Chris Powell: Postal Service realities; bring back postal banking?

The Littleton (N.H.) Main Post office, opened in 1933. It’s surprisingly grand for a town with only about 6,000 residents. It’s on the National Registry of Historic Places.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Maybe someday when the United States has a president who is not crazy or senile, a Senate majority leader who isn't his tool, and a House speaker who doesn't think that those who disagree with her are enemies of the state, the country can have a serious discussion about fixing the U.S. Postal Service.

President Trump recently suggested that he wanted to cut off money for the Postal Service to hamper the voting by mail desired by Democratic leaders. The postmaster general, a big donor to the president's campaign who is invested in companies that compete with the USPS, had ordered economy measures that raised suspicion about his motives. But he has postponed those measures until after the election.

Since throwing fantastic amounts of money at everything has become national policy, the other day the Democratic majority in the House passed an emergency appropriation of $25 billion for the Postal Service with barely a thought about the service's inefficiencies and potential.

Just as the president seems to want to weaken the USPS for partisan reasons, the Democrats seem to want to keep it operating just as it is because it employs about 600,000 people, most of them belonging to a union that supports Democrats. In the Democratic view, delivering the mail efficiently seems to be secondary.

The Postal Service long has been losing big money. It has not come close to covering its costs for the last 13 years, during which its losses have totaled $78 billion. Its unfunded pension and retirement medical insurance liabilities are worse.

In 1971 the USPS was taken out of the regular government and made a supposedly independent agency in the hope that regular business practices would be applied and improve efficiency. But this didn't accomplish much. Mainly postage prices rose as government's direct subsidies were withdrawn, and the Postal Service's financial position worsened.

{Editor’s note. Much of the Postal Service’s financial woes stem from a 2006 law passed by the Republican-run Congress in a lame-duck session that mandated that the USPS pre-fund its employee-pension and retirement costs, including health care, not just for one year but for the next 75 years—a crippling requirement not imposed any other enterprise. The year that mandate passed, the Postal Service had a $900 million profit.}

Customer services have been expanded but mail volume has fallen sharply, first because of the Internet and lately because of the virus epidemic, so the Postal Service doesn't make full use of its vast infrastructure.

Its defenders, mainly Democrats, note that the USPS was never supposed to earn a profit but to knit the country together. It has done that well. But some of its defenders imply that because it wasn't meant to make money, it's all right for it to lose any amount of money -- that its primary purpose now is not delivering the mail but employment and that postal employment is the best use of the money being spent to cover losses.

Republicans are suspected of wanting to privatize the Postal Service or cripple it by repealing its monopoly on delivery of first-class mail. Certainly private companies might do better with such mail in some respects, but the law requires the USPS to serve all people in the country at the same rates -- to make not just the less expensive deliveries of densely populated areas but the more expensive deliveries in the remote countryside. The Postal Service is a great gift to rural areas, the country's breadbasket.

Urban areas also might find the USPS more of a gift if postal banking was restored. From 1911 to 1967 the Postal Service office offered modest savings accounts. While their appeal diminished with federal bank deposit insurance, which came because of the Great Depression, the Postal Service still sells money orders and might offer not just savings accounts again but also basic banking services to poor people whose patronage commercial banks find unprofitable and who use expensive payday lenders and check-cashing services.

Of course, the Postal Service probably would not break even in the banking business either, but helping the poor save and learn banking would elevate them and give commercial banks some much-needed competition.

In any case the USPS has a big underused infrastructure even as it still knits the country together. But like nearly everything else in government, its employment costs are excessive. If actual governing ever resumes in Washington, improving the Postal Service while making it break even should be high on the agenda.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Llewellyn King: Save the Postal Service: It helps to make America great

The downtown Westerly, R.I., Post Office, designed in the Classical Revival style, in 1913, by architect James Knox Taylor. The single-story building features a broad curving facade with eight fluted Doric columns of Vermont marble, flanked by wide piers. The interior lobby space retains many original features, including terrazzo and marble flooring, and a coffered ceiling with decorative moulding.

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

Open Letter to the New Postmaster General Louis DeJoy

Dear Sir,

There is fear that you’ve been appointed Postmaster General (congratulations, by the way) to downsize and privatize the post office. I’m here to plead for the post office. It is a great institution and –yes, yes, yes –incredibly efficient.

