Does anybody really think . . .

Submitted by Lily O Lady on Sat, 08/22/2020 - 1:37am

that the Democrats will restore the USPS, even if they win both houses and the White House? They seems to be signaling that there won’t be any money for much of anything.

I doubt that they will go after DeJoy for his wanton destruction of Postal property such as the sorting machines and collection boxes. Nor will they use existing federal statutes to prosecute him for tampering with the mail.

DeJoy seems to be following Trump’s model of lying right to our faces without any intention of doing anything that he says. Even so I think he will avoid prosecution because, while several of Trump’s associates has been prosecuted and even sent to prison, there is big money to be made in privatizing the Post Office which can be shared among TPTB. Further, this is a huge advantage for Jeff Bezos’ Amazon as he has been developing his own distribution system. It may well drive some of his competitors out of business. And since Bezos has more money than god, I expect that his will be done. All the lying by DeJoy is just cover for what TPTB have generally been working toward, hell, drawn to, for so very long.

So why all the hoopla by the Democrats and their associated interest groups like MoveOn and the rest who keep sending out emails asking for donations? Will those donations really help save the Post Office? I do believe they will pay the salaries of those who consider themselves to be part of the elite. But my husband got to see how one such lobbying group does its work, and I saw another.

It’s a pretty pitiful affair. They don’t want to piss off those in Congress who they are supposed to be lobbying. So they are very circumspect in their language. They drag along constituents to make a point, but that point is that people with no money are upset with you. Which as we know means nothing. Money talks. Relatively penniless constituents sound like the adult in a Charlie Brown cartoon: some fury but no real sound.

I don’t want to say this, but the Post Office is going. There will be no “political will” to spend or recoup the money to restore it. And by political will I mean something supported by our corporate overlords. All the emotional appeals are just ways to distract us and make use feel anything but powerless, which is what we are. It’s the bloody shirt, the rallying cry, full of sound and fury, a tale told by idiots signifying nothing.

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Comments

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 08/22/2020 - 2:25pm

No

All the lying by DeJoy is just cover for what TPTB have generally been working toward, hell, drawn to, for so very long.

This attack is bipartisan and is just another step in the corporate coup that has been happening since.......fill in the blank. Both parties voted for the 75 year pension plan and dems didn't even address the PO during the 2 years they held all branches.

This article has some good and bad points to it. Bovard was in Reagan's admin so it seems to have a right slant to it. But worth a read anyway.

Mail Slowdowns Started 50 Years Before Trump

Actually, the Postal Service has been intentionally disrupting its own service since at least the Nixon era. At a high-level meeting in 1969, postal management decided “to no longer strive for overnight mail delivery and to keep this a secret from Congress and the public,” the Washington Post reported in 1974. Management also considered cutting costs by educating Americans not to expect prompt service, according to the Post.

In 1993, the Postal Service created a task force to examine how it could profit by further reducing standards, shifting far more overnight mail into two-day delivery. That resulted in a trial mail slowdown in Florida with the Orwellian name, “Delivery First.” That moniker didn’t mean delivering the mail would become the highest priority, but that postal carriers’ daily schedule was reversed. Carriers hit the streets first and sorted mail afterwards, adding at least a day to delivery times. (isn't this what DeJoy is having them do now and that's slowing down the mail? - snoopy)

Beginning in 2000, the Postal Service quietly slashed delivery targets in much of the nation for first-class mail going beyond local areas. A 2006 Postal Regulatory Commission report found that the Postal Service scorned federal law requiring the “highest consideration” to speedy mail delivery. Instead, “administrative convenience resulted in mapping coverage of the two-day standard exclusively in terms of surface transportation.” The commission found that “postal patrons in several Western states, including California, experienced far more service downgrades than those in other parts of the country.”

Much more and links in article.

The post office keeps losing money we're told and it would be better to privatize it. Well schools are losing money right? How bout we talk about the military and how much money it loses every year. The pentagon anyone?

No Biden/Harris will not turn this around. Biden already kicked it down the road for 8 years and why anyone expects him to be better than Obama is boggling. But of course people will project their own thoughts on Biden's tenure like they did Obama and still do.

In other words they will go to sleep again. Obama trashed the anti war movement so well that centrists that were all over Bush for war have stayed asleep while Trump continues the wars massacres.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAEe7epD51w&list=TLPQMjIwODIwMjBHegFXfbF...

This is a great segment.

They are going to f'ck us over and yet you're going to vote for them anyway.

Jimmy calls us adult childs of alcoholics. I can't argue with that term.

All the emotional appeals are just ways to distract us and make use feel anything but powerless, which is what we are. It’s the bloody shirt, the rallying cry, full of sound and fury, a tale told by idiots signifying nothing.

Yup. This pretty much sums it up. But good on the people who are at PO across the country protesting against this. Kudos and thanks.

—

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Submitted by Lily O Lady on Sat, 08/22/2020 - 2:33pm

I know. I see the protesters and now realize the utter

@snoopydawg

futility of it. For a while I thought a bunch of people could dress up as Postmaster Ben Franklin to lobby Congress, but then I realized that he is associated with the one hundred dollar bill. Congress loves money, the Post Office not so much.

Thanks for the link, sd. It really does put all this kabuki in perspective.

