bulldog to take a stand in whatever way that is possible to defend this vital and important institution of the democracy which we now enjoy and is now being seriously threatened. The demise of the Postal Service is an important step towards this end, the erosion of the United States democracy.
Carole Trickett
Farmington
Ben Franklin founded a service that was supposed to be self-sufficient. And it was, for a good long time. It started running deficits decades ago. When exactly and why? I don’t know and I don’t have the patience to scour the internet for the dirty details. What I found very easily is in the 2017 report, from none other than PBS, linked below, showing that the problems in the USPS started no later than 2006, well before the current administration.
U.S. Postal Service marks 11 straight years of financial loss
The crux of the problem: why not focus on this aspect of the linked story?
“To become financially stable, the Postal Service is also urging Congress to provide it relief from t<em>he mandate to prefund retiree health benefits. Legislation in 2006 required the Postal Service to fund 75 years’ worth of retiree health benefits, something that neither the government nor private companies are required to do.
But earlier this year, Congress removed this mandate: “The unreasonable pre-funding mandate has threatened the survival of the USPS and placed its vital services for the millions who rely on it at risk. The pre-funding mandate policy is based on the absurd notion of paying for the retirement funds of people who do not yet, and may not ever, work for the Postal Service. My bill will finally repeal this ludicrous policy, provide the USPS with critical financial relief and is the first step towards much-needed comprehensive reform.”
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D) OR https://defazio.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/defazio-authored-bill-to-help-us-postal-service-maintain-sustainability#:~:text=In%202006%2C%20Congress%20passed%20a,pay%20down%20the%20national%20debt
(Background info – How Congress Manufactured a Postal Crisis — And How to Fix it (2019)
https://defazio.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/defazio-authored-bill-to-help-us-postal-service-maintain-sustainability#:~:text=In%202006%2C%20Congress%20passed%20a,pay%20down%20the%20national%20debt.
ANYBODY can research the underlying problems created by installing a new Postmaster General who has tried to again sabotage the workings of the U.S. Postal Service.
First thing for me to say is to NOTE the word Service. Perhaps in the same way way that the Armed Forces of this country are regarded as a Service. Profitability not in the equation, The second note concerninf this is the requirement that th Postal Service had to meet was to pay ahead the money that would be needed by the postal workers for retiremement for the next 75 Years. imagine any budget being robbed of this amount and then expected to be on par in the folowing years.I would consider this requirement a dirty deal.
The current administration is filled too many overloadomg with dirty deals.DeJoy himself has profited in the past with some inroad into the Postal Service. As you say, all on the internet.
The United States Postal Service is a service that has been so important in the DAILY lives of the United States citizen and continues to be.
There is no doubt that Trump is weaponising the Postal Service which is in the fabric of every day life in this country. The weaponising to do anything and everything that he can to disrupt the electoral process. And we, the citizens of this country believed only such things happened in the Banana Republics. Well, here it; post boxes being carried away; sorting machines getting dumped.The picture is pretty and undeniably cleaar.
OMG IS THE NEXT OUTRAGE!!
Happy After November
Everything Is Beautiful.
So pass it! The Dems have the House; it’s a no-brainer. Send it to the Senate and, if Mitch won’t bring it to the floor, scream through your helpers, the MSM.
Post offices are constitutionally mandated, not founded by Ben Franklin. Congress has to establish it, there is nothing that says it can’t be replaced or totally gutted and rebuilt from the ground up, it isn’t a monopoly either, mail delivery isn’t a USPS exclusive and was never meant to be the exclusive “mail” service. The dems are just talking trash when they say Trump chose to do it when he did for the reasons they say he chose to do it, when in reality, he has been discussing the broken postal service since 2017 Dejoy was appointed in April, the vetting process took a month and he started in June making changes to save money. And who better to run the postal service than a successful businessman in logistics who is also an accountant. The USPS is a business, it needs to be run by business savvy people, not politicians and bureaucrats. From 2009 to 2012-13, the dems had the trifecta, house, senate, president. They could have passed any legislation they wanted, instead what did they do, cash for clunkers, and a multi-billion dollar bailout for companies the government owns, Fannie May and Freddie Mac are wholly owned and operated by the federal government. The dems did nothing to aid the failing USPS, VA, or the education system. But Trump trying to fix the broken systems, dems and leftist are having a fit, why, because orange man bad.