How can I say that when for generations it’s been the butt of jokes, a standard applause line when denounced by politicians as an example of government run amok?

Simple: personal experience.

For 33 years, I published professional newsletters in Washington. The champion in my stable was The Energy Daily. Its success -- and it was very successful in the 33 years from its founding until I sold it -- depended on the absolute reliability of first-class letter service from the post office.

Every evening we mailed the paper in a No. 10 envelope at a post office in the Washington area. Every morning, I received one in my mailbox in The Plains, Va., 50 miles southwest of District. It was extraordinary. So, too, was its delivery across the country.

Not only did we deliver subscribers their copies by first-class mail, but we also did all the promotion the same way. Over the years we mailed hundreds of thousands of first-class sales letters, and it paid off.

Even now, in the Internet age, mail is more trusted and taken more seriously. The head of a large cancer charity told me they still rely on mail solicitations for most of their fundraising: They raise $15 million a year through it.

Years ago, the president of a large, Mid-Atlantic electric utility told me, “The post office is one of the most efficient organizations in the country. Every month we mail more than a million bills, and they all get delivered.” So, I asked, why it is cited as an example of why the government can’t do anything right? He answered, “Have you heard about the alligators in the New York sewers?”

President Trump -- to whom you, Mr. DeJoy, have made financial campaign contributions of over $2 million (a mail carrier earns just over $45,00 a year) -- wants to see the post office punished; presumably because it has a contract to deliver for Amazon whose CEO Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the country, owns The Washington Post, which isn’t kind to Trump.

Now, I’ll agree, that the post office must stop losing so much money. Those first-class letters are few, shredding revenues. The package business is the future.

But the problem is, as much as anything, micromanagement from Congress.

When I lived in The Plains, there were a dozen nearby post offices: rural ones, close together, serving few people. Democratic and Republican congressmen get overly attached to their local post offices and fight their closure, even when it is clear there should be consolidation. Likewise, Saturday delivery; for reasons long forgotten, six-day-a-week delivery has become sacred. A private company would stop that on Day One.

Besides, you can understand the attachment to your local post office: It is part of the community. You get and send mail there, maybe buy some stamps, and catch up on the gossip -- postmasters know everything.

People don’t hang out at the FedEx office. Remember that. You damage the post office and you take away something from American life.

Also, what corporation would support rural delivery? The rural electric cooperatives were created as a part of FDR’s New Deal because there was no other way that the farms would be electrified. Even in this day and age, there is little broadband availability in rural America because it doesn’t pay to lay the cable. What will happen to the mail?

Here is a true story about the post office in The Plains. A stray village dog, one well-fed and well-known as Downtown Brown, became attached to the post office. He decided that he owned it and barred people he didn’t like from entering. Downtown Brown had to be rusticated to a farm so that the people of The Plains -- population 238 -- could once again use the post office.

It wasn’t decided then that the post office should be closed because the dog was affecting the mail. If you privatize the post office now, that is what you’ll be doing.

Do be careful. You are stepping in to take control of something very American, since 1775. It has social value as well as being an innovator, from stagecoaches to airplanes to automated sorting.

The post office helped make America great. Save the post office. About Downtown Brown: I’m told he lived a long and happy life and never went postal again.

Cordially,

Mail Customer

Llewellyn King is host and executive producer of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He is based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

Website: whchronicle.com

Julie Bates: Save the Postal Service, burdened by grossly unfair pre-funding law

Via OtherWords.org

This summer, the White House proposed selling off the U.S. Postal Service to private corporations.

As a 22-year postal worker, I recently joined my coworkers, our families and neighbors across the country to rally in support of our public Postal Service. Our message to those who want to sell off our national treasure to the highest bidder: U.S. mail is not for sale.

Many may think that in the Internet age, the Postal Service has outlived its usefulness, and that the decline of letter mail is the cause of the Postal Service’s financial troubles. But the Postal Service actually turns a profit on its deliveries.

The truth is that the USPS’s problems were largely created by Congress.

A bipartisan 2006 law, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act mandated that the USPS pre-fund future retiree health benefits 75 years into the future. That means we have to fund retirement benefits for postal employees who haven’t even been born yet.

It’s a crushing burden that no other agency or company — public or private — is required to meet, or could even survive.

