Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

inquirer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 325 posts

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#191

Post by evan_ »

athms wrote: post #176
conception wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banking from the post office is a pretty common thing and makes a lot of sense as it gives people a public, non-profit banking avenue for the poor and under served.

I would agree if there were more post offices, but the USPS has been closing them over the last twenty years to cut costs. They serve wide geographic areas and it is easier to find a local credit union than a post office these days. The poor would be better served with Internet banking.

Many people do not have reliable internet access.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#192

Post by qserasera »

athms wrote: post #176
conception wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banking from the post office is a pretty common thing and makes a lot of sense as it gives people a public, non-profit banking avenue for the poor and under served.

I would agree if there were more post offices, but the USPS has been closing them over the last twenty years to cut costs. They serve wide geographic areas and it is easier to find a local credit union than a post office these days. The poor would be better served with Internet banking.

Perhaps a potential USPS credit union would disrupt payday loans.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#193

Post by newbie789 »

newbie789 wrote: post #5

I've had significant delays up here in the Pacific Northwest. A friend of mine mailed me a box of comic books over two weeks ago and it's still in limbo. I just want to read Green Lantern Corps. :(

Guess there's not a lot of DC fans on here, must be a Marvel crowd!

In all seriousness, I live with a type 1 diabetic and I'm really, really glad that her insulin isn't delivered by mail anymore. This particular instance of fuckery could have literally killed my best friend.

It's mind boggling to me that this is being treated so brazenly as a political football. I'm sure there are inefficiencies and bottlenecks that could be addressed, but literally stopping the mail to illustrate some notion about how the market could somehow create a better solution is reckless and frankly pretty disgusting.

If this turns out to be somehow punitive because a certain somebody doesn't like mail-in voting, I'll be incredibly unsurprised.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#194

Post by learc83 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #161
learc83 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>FedEx and UPS are subject to the same pension and retirement benefit funding requirements as USPS. No they FedEx and UPS were required to prefund pensions in the 1970s, but they were given 40 years in which to do it. USPS was given 10 years. In addition USPS was required to prefund retirement medical benefits, and unlike a private company who can cut retirement medical benefits at any time, USPS requires an act of c…

I agree the exact terms of funding requirements (10 years) for USPS were politically motivated to weaken it, but the philosophy of funding accrued benefits is sound, and it was long overdue. The same should be required of all entities issuing defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare. Also, I find it ridiculous that retirement medical benefits can just be cut anytime, as they are part of the compensation agreem…

The philosophy being sound is worthless if the execution is flawed.

As to investing look at page 35-36. It’s not literally just T-bills, but treasury holdings with very low interest rates compared to the kinds of investments private companies are allowed to make.

https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/10k-reports/fy2...

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#195

Post by pstuart »

johnchristopher wrote: post #189
pstuart wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If voting is effectively curtailed, everything else is moot. This election is a referendum on (American) democracy.

Hmm. Wasn't that referendum settled in 2016 ? Trump is 30 years in the making. Unless there's a swing back to restoring democratic norms there's no reasons the coming years are going to be much different, no matter who is elected president.

No, this is different. Trump at that time was a "why the fuck not" to people who hated the current climate and wanted "change". He was an "unknown" as far as the governance he would provide.

If Biden is able to take office I expect work to be done to try to salvage things.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#196

Post by andrekandre »

ethanbond wrote: post #177
_-david-_ wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a first world county that doesn't have voter id laws?

How about this: if Republicans were pushing voter ID laws plus a comprehensive plan to get IDs to every American who wishes to vote, I suspect no one would have any problem with such a proposal. As it stands now, there are large groups of Americans for whom getting a photo ID is a non-trivial task. People without birth records, people who can’t take time off work to go to the DMV, people who don’t know that they go t…

> Finally you simply throw ballots from the disfavored precincts directly in the trash.

cant this be done, arguably even easier with mail-in voting?

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#197

Post by missedthecue »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #170
luckylion wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can usually switch to a different company when you're not happy with the work they do, it's much harder to switch to a different state.

As long as you have term limits, you don’t have to move states/countries to get different leaders, you vote.

Voting is not a good way to get what you want. Your vote will have essentially no impact on the outcome of the election.

My choice to go with this provider or that one has 100% of an impact on me. There is no creative destruction going on with the USPS.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#198

Post by Simulacra »

Example number one why mail in voting will never work. We can’t even prevent carriers from hoarding or throwing away mail, let alone ballots. The USPS has been grossly underfunded and abandoned for generations, and it’s in no position to take on our most valuable right and responsibility.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#199

Post by staplers »

alextheparrot wrote: post #26

This is problematic to voting in the same way closing polling sites is, framed as cost cutting or inefficiency reduction with the intention of reducing access to a subset of the population. This is just frustration, but the fact that we could pass a massive defense bill (again, I know), but are unable to fund basic services shows the integrity of our government. Moreover, it shows the culpability of most of the elect…

The federal government is deploying Border Patrol and DHS agents to democratic American cities to use less-lethal ammunition on people demanding the defunding of police to better fund community services.

The people's movement is happening right now.

Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up

#200

Post by kryogen1c »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #110
lotsofpulp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retirement benefits should be funded as they are accrued. That is not the problem. The problem is the USPS doesn’t have the power to price their products appropriately in order to pay for their expenses (including payroll which includes retirement benefits). If anything, all entities promising retirement benefits should be forced to do it the way USPS does. In fact, non government entities were forced to via the Pens…

I wish I hadn't mentioned the pension, because it takes away from the immediate and much worse problem that the governing party is trying to stay in power by preventing members of the other party from voting.

> the governing party is trying to stay in power by preventing members of the other party from voting.

since trump lost the popular vote in 2016, isnt your grand republican conspiracy both categorically false and totally meaningless if it werent?

Post reply on HN