Yes, it has to be Trump’s fault also, I’ve heard that song before just change the name (Bush)…just keep piling it on.
Nuff Said…
The postal service has been an issue longer than the last couple weeks. Obama talked about it and was involved in the removal of drop boxes. This is typical “orange man bad” hysteria typical of what we have been seeing for the last four years.
The USPS has been a mismanaged, bankrupt company for years. Now finally someone is trying to make it fiscally responsible.
Better not allow voting by mail to go ahead, then. Too much risk of lost or delayed ballots. Darn it. Guess we’ll have to risk voting in person.
I was heartened to see the Postmaster General today say that he believes in voting by mail, that the postal service will give priority to ballots and will work with states to avoid problems.
“From 2009 to 2012-13, the dems had the trifecta, house, senate, president.”
This is not an accurate statement.
Easy to check on wikipedia. See below:
110th United States Congress: January 3, 2007 – Jan. 3, 2009. Although the Dems held fewer than 50 Senate seats, they had an operational majority because the two independent senators caucused with the Dems for organizational purposes.
111th United States Congress: January 3, 2009 – January 3, 2011
In the November 2008 elections, the Democratic Party increased its majorities in both chambers, giving President Obama a Democratic majority in the legislature for the first two years of his presidency. However, the majority was only filibuster proof for a period of 72 working days while the Senate was actually in session.
112th United States Congress: January 3, 2011 – January 3, 2013
In the 2010 midterm elections, the GOP won the majority in the House of Representatives.
113th United States Congress: January 3, 2013 – January 3, 2015
The Senate had a Dem majority, while the House had a GOP majority.
Every Person who is eligible to vote should get one vote.
No person should be allowed to vote unless they are eligible.
The only way to know if they are eligible or not is if they provide proof of who they are.
It bothers me when I am not asked for ID at the polling place. We’ve slipped into this mess .
I don’t care how it is done as long as ONLY eligible people vote, and every eligible voter has an opportunity.
Everything Is Beautiful.
Marie Wikipedia is not reliable. Anyone can edit Wikipedia info at anytime you would be better off going to the official government website and getting the info directly from there.
The Second Continental Congress established the postal service on July 26,1775, appointing Benjamin Franklini the first Post Master General.Much of what he established as the workings of this service are still in use today.
I did write that the PO was founded by Ben Franklin.From the above I wold says he had a lot todo with its establishment in 1775. The point being that the postal servicd has been in the fabic of this country since its inception, I believe we cannot just throwit aside. AND the postal serive is NOT a business. It is a SERVICE! for the benefit of the citizens of this country from its beginning.
@Awww, Marie is correct on this point. The Democrats gained the “trifecta” in the 2008 elections but lost the House in the 2010 midterm election. 2010 was a big landslide election for the GOP, at the state level as well as the federal level. It was the year we flipped Maine “red”.
Still your point is solid. The Democrats could have done anything they wanted; I believe they even had a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate for two whole years. And bills that spend taxpayers money on federal projects are hardly going to find a lot of opposition from either party anyway.
Carole there is no reason the postal service needs to be a drain on the budget. It should be run as a business so it can do so. After all most people are complaining about the budget deficit a d some of these same people are now complaining about trying to make things work correctly so we can do that.
Creating more post offices then needed was a pork barrel political move from way back as they are still under the” watch” and influence of congress. I also agree with good pay and retirement pay but I can not agree with paid health care beyond their active work time. Its this habit of giving free health care to federal,state, and service people that rules out getting any chance of a free enterprise drop in costs. I hate to say it but no one is going to care about change as long as there is a -0- at the bottom of their statement sheet. The five dollar aspirin along with the 125 mile an hour snowmobile are,to me, just another of the more perverse wonders of the world. Can you really justify either one.
Awww, The concept of run like a business has been invasive. The Postal Serviceis a SERVICE. not a business, nor should it be.The US is a very large country which has made the challenge “for the greater good” a difficult concept for consensus. The US values the Individual above all else in many of it’s geographic areas. Our survival as a species who live on one small planet demands cooperation. If we do not cooperate the species and the planet will continue its downward spiral. The demise of the Postal Service is an exhibition of the downward spiral. How can the elimination of mail sorting machines be an improvement???? Major lie.