The mandate drained $5.5 billion a year out of Postal Service funds and accounts for more than 90 percent of its losses. In fact, if it weren’t for this manufactured pre-funding crisis, the USPS would have reported profits in four of the last five years — all without receiving a dime of taxpayer money.

While it’s true that the way people use the mail is changing, the Postal Service is still a vital part of the country’s infrastructure.

Package volumes have exploded with the e-commerce boom. Companies as large as Amazon and as small as a one-room Etsy vendor rely on the Postal Service. USPS delivers 30 percent of FedEx Ground packages and 40 percent of all of Amazon’s many shipments. Vitally, the USPS is at the heart of a $1.7 trillion mailing industry that employs more than 7.5 million people.

The people of this country love the Postal Service. A recent Pew Survey showed 88 percent of Americans view the USPS favorably.

One reason for this success is our commitment to serve 157 million homes and businesses six — and sometimes seven — days per week at affordable, uniform prices. Our public Postal Service reaches everyone, everywhere, no matter one’s health, wealth, age, or race. We should never lose sight that it’s veterans, seniors, and people in rural areas who rely most on the Postal Service for essential goods and life-saving medications.

What could the public expect if the Postal Service were sold to off to private interests? Higher prices, slower delivery, and an end to universal, uniform, and affordable service to every corner of the country.

And who would pay the price? All of us.

Postal services that have been privatized abroad provide a cautionary tale: In the UK, postage is up nearly 80 percent since 2007. The privatized Portuguese post has closed nearly a third of its post offices.

Our postal system is older than the country itself. It was a vital component of our country’s public good then. It still is today. And along the way, one fundamental fact has always been true: Our postal system has never belonged to any president, any political party, or any company. It’s belonged to the people of this country.

Postal workers are rallying to urge lawmakers to stop the selling off of the public postal service for private profit — and to remind everyone the Postal Service is yours. Keep it.

Julie Bates is a 22-year postal worker at the Des Moines, Iowa post office.

Jim Hightower: Trump's bid to use Postal Service to hit Amazon may backfire big time

Photo by Chensiyuan

Close up of the James A. Farley Post Office,  in Manhattan. Read the inscription over the columns: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds''

Via OtherWords.org

The U.S. Postal Service has 30,000 outlets serving every part of America. It employs 630,000 people in good middle-class jobs. And it proudly delivers letters and packages clear across the country for a pittance.

It’s a jewel of public-service excellence. Therefore, it must be destroyed.

Such is the fevered logic of laissez-faire-headed corporate supremists like the billionaire Koch brothers and the right-wing politicians who serve them.

This malevolent gang of wrecking-ball privatizers includes such prominent Trumpsters as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (a former Wall Street huckster from Goldman Sachs), and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney (a former corporate-hugging Congress critter from South Carolina).

Both were involved in setting up Trump’s shiny new task force to remake our U.S. Postal Service. It’s like asking two foxes to remodel the hen house.

Trump himself merely wanted to take a slap at his political enemy, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, by jacking up the prices the Postal Service charges to deliver Amazon’s packages. The cabal of far-right corporatizers, however, saw Trump’s temper tantrum as a golden opportunity to go after the Postal Service itself.

Trump complained about the Postal Service not charging Amazon enough for mailing packages. But instead of simply addressing the matter, the task force was trumped-up with an open-ended mandate to evaluate, dissect, and “restructure” the people’s mail service — including carving it up and selling off the parts.

Who’d buy the pieces? For-profit shippers like FedEx, of course. But here’s some serious irony for you: The one outfit with the cash and clout to buy our nation’s whole postal infrastructure and turn it into a monstrous corporate monopoly is none other than… Amazon itself.

I’d prefer my neighborhood post office, thanks. To help stop this sellout, become part of the Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service: www.AGrandAlliance.org.

Jim Hightower, an OtherWords columnist, is a radio commentator, writer and public speaker. He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. 

Jim Hightower: Predatory companies seek to destroy the most popular federal agency: the Postal Service

Via OtherWords.org

A half-dollar hardly counts as money these days — it won’t even buy a cup of coffee. But pssssst… here’s an amazing half-dollar bargain for you: A first-class postage stamp.

For 50 cents, you get the stamp, 3 cents in change, and America’s phenomenal network of post office workers and letter carriers, who will deliver your missive into any of the 43,000 zip codes of this vast country.

