'Tis the Season to Renew and Expand the US Postal Service
Threatened by Trump and the GOP with privatization schemes, the postal service is a treasure than must be saved.
By John Nichols Twitter YESTERDAY 11:15 AM
The United States Postal Service delivers for Americans all year round. But the vital role that the Postal Service plays in all of our lives is especially notable during the holiday season. Between Thanksgiving and the end of the year, postal workers will deliver roughly 15 billion pieces of mail and 900 million packages with a level of efficiency and good cheer that could never be recreated by the private sector.
Unfortunately, as the Washington Post noted this fall, the Trump administration is plotting “to privatize and diminish the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).”
Government Executive magazine explained in September: “The White House made the proposal in its wide-ranging plan to reorganize the federal government. Privatizing the Postal Service was among 32 distinct ideas it said would help agencies run more efficiently. It first called for reforms to the Postal Service that would create a more sustainable business model, but those changes would be made only for leverage to then sell the entire agency to the private sector.”
Donald Trump has had a lot of bad ideas in his first two years as president. But this is one of the worst.
The unions representing postal workers — the National Association of Letter Carriers, the American Postal Workers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, and the National Postal Mailhandlers Union — have made a powerful case against the administration’s approach, explaining that privatizing USPS would harm:
https://www.thenation.com/article/united-states-postal-service-trump/
-snip-
Sanders recommends “postal banking” reforms, which would allow the Postal Service to provide basic financial services — something that the USPS did until 1967, and that postal services in other countries do to this day. He has also called for permitting the USPS to develop new consumer products and services, noting that “currently, it is against the law for workers in the post offices to make copies of documents, deliver wine or beer and wrap Christmas presents.” Sanders would also reinstate overnight delivery and improve service standards as part of a smart and necessary modernization program.
Arguing that “the beauty of the Postal Service is that it provides universal service six days a week to every corner of America, no matter how small or how remote,” Sanders offers a proper plan for preserving a vital institution. “It is time,” he said, “to save and strengthen the Postal Service, not dismantle it.”
And get rid of that self funding retirement 75 years into the future.................that is BS
= new reply since forum marked as read