Joe Clark – slight correction. Ted Kennedy’s death followed by Scott Brown being elected Senator to Massachusetts ended the Democrats “super majority” a year and a month into the session. If the Democrats win the Senate, there will be considerable pressure to do away with the filibuster. One possibility would be to bring back the old rules (pre-1975) which required people continually speak for as long as the filibuster was in effect.
As someone who still writes letters and uses the post office, I have noticed that service is much slower. I also realize that with email, electronic bill payment, electronic subscriptions to papers and magazine, and a change in culture, the post office cannot be what it used to be. In theory, the idea of making structural change makes sense – I’d gladly pay more for stamps for a viable post office. I think the problem now is that the President is attacking voting by mail while changes are being made, at least creating the appearance that this is an attack on democracy.
Once this election is over, no matter who wins, I would hope that a bipartisan effort could be created to determine what role and scope the post-office should have in a world where so-called “snail mail” has become less important. That should include being viable and responsible during elections. But as with everything else in this brave new world, the post office is going to change.
Carole the postal service is washed up. They have been in the red for a number of years and the current administration has bailed them out to the tune of $10 billion dollars but Nancy won’t admit that. The only thing I get in my mailbox these days are a few bills and junk mail that we are paying for. I would suggest that the postal service start charging a higher rate for all the junk mail that gets sent out if they pay anything now. Amazon could pay a higher rate too. The fact of the matter is people are freaking out about this because of how the media has spun it kind of like the china flu has been. Look up tuberculosis deaths over the last couple years. No one told you too freak out about tuberculosis.
Aww:
Don’t know where you’re going with TB. Roughly 9,000 deaths in 2019 in the U.S.
That’s slightly less than the +170,000 from COVID so far this year.
This number could have been much less had we a national response earlier this year from a functional federal administration.
No such luck there.
Evidently MAGA involves standing idly by and blaming everyone else while a pandemic wrecks our economy and kills hundreds of thousands.
VOTE HIM OUT.
Yes, the USPS has been running a massive debt for years, but that’s not the point. Now is not the time for an overhaul. With the election on the horizon, in the midst of a pandemic (I won’t even go there, Mr. Trump), we need the USPS to be running, deficit or not, so that people can stay safe and mail in their ballots and so their votes can be counted. It seems to me, it’s a poor decision at best, a calculated one at worst. The “fraud” that Mr. Trump speaks about is without evidence: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/18/us/voter-fraud.html. Or maybe this is fake news?
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.8 billion people—close to one quarter of the world’s population—are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb), the bacteria that causes TB. Last year, 10 million fell ill from TB and 1.5 million died.
This is a global pandemic not just the U.S. use global numbers Luke. Like many have said if you can go to Walmart or Hannaford you can go to the polls to vote or request an absentee ballot. There is zero need for mass mail in ballots. Stop pushing the narrative and start thinking for yourselves!!!
I think we’re talking about what the US should do, Awww, we look at US numbers.
COVID-19 has killed nearly 180,000 Americans in less than half a year.
60,000 Americans died in Vietnam in over ten years.
This is over a quarter of the Americans who died in four years of WWII, and more Americans than died in WWI.
As Luke points out, only 9,000 died from TB. Moreover, this spreads in the US much more easily – look at the Millinocket wedding that caused over 50 cases and has killed at least one person.
But trying to pretend that for US policy we should use global numbers is laughingly lame.
Aww:
Globally, the US has 4% of the World’s population and 22% of COVID deaths.
Again this is mostly due to a timid, unscientific, inept, and corrupt national response on the part of the federal government administrated by one Donald Trump.
As for the election, requesting absentee ballots is what this is about. Mailed absentee ballots take time to count. As we learned from Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court has upheld that presidential elections are time sensitive.
There’s going to be millions more absentee ballots in this election as a result of the pandemic and for good reason. No sane person wants to line up inside with the maskless. Not the best time to defund the postal service, unless your purpose is to put the whole election in question. Which is exactly what Trump has admitted to when he says he won’t accept the loss that every poll now says is coming his way.