Our public Postal Service literally delivers, and many of our post offices serve as treasured community centers — two reasons that the U.S. mail service consistently ranks highest of all federal agencies in public support.

So, naturally, it must be  ravaged and ultimately eliminated.

That’s what passes for logic in the back rooms of Congress and in the boardrooms of predatory corporations that want to take control our mail for their profit.

They keep demonizing anything public — especially any public service that actually works and is popular — because the corporate powers and the Congress critters they buy in bulk ultimately intend to privatize all of the people’s government. To advance their plutocratic vision, they’re out to tarnish the Postal Service as a massive, money-sucking, dying, bureaucratic behemoth.

But here are a few facts they don’t want you to realize.

One, this public agency provides affordable mail service to all, in poor communities as well as rich. Two, it does this without a dime of taxpayer money, financing its entire operation with the sale of stamps and services. And three, it provides hundreds of thousands of solid middle-class jobs spread throughout every zip code.

To help keep this public jewel out of the hands of a few greed-headed, price-gouging, low-wage, tax-dodging corporations, support “A Grand Alliance To Save Our Public Post Offices.” Find it at www.AGrandAlliance.org.

Jim Hightower is a radio commentator,  public speaker and the editor of the  newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. He wrote this for OtherWords.org.

Katherine McFate: What we lose with privatized mail

Last year, the U.S. Postal Service delivered 1.4 billion packages for FedEx and UPS. In fact, it delivers the last mile for almost a third of FedEx packages. The 618,000 Postal Service workers also delivered nearly 66 billion pieces of first-class mail — that’s more than 100,000 pieces per carrier.

The Postal Service can reach all 150 million American households because it’s a publics ystem that we’ve been investing in for over 200 years. Our Constitution tasked the federal government with creating a national postal system and told the postmaster general to report to the president.

But in 1971, Congress made the service into an “independent agency” managed by a board of governors. And since then, it’s been under attack by politicians who never met a public program they liked.

Yes, the rise of UPS, FedEx, and the Internet has created new challenges for your local post office. But the purported “fiscal crisis” is a manufactured one.

In 2006, Congress required the Postal Service — known as USPS for short — to “pre-fund” 75 years of its retirees’ health benefits. This added $5.7 billion to its costs last year.

No other private company or federal agency has to pre-fund retirement health-care benefits. If they did, many corporations would run huge deficits or tumble into bankruptcy. Without these retiree health payments, USPS would actually turn a profit.

Using the deficit created by this requirement as an excuse, the USPS board of governors is closing distribution centers, cutting worker hours, eliminating delivery routes, and slashing jobs. Over the past five years, USPS has cut 94,000 positions.

The job loss alone is a travesty, but a bigger principle is at stake.

Our nation’s founders understood that a universal, affordable, and yes, public postal system helps knit us together as a nation. They recognized that commerce requires a common infrastructure and public institutions that belong to and benefit the entire country.

Instead of shrinking the Postal Service, we should build on it. That means, first of all, appreciating that the USPS can be much more than a delivery service.

In many small towns, the local post office continues to be a community hub, a place to meet neighbors and get news. And postal carriers don’t just deliver letters — they often keep an eye on the elderly and homebound, and alert first responders if things look amiss.

They could do even more. The Postal Service’s fleet of vehicles — the largest in the country — could be equipped to detect air pollutants and report potholes, water leaks, and other infrastructure repair needs.

Why stop there?

The USPS could raise tens of billions of dollars each year by reinstating post office savings accounts and banking services, which it efficiently provided for 55 years in the first half of the 20^th century.

Customers received 2-percent interest on their savings accounts, and the post office loaned their money to community banks, which then made loans to local businesses. This virtuous circle benefitted the entire community. At its peak, 4 million Americans took advantage of these services, saving $36 billion in 2014 dollars.

Today, 34 million American families live in places without traditional banking services. High-interest payday lenders and check-cashing services charge low-wage working families in those communities an average of over $2,400 a year. Experts estimate that low-cost banking services could save American workers a trillion dollars a year.

Instead of selling off the assets we built together over two centuries, let’s invest in our Postal Service — a public system that has served our nation since its birth.

Katherine McFate is the president and  chief executive of the Center for Effective Government in Washington (foreffectivegov.org). This article was distributed via OtherWords.org. This article was distributed via OtherWords.org.