The US Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors is preparing to name David Steiner, a current member of FedEx’s Board of Directors, as the next Postmaster General (PMG), according to a report in the Washington Post. The selection is reportedly being made at the behest of Donald Trump.
The move signals a massive escalation of attacks on the post office, especially its privatization, which both Trump and Elon Musk, head of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” (DOGE) support. But privatization would be the culmination of decades of bipartisan attacks, beginning with its demotion from a cabinet level department to an independent, self-funding agency under President Richard Nixon.
The situation urgently requires organized resistance by postal workers and their allies in the working class. As the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee explained in a statement in March: “This requires new organizations, rank-and-file committees, to mobilize ourselves independently of Trump’s collaborators in the Democrats and the union tops. We must safeguard our own initiative and begin organizing now rather than waiting for ‘permission’ from the top which will never come.”
Privatization and then closure, blaming lack of profitability.
National postal service is a public service just like public transportation. It is not meant to be profitable on its own. Ita existence alone is profitable as a service to the community and country.
Public services should not have a necessity to “operate in the green”, these are public funded services with government tax funding.
Edit: Public roads like highways are publicly funded. You don’t see car companies building infrastructure for consumer to have a place to drive their
carWe can’t forget that the USPS did operate in the “green.” Until Republicans in the 1990’s passed legislation that required post office workers a fat retirement pension. The pension program was specifically designed to run the “profitable” USPS into the “red.”
So, Republicans now 30 years later get to boohoo and cry about the inefficiency they manufactured to seize control of public assets to fill their own private suit pockets.
Sickening. Actually makes me physically ill thinking about this. I cannot wait for their comeuppance.
It’s not that they changed the amount of individual pensions. What they did is force them to pre-fund the pensions to a ridiculous degree.
They were funding pensions for people that hadn’t even been born yet.
Just like the tariffs, the loss of a functional post office is going to hurt far more things deeper than they realize. Or like everything else, they understand it will break things but only care about what they’re getting out of it.
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with you. They’re basically pirates. They’re pirates that wear suits.
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Anyone who says they’ll run the government as a business will fail at doing both.
In case you’re curious why they might hate the post office so much, I suspect it’s because as a government entity it has two important attributes:
- A requirement for universal access
- At least some constitutional protections for privacy.
When you ship UPS or FedEx, you’re giving a package to a private entity. They are only bound by the contract they make with you. If they decide to start opening every package, that’s their right. The USPS has specific laws around when it can and cannot search packages, and generally requires a warrant.
The whole point of paying taxes is for this shit! People already don’t trust the government no matter what, eventually more Americans are gonna have to wake up and realize they only want your money if they can keep it.
the only reason it would be unprofitable is if they force it to be that way like they did with the pension fund requirements.
Once that happens the orange cancer will stop USPS from delivering ballots to the states lucky enough to have mail-in voting.
Fuck that guy.
DeJoy was hard to beat in terms of who would be perfect to run counter to the USPS’ mission. Never underestimate Trump and the Republican establishment’s ability to find new corrupt cronies.
Wtffffffff
Ok I’m sorry but how is this in any way surprising?
I agree that it’s incredibly shitty and fucked up. But it’s anything but surprising.
Also: fuck you, Biden, for “my hands are tied I can’t get rid of this guy”. I honestly struggle to think of someone who could have prepared us more poorly for fighting off the fascists, on this and so many other levels. THAT will be his legacy: Washington said we had “a Republic, if you can keep it”, and Biden was the one who lost the Republic.
Just another day of Trump wiping his ass with the Constitution.
ooh. this is like a two for one. board memeber and trump politcal apointee with aims to destroy the government. Definitely extra points for this one.
