This is a critical threat to democracy given the circumstances of the upcoming election.
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
#32Incredibly frustrating to get mail by USPS over the past couple months and even more frustrating to know this is an intentional kneecapping of the USPS by the administration in order "prove" government services are inefficient to privatize the USPS
Demand is way up due to the pandemic. Amazon hired 175,000 temporary workers to keep up with demand [1]. All the Trump adminstration had to do to cause a problem was not hire any extra help and disallow overtime.
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-reaches-1-million-w...
Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up
#33Are they de-prioritizing all the spam and useless pre-sort stuff? That would be the first order of business for me.
The spam is what pays the bills so it will not get de-prioritized.
Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up
#34This is a critical threat to democracy given the circumstances of the upcoming election.
That's a feature, not a bug. For those currently in charge at least.
Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up
#35This is a critical threat to democracy given the circumstances of the upcoming election.
So get the word out that mail in ballots can be dropped off in person ahead of time.
This is likely the sensible thing to do within a few weeks of the election anyway.
Even without the problems at the post office, dropping it off directly really reduces the chances of it getting lost.
Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up
#36Incredibly frustrating to get mail by USPS over the past couple months and even more frustrating to know this is an intentional kneecapping of the USPS by the administration in order "prove" government services are inefficient to privatize the USPS
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 presidential election. It the closest thing they can legally do to suppress voting turnout, and it's a deliberate strategy to win the election by reducing the franchise.
This isn't in a vacuum either, it's a coordinated part of a national legislative strategy (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/exposin...). It is coordinated across at the state and federal levels, and across branches. You can see here with the intentional degrading of the USPS immediately prior to a national election, at a state level with polling place closures (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/so...) and photo id laws (https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...), and constellation of Republican judicial appointments coordinated with specially prepared and crafted legal challenges by Republican AGs and private parties at state and circuit levels.
This is how it's being done: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...
Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up
#37I was in Guatemala and learned to my surprise that its national post has been disbanded. There's no functioning postal service of any kind, only private couriers.
How does that even work? By private couriers do you mean companies similar to UPS and FedEx? Or private couriers like the bike couriers in US cities? If I needed to mail documents to the other side of the country, for example, could I just drop it off at a storefront or would I have to hire one person to take the envelope the whole length of the journey?
Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up
#38Even the Pony Express failed financially and as far as I can tell those guys were the definition of grit. But technology and the dangers of the times got the best of them.
If the USPS fails financially it just means we pay for it through taxes like every other government service. But in this case the USPS isn’t falling victim to technology it’s falling victim to political sabotage: https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...
Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up
#39Even the Pony Express failed financially and as far as I can tell those guys were the definition of grit. But technology and the dangers of the times got the best of them.
USPS is not failing financially. It's the victim of a long-gestating assassination and a refusal by the current admin to adapt it to the Covid era of high demand.
Re: Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USPS struggles to keep up
#40Are there some actual studies stating that privatized mail office would be cheaper/more efficient/better service? Or is this just attempt at money grab?
How can it not be less expensive? The private companies don’t have to offer/fund the insane pension benefits that public sector employees get. The public sector pension scandal is insane.
Suppose you were right, and a private service could outcompete USPS. Why haven't they already? There's many delivery services that go to residential homes now, and tons of spam mailers that would love to save a few dollars in those areas where a private service could do it more cheaply. I'd be shocked that if UPS or FedEx thought they could be more profitable than USPS they wouldn't start competing.