They're going try to steal the U.S. Postal Service next year.

[dutch508]

Hotler (6,555 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212826858

They're going try to steal the U.S. Postal Service next year.
Last edited Tue Dec 31, 2019, 11:25 AM - Edit history (1)

"USPS could privatize as early as next year"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/usps-could-privatize-as-early-as-next-year/ar-BBYtDIj?li=BBnbfcL

If money is needed to prop up the U.S. Postal Service take it from the ****ers on Wall St., or take it from the military coffers. Fight back people, start calling your representatives. If this is allowed, they'll get their hands on the Social Security fund.
I didn't know the rat ****ers were this close to stealing it.

  The USPS is so mismanaged that it bleeds money because it can't compete with private carriers.

Captain Zero (793 posts)

1. what they really want are the US Postal Service PENSION FUNDS

Not surprising the theft would happen under Trump's watch.
Watch the pension funds vanish if this happens.

Somehow your pension will vanish? How? Even if tomorrow the USPS turns private company (which will be shit) if you are already retired you are a government retiree. That doesn't change. Postal workers are unionized already. No way the union will let that happen to currently employed workers. (Dad was a postman is whole life- save the three years he was in the Army in the 1950s.)

Star Member ProudMNDemocrat (5,658 posts)

2. Support your local Post Office.....

As a small business owner, I use the USPS a lot to ship Period Clothing and other costuming items all over the country. By doing so, I help keep Veterans and Postal workers employed. As rates go up, it is more important to keep this institution operating.

It is also important for Congress to repeal a 2006 law that forced the USPS to fully fund their retirements 75 years into the future within 10 years.

It's cheaper to use the USPS... also much slower and I've lost more through them than UPS, FEDEX, or DHL combined. I ship a lot of things too. If a customer wants it quick there is only one way to do it.

Ohiogal (12,127 posts)

4. It doesn't surprise me in the least

that this should happen under the Trump regime.

Postal service ... health care ... even education .... everything has to be for profit in this country.

Nothing should be run in the red in the government.

Proud Liberal Dem (19,007 posts)

12. Reason #? (I've lost count) why we should NEVER elect "businessmen" to run any facet of government EVER! I actually thought that we learned that lesson with George W. Bush but I guess not.

Star Member Drahthaardogs (5,704 posts)

7. This is his plan for all of the Federal employees

I used to work for DoD and saw it happen. One hire for every three retires, slowly choking the feds to death then privatize it so the oligarchs can make more $$$

 

Star Member Laura PourMeADrink (30,404 posts)

16. I want to know where these PTB people hatch their

Ideas. I envision a private wood-paneled club, fireplace ablaze, rare scotch with one large ice cube. One says "how can we make more money?". Another says "post office!". Convinced HMOs were invented this way on a cocktail napkin.

 

bucolic_frolic (14,283 posts)

24. USPS rate increases have far outpaced inflation for almost a decade

and deficits still linger.

In the recession, my post office lobby was rarely cleaned and was cold in winter. One local post office the postmistress complained she had a space heater under her desk as the only source of heat. Now, the lobbies are immaculate, and warm maybe 70 degrees F in winter. So i'm seeing increased spending.

Package rates going up again??? Rates have gone through the roof, Priority Mail especially. Yet the USPS allows private companies like Pirate Ship to skim steep discounts for the few who know about it. Retail customers - people who don't ship online - are the highest of all. This is most likely elderly folks at holiday time.

Post Office Boxes continue to rise. What was $20 in 2003 is $92 today, and will rise in January surely. I would expect they start charging for home delivery, that's what they're talking about. So everyone can pay $2 a week for delivery, and you won't have a choice. All to receive junk mail, annual statements in January, and a tax bill. When there is no mail, it's all electronic, will we still be paying then?

Using USPS services less and paying more with little choice about it will NOT be a popular idea.

 

Star Member not fooled (3,717 posts)

27. This is what pukes are about

red don and his antics are the diversion while the real work of the GOPee proceeds: to loot the country and impoverish everyone else so the oligarchy can reign.

Hope the maggots are proud. They make this possible.

Star Member guillaumeb (37,728 posts)

36. True. This crisis was deliberately created by the GOP

because they want to privatize the USPS so their donors can profit from less competition.