VOTE HIM OUT.
Luke you are regurgitating the msm narrative. Trump has secured $10billion for the postal service this year. This has nothing to do with absentee mail in ballots. They want to mail everyone a ballot because the “rona” china flu is sooooo dangerous!!! Open your eyes if you can go grocery shopping then you can vote in person. No need for every person to vote by mail. Before you claim Trump does it he has too because he is registered in Florida and lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and hopefully he will another four years. It’s funny how you people defend a bunch of career politicians even after he has shown how corrupt the system is.
An awful lot of folks here don’t know the difference between to and too, then and than and lose and loose. Must be recent college graduates.
Awwww, you and I can easily go vote in person. But my mom has COPD and is 82; if she gets COVID, she’s likely to be one of the next deaths. I know younger folk who have auto-immune diseases or other respiratory problems. And even young healthy people often have really bad consequences from the disease. When you have what will be over 200,000 deaths by election time, all in less than a year, from a disease that is easily transmitted, some folk like you and I might be risk acceptant enough to say “I’ll almost certainly be OK, I’ll vote.” Others who are – or who have family and friends who are — high risk, may decide that it makes much more sense not to tempt fate and instead vote absentee. Both the Democrats and Republicans have been pushing that and early voting in Maine and many other states even before this election. And by the way, Trump’s corruption is beyond that of most politicians, that’s why he’s being investigated and has to submit documents to a few courts. The guy’s a con man. Weak, insecure, a hustler who I think pulled off a con he can’t handle. I think the GOP will be much better off when they’re rid of him.
Scott you list 60,000 lost in two years of war in Vietnam as if it is trivial compared to covid. Ask a vet their opinion.
Scott I never said people shouldn’t vote absentee. I said mass mail in voting isn’t a good idea for a number of reasons. Like another commenter said look at Patterson NJ. As for the investigation you speak of look into how many of the investigators are now being investigated for falsifying FISA court documents and where that leads back too. No less than the last administration and the current senile candidate for President.
Scott….. Trump may be a con man… we made the better choice… between a con man and a con woman… Now we have a figurehead running for the office… that leaves who in charge??
I don’t like his attitude but personally, I think the reason he’s enduring so many investigations is because he won. “Investigations” started almost immediately after the election.
Moving right along ….. this election is a very high stakes game. We need, as an entire country (imagine) stability for the coming months. The United States Postal Service has BEEN a stable part of our day to day lives in this country since its inception, as I have pointed out. We NEED to maintain this stability. We have enough uncertainity, instability in our day to day lives right now, AT THIS VERY MOMENT. Can we not, as a nation quiet down annd respect this national need. To do so, will require ignoring Donald Trump and his performance manoevres.
Carole I’m going to assume you watched the DNC convention last week and have probably ignored the RNC this week. The difference I’ve seen in them so far is one has hope and the other was all about get rid of the orange man !!! Have you heard what Biden said about crona ? He claims there is no magical cure coming kind of like when Obama said Donald Trump would need a magic wand to bring jobs back. There is zero optimism with todays democrat party and its obvious if you have your eyes open and don’t blindly listen to the t.v. You are correct we need to come together and bring peace to our country and it would help if the dems would start by disavowing the riots we see daily because of a marxist group pushing divisiveness. I would encourage you to watch some of the speeches by a very diverse group of people at the RNC it may show you what you have been missing.
Awww – There is so much angst in both parties.Adherents to the GOP are very concerned; adherents to the Democratic party are very concerned. Each one argues ferociously. In the midst of this, let us not lose the US Postal Service. As I mentioned in my previous post the US Postal Service has been an important part of the fabric of the American idenity, again since the country began to come together as a country. It would be counterproductive to lose Postal Seervice at this time of burning tension between the GOP and the Democrats. And, no, I did not watch either convention not having subscribed to a carrier of television programing.I am an advocate for national cohesion and respect.
Carole the usps is not going to close that is just a msm and democrat talking point. The President has secured $10 billion to get them through and the new post master general also testified that it is not his intent to close it. He wants it to be self sufficient and it is a work in progress. Relax, breath and research.