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

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

#161

Post by lotsofpulp »

learc83 wrote: post #138
lotsofpulp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would be nice but [insert financing excuse here] others cant do it too. I don’t know what this means. >Yes but forcing just USPS to do it was an attack on USPS because it has to compete with private companies. FedEx and UPS are subject to the same pension and retirement benefit funding requirements as USPS. It’s only government entities that aren’t regulated (because politicians like to be able to pay current…

>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 agreement. It's just a fluke of the law that it was never enshrined like defined benefit pensions were.

I don't see where the USPS is required to use T-bill rates to value liabilities in the tex of the PAEA law:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr6407/text

>who shall hold membership in the American Academy of Actuaries and shall be qualified in the evaluation of pension obligations, to conduct a review in accordance with generally accepted actuarial practices and principles and to provide a report to the Commission containing the results of the review.

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

#162

Post by luckylion »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #144
missedthecue wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest argument against government run services is that eventually, the people you don't like will be in charge of them

The simplest counterpoint to this is that government allows accountability. You will have those same people you don’t like running private enterprise, but CEOs have much longer terms than postmasters general.

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.

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

#163

Post by zanny »

ethanbond wrote: post #146
zanny wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that just because Republicans are wrong (and boy are they) does not make Democrats right. Democratic administrations, even with majorities to pass legislation, have done nothing to correct much of the anti-democratic processes in the US including elections being on a non-holiday Tuesday, absentee ballots being limited / restricted and operating state-by-state, the persistence of first past the post voting being…

I am no fan of the Democratic Party and strongly feel we need to overhaul our systems in a big, big way. Part of that overhaul cannot be , however, a period without democracy. It is much easier to maintain, modify, or destroy a democracy than it is to create one. Here you have the Republican establishment, not insurgents, actively trying to disrupt Americans’ right to vote for their leadership.

This is presuming you have democracy now, when studies that show that congressional policy has no correlation to the interests of the people at large but a meaningful correlation to lobbyist money.

In a republic, representatives are meant to be selected as being a stand in for the majority of their electorates will and interests. In aggregate, such authentic representatives would then be proposing policy and instituting an agenda corresponding to the desires of a majority of the public at large.

Studies show a supermajority support in the US now for drug war deescalation, universal health care, military disarmament and an end to the Middle Eastern occupations, more equitable tax code, and more. Policies a substantial minority in congress are even remotely interested in considering let alone passing.

Its not much of a democracy if the people you elect, in aggregate, are not actually acting in the interests of their electorate. At all. Its a democracy in name, but a plutocracy in practice, and to be fair this was the structural intent of the founding documents. Having a senate is undemocratic. Having an electoral college is undemocratic. First past the post voting is undemocratic. Historically, huge restrictions on suffrage, the barriers put in place for newly suffraged peoples to actually vote, general disenfranchisement / difficulties in voting, the lack of regulation on campaigning, etc are in place to perpetuate and empower the plutocratic power duopoly regime incumbent political institutions exist to protect.

But thats where conservative mindsets come from in the first place. Content with the status quo and in fear of things going wrong that they don't want to try to do right. And its not an unfounded fear - centuries of evidence shows regime change never works, especially when its against the interests of a societies incumbent ruling class. But I just don't like maintaining the veneer delusion that America is anything close to truly democratic, or has ever really been.

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

#164

Post by missedthecue »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #144
missedthecue wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest argument against government run services is that eventually, the people you don't like will be in charge of them

The simplest counterpoint to this is that government allows accountability. You will have those same people you don’t like running private enterprise, but CEOs have much longer terms than postmasters general.

Accountability to whom? The NSA is still illegally snooping on you and I, killer-cops go unpunished, and the social justice system is biased against black men, but supposedly there is accountability?

The difference here is that it's not profitable for UPS to piss off its customer base. A CEO of a privatised postal company acting in his own rational self interest would produce far different results than Donald Trump acting in his own rational self interest.

