GOP Plan to Kill Postal Service Marches On

by Pa Rock

Curmudgeon

(Weather Update:  At 8;15 this morning there is about one inch of snow on the ground in south central Missouri, with lots of dead grass and leaves still poking up from the ground and through the gathering whiteness.  A light snow is blowing across the front yard as I sit behind what passes for a picture window, typing.  The birds, primarily cardinals, are hopping among the bird feeders and gnomes trying to consume as much seed as they can while they can.  Alexa says it is six degrees F. outside with an expected high today of twelve degrees F.

Rosie and I darted outside an hour ago and she valiantly attempted to do her business - with some success, but the icy ground hurt her little feet, so I scooped her up and we rushed back into the safety of the house.  The thermostat is set on 73 degrees F, but it still feels chilly, so I may goose it again.

We will survive!)

I have a list of things on my writing desk that piss me off, good material to tap on a snowy day.   I'd like to begin with the US Postal Service (USPS), always an easy target. But before airing grievances against that cesspit, I do want to acknowledge the hard-working lady who is my local delivery person.  Out in rural areas such as where I live, the people who bring the mail are the face of the USPS, and most of them are sweet, kind, and very helpful.  

My mailbox out by the road is larger than the average box, something that saves the mail lady needless trips to my front door, and saves Pa Rock occasional trips into town to pick up large packages when a substitute carrier is running the route.    But I seldom have to go to town for oversized mail.  When a package is too large for the big mail box, my wonderful mail person pulls up the drive, gets out of her car, and walks over and carefully sets it on the porch.  When I'm outside, she hands it to me, and has even offered to help me inside on days when she worried I might be too unsteady - and she always has a nice word for Rosie!

The continuing racket from political Bozos about eliminating rural mail delivery as a cost-cutting measure is a direct and unnecessary threat to the livelihood of thousands of hard-working Americans who carry the mail, and one more way to inflict pain and hardship on the poor and elderly.

But behind the super folks who man the frontlines of the US Postal Service are hordes of sinister bureaucrats and political functionaries whose sole reason for employment seems to be to destroy a necessary and once well-operated mail delivery system from within.  I've not done a "deep-dive" into the postal system's problems, but I am aware of a couple of things which our government has intentionally done to cripple this very critical public service.

The postal service used to be a cabinet position with the Postmaster General (Ben Franklin's old job) reporting directly to the President, but after a massive postal strike in 1970, Congress passed and President Nixon signed the "Postal Reorganization Act" which removed the patronage elements (where politicians were involved in the selection process of postmasters) and tried to turn the operation into a business.  Wages were raised, and postal workers were given the right to organize - but not to strike.  The concept of the postal service as being some sort of government function, something we paid for with our taxes, began to fade, and was replaced with the notion of the postal service being a business that had to make a profit in order to survive and function.

But the postal service didn't completely become a free-wheeling agent of American capitalism.  The head of the organization, still called the "Postmaster General" is appointed by an independent board of governors who are themselves appointed by the President of the United States on staggered terms - a system that does not necessarily work as intended if there happens to be a megalomaniac tyrant in the Oval Office.  (Donald Trump did threaten to fire members of the postal service's board of governors last year, and to place the entire operation under the control of the US Department of Commerce - but later TACOed.)

Congress and President George W. Bush significantly hobbled the US Postal Service in 2006 with the enactment of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) which forced the postal service to pre-fund its Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund years in advance.   The annual payments were supposed to keep the retiree's health plan funded for the next 75 years.  No other government agency operated under such a mandate.  The new program sucked up most of the postal revenue and accounted for 84% of the agency's losses.  The price of postage skyrocketed, service declined, and public faith with the USPS began to significantly wane - which was likely the long-term intent of the legislation to begin with.

Today the postal service is in a losing position and takes abuse from all sides.

The most recent outrage regarding the USPS is a change in its policy for postmarking mail.  The agency recently announced that mail is now being postmarked when it first reaches an automatic mail sorter - and not on the day that it is dropped off at a local postoffice.  That change distorts when an item is actually mailed, masking the length of time that it takes for mail to be delivered.

My son recently sent me a package from a post office in the Kansas suburb of Kansas City where he lives.  It took six days to arrive, when not long ago it would have gotten here in two days or less.  (No wonder they want to mask the delivery time!)   The local mail from here goes out by truck every day that the postal service is operational at 4:00 a.m., and it is trucked to a sorting center (I'm guessing in Springfield, MO - but for all I know it could be Baton Damned Rouge in Louisana!)

A friend of mine in a community close to Joplin, Missouri, (about 180 miles due east from where I live) sent me an important piece of mail that I finally received yesterday - one week after it had been mailed.  Instead of going west, toward my house, it went due north 160 miles to Knasas City where it was postmarked, and then was sent south and east to West Plains, perhaps by pack mule, where I finally received it - seven long days after it was mailed.

Another friend, who lives in McDonald County, Missouri, the southwest corner county of the show-me state, mailed in her county propery taxes on December 30th, a full day ahead to the deadline before penalties are imposed.  The county seat was less that ten miles from the postoffice where she mailed her statement and check.  A couple of weeks later she got a notice that she owed a penalty because her payment had been postmarked on January 2nd, in Knasas Cit, Missouri - 200 miles north of where she had physically mailed the correspondence.  My friend is pissed!

I can put a 78-cent stamp on a letter to my daughter in Oregon on a Monday, drop it in the mail here, then get in my car and drive west - leisurely - spending at least four nights at motels along the way, and easily be sitting at her house in western Oregon when the letter arrives on Saturday, or possibly the following Monday!

One more note:  I did see some speculation on the internet that the new policy of postmarking mail at sorting centers rather than at the location where it actually enters the mail system may have been the result of some political pressure by forces who are opposed to mail-in voting.  Just sayin:)

Pa Rock would rather his tax dollars be used to fund a decent mail service instead of paying masked criminals to terrorize and arrest five-year-olds!

Okay, that's it.  My spleen is vented.  Have a wonderful snow day - and give your mail person a warm smile and maybe a hug - none of this is their fault.