All the lying by DeJoy is just cover for what TPTB have generally been working toward, hell, drawn to, for so very long.

This attack is bipartisan and is just another step in the corporate coup that has been happening since.......fill in the blank. Both parties voted for the 75 year pension plan and dems didn't even address the PO during the 2 years they held all branches.

This article has some good and bad points to it. Bovard was in Reagan's admin so it seems to have a right slant to it. But worth a read anyway.

Mail Slowdowns Started 50 Years Before Trump

Actually, the Postal Service has been intentionally disrupting its own service since at least the Nixon era. At a high-level meeting in 1969, postal management decided “to no longer strive for overnight mail delivery and to keep this a secret from Congress and the public,” the Washington Post reported in 1974. Management also considered cutting costs by educating Americans not to expect prompt service, according to the Post.

In 1993, the Postal Service created a task force to examine how it could profit by further reducing standards, shifting far more overnight mail into two-day delivery. That resulted in a trial mail slowdown in Florida with the Orwellian name, “Delivery First.” That moniker didn’t mean delivering the mail would become the highest priority, but that postal carriers’ daily schedule was reversed. Carriers hit the streets first and sorted mail afterwards, adding at least a day to delivery times. (isn't this what DeJoy is having them do now and that's slowing down the mail? - snoopy)

Beginning in 2000, the Postal Service quietly slashed delivery targets in much of the nation for first-class mail going beyond local areas. A 2006 Postal Regulatory Commission report found that the Postal Service scorned federal law requiring the “highest consideration” to speedy mail delivery. Instead, “administrative convenience resulted in mapping coverage of the two-day standard exclusively in terms of surface transportation.” The commission found that “postal patrons in several Western states, including California, experienced far more service downgrades than those in other parts of the country.”

Much more and links in article.

The post office keeps losing money we're told and it would be better to privatize it. Well schools are losing money right? How bout we talk about the military and how much money it loses every year. The pentagon anyone?

No Biden/Harris will not turn this around. Biden already kicked it down the road for 8 years and why anyone expects him to be better than Obama is boggling. But of course people will project their own thoughts on Biden's tenure like they did Obama and still do.

In other words they will go to sleep again. Obama trashed the anti war movement so well that centrists that were all over Bush for war have stayed asleep while Trump continues the wars massacres.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAEe7epD51w&list=TLPQMjIwODIwMjBHegFXfbF...

This is a great segment.

They are going to f'ck us over and yet you're going to vote for them anyway.

Jimmy calls us adult childs of alcoholics. I can't argue with that term.

All the emotional appeals are just ways to distract us and make use feel anything but powerless, which is what we are. It’s the bloody shirt, the rallying cry, full of sound and fury, a tale told by idiots signifying nothing.

Yup. This pretty much sums it up. But good on the people who are at PO across the country protesting against this. Kudos and thanks.

—

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Submitted by Granma on Sat, 08/22/2020 - 3:00pm

The USPS has a 91%

approval rating. It is being taken apart in front of us, hurried up in hopes of swinging an election. People don’t like it. They want the postal service.

I keep wondering what it takes to get people to put a stop to this and all the other things. What is the last straw for people in this country? I do not think most people believe this election will change things. There is lots of hoopla about the election and how important it is. And yet millions of people gave up on voting decades ago and that hasn’t changed, except that there are more of them.

Maybe a lot of people are past the breaking point of fed up and just plain do not see what they can do about it. Anyone with ideas about that is not going to be heard by anything like a majority of the public.

Submitted by travelerxxx on Sat, 08/22/2020 - 3:27pm

Clear as a bell

The priorities are quite clear. Those who own the nation are fine with spending a trillion dollars per year (that we know about) on the military – with their nearly one thousand bases worldwide. And right now, this military has no other purpose but to asset-strip weaker nations for profit. The US presently has no enemies, other than those imagined by the warmongers. There is no nation threatening us with war or destruction. If we would leave the people of the world in peace, we'd find what a waste our "defence" spending actually is.

A small fraction of the unfathomable fortune wasted on killing brown people worldwide would fix our Postal Service forever. Of course, the same could be said of providing our citizens healthcare, paying for Social Security forever, , rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, smashing the monopolies, etc., etc., etc.

How this isn't apparent to every adult in the United States speaks to the massive power of propaganda and greed.

Submitted by MrWebster on Sat, 08/22/2020 - 9:39pm

Everything will get worse under Biden

Biden not only announced that nothing will change, but to expect austerity from his main economic advisor--there will be no monies available. Put this together that Pelosi is a certified deficit hawk. As Biden announces his austerity program, the democratic caucus will go along with it. Just like they went along with all the neoliberal policies of Clinton and Obama. As Jimmy Dore (and others) have loudly proclaimed--neoliberal policies like NAFTA could not be passed under republicans, but only under democrats.

They will just let the Post Office wither away till we are looking at mail service maybe 2-3 days. Postage rates jacked up sky high. And along with this the death of small mom and pop businesses on ebay, amazon, etc. that rely on thee post office.

These events with the racist xenophobic views toward especially the Russians, expect a full out shooting war to divert a nation in total social and economic collapse.. Probably ending in a nuclear holocaust. If the polls like bad for the 2022 mid-terms, expect the war to begin before then.