I could easily see Jeff Bezos buying the USPS and picking out the package delivery operation to enhance his own bottom line. Replace unionized workers and good paying jobs with $15 an hour part timers with no benefits.

dlk (5,838 posts)

40. Republicans despise the postal service because it is unionized

They have spent decades decimating unions and American workers have paid a very high price as a result.

 

[Mary Ann]

Star Member Laura PourMeADrink (30,404 posts)

16. I want to know where these PTB people hatch their

Ideas. I envision a private wood-paneled club, fireplace ablaze, rare scotch with one large ice cube. One says "how can we make more money?". Another says "post office!". Convinced HMOs were invented this way on a cocktail napkin.

I may be misremembering, but I thought HMOs were one of Teddy Kennedy's Scotch-fueled ideas.

[Mary Ann]

ancianita (12,494 posts)

20. It will hit the courts. Because the USPS is the only agency written into the Constitution, courts

will stop this privatizing.

USPS's existence and thus, its operations, are constitutionally protected from privatization attempts to defund it.

The Second Amendment and the Electoral College are also in the Constitution, but you all would do away with both in a heartbeat.

Idiot.

[Ralph Wiggum]

I may be misremembering, but I thought HMOs were one of Teddy Kennedy's Scotch-fueled ideas.

I always heard it was one of the hookers that convinced Fat Teddy to come up with HMO's.

[SVPete]

DUpipo are going postal over the postal going private! 

BTW, while Article 1, Section 8 grants Congress the power to "establish Post Offices and Post Roads", it does not require that Congress do so, nor that Congress guarantee the perpetual existence of such facilities, nor how such facilities are to be administered (whether government agency or private company).

As my signature quote states,

[Mary Ann]

I do payroll for a very small animal shelter in rural Michigan. I write actual checks, because of um, reasons.

In June I was going to be out of town for about ten days, and had no one else to fill in for that pay period. The manager scanned and e-mailed the time sheets to me, I wrote the checks, and took them to the post office and spent many $$$ to send them overnight to the manager. I then trusted the post office to take care of the matter.

They didn't arrive.

Phone calls ensued. Our local post office located them, and someone there coached Little League with the husband of the shelter manager, so took them to the game. Which is more a credit to small town life, than a bloated and inefficient government bureaucracy.

Reminds me of the time my husband's luggage arrived home from the airport on the school bus . . .

[Old n Grumpy]

When I had my business I shipped thousands of packages priority mail with good results, it was fast and cheap with free boxes. I got to know my mail man pretty well and from talking to him I think the USPS invented inefficency and wastefulness.

[landofconfusion80]

Our rural carrier is so bad the PO is actively trying to fire her. She's picked up so much seniority in the union. That itll probably never happen.

[I_B_Perky]

Wow.

Cliffs notes version cause I have to go to work at 0 dark thirty:

1.  USPS is not a government funded entity and hasn't been for a while
2. The US governmemt, ie congress, can require them to fund their retirement
3. The US government (congress) did the above, to the tune of like $75 billion, causing them to run a deficit
4. Totally privatizing them will take congress mandates away from the them
5. The post office is actually in the constitution

I'm for privatizing it, Congress mandate ie pensions, is insane. If congress is all agog about that, then why ain't they all agog about Social Security?  Supposed to have fixed it back in the 80's.

Funny thing is... UPS, Fed Ex and the other one use the USPS a lot. Especially around the holidays.  They are, quite literally, the big dog on the block when it comes to moving packages.  Don't believe me? Then you ain't done your homework dummies.

[Movie buff- The Sequel]

"dlk (5,838 posts)

40. Republicans despise the postal service because it is unionized

They have spent decades decimating unions and American workers have paid a very high price as a result."
Um, no.
Many labor unions have begun slowly tilting more to the right lately, once they finally got their heads out of their butts and began to realize that the Dems were just using and manipulating them for votes and to advance their class- warfare policies, then kicking them to the curb afterwards.
The Left's war on the coal- mining industry (An industry whose labor unions are among the oldest and most respected in the country), which was kicked into high gear by Obama and continued by AOC and other current Dem politicians, was one of the last straws for them.