And even if the CEO didn't produce good results, I could mail my letter using another firm. With USPS, this is not possible. They have a legally protected monopoly on the delivery of letters. No one else can do it.

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

#165

Post by specialist »

spenczar5 wrote: post #156
specialist wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome. Me and my peeps did the yeoman work to both protect the secret ballot and ensure end-to-end auditability. If every jurisdiction nationwide adopted the rules, procedures, and operations used by King County Elections, we'd be in good shape. But they won't.

Why not? I am curious to know more - is it expensive or difficult to implement? Couldn’t other jurisdictions copy King County’s system?

Election administration is chronically underfunded.

A lot of people have some very funny ideas about how to conduct elections.

For examples:

Should ballots be required to be received or postmarked by Election Day to be accepted? (Correct answer is postmarked.)

If a voter makes a mistake, how does it get corrected? Some jurisdictions just toss any ballot with any mistake.

What are the standards for signature verification? What happens if the admins identify a mismatch?

Sadly, the minutia goes on and on.

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

#166

Post by dragonwriter »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #55
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…

Voting in person the old fashioned way for all but those with a good physical excuse seems to be the best way to maintain the integrity of our voting process. Yes, in-person voting has the potential for fraud, but mail-in voting has all of the same problems and more. It's hard to find a mechanism for fraud that applies to in-person but not mail in. Furthermore, the issues with COVID seem overblown. I've waited in lin…

> I've waited in line to vote, but the lines were never longer than the lines at my local supermarket on Saturday morning

As is disproportionately the case on HN, you are probably a relatively privileged individual, living in a relatively privileged community. Even if not, you should be aware that generalizing from your personal experience is not reliable.

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

#167

Post by agustamir »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #48
throwaway5752 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not a point about government effectiveness or efficiency. They kneecapped the USPS when they forced prefunding of pension liabilities ( https://www.cnbc.com/2011/10/24/the-truth-about-the-post-off... ). They had more legislative leverage prior to 2018, so they could have done all this much earlier. It is not possible to honestly discuss this in a meaningful way without acknowledging it's 3 months out from a presi…

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…

Trying to ELI5 this to myself - USPS has to fund their pensions and is forced to keep money aside for it. They are unable to make price increases to account for all this extra money that they have to keep aside since they are a public service. Their competitors UPS, FedEx are not being held to the same standard, and so USPS is losing out? And this makes a convenient excuse to show USPS as a failed org?

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

#168

Post by missedthecue »

evan_ wrote: post #132
missedthecue wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USPS actually has two legally enforced monopolies, as per Title 39 of the US Code. One is over the delivery of anything defined as a “letter,” which is within certain size and weight limits. The second is over the use of your mailbox. That is correct: there are criminal violations if anyone puts anything in your mail box that is not US government approved “mail.”

It doesn’t really seem enforceable though since there is an explicit cutout in that for “urgent” letters. Every letter I send is urgent!

This sounds plausible, but wouldn't work. The USPS has a history of defending its monopoly. Two example:

In 1971 a private corporation, the Independent Postal System of America, offered to deliver Christmas cards for five cents each — three cents less than the U.S.P.S. rate. They were stopped by a court injunction.

In 1966 the CF&I Steel Corporation, frustrated by the quality of postal service between their Denver headquarters and their plant in Pueblo, hired an armored-car service to deliver the mail. After five months of operation the service was halted by the Denver Post Office, and "at the Post Office’s suggestion" CF&I paid two thousand dollars toward back postage..

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

#169

Post by _-david-_ »

ethanbond wrote: post #135
bobsoap wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what are those barriers?

Photo ID laws is a big one. Closing polling stations in minority communities.

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

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

#170

Post by sixstringtheory »

luckylion wrote: post #162
sixstringtheory wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest counterpoint to this is that government allows accountability. You will have those same people you don’t like running private enterprise, but CEOs have much longer terms than postmasters general.

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.
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