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Kitchen Table Kibitzing June 16, 2024 [1]

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Date: 2024-06-16  

Postal Blues

I worked for the USPS for 20 years before my retirement. It was a good place to work, of course with usual employee grousing, like every job. This was 25 years ago, so there have been many changes. We all were aware of the republican desire to privatize it, but were not worried. We knew as well that USPS was very highly rated worldwide.

In 2006, Congress passed a law that imposed extraordinary costs on the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. This burden applied to no other federal agency or private corporation. We mused at the time that this required benefits for folks yet unborn, at a time that electronic communication was beginning to eliminate postal mail. If the costs of this retiree health care mandate were removed from the USPS financial statements, the Post Office would have continued to be profitable (what repubs called a cash cow).

In my opinion things went downhill after that, with rising rates and worse service. Changes were finally made. The Postal Service Reform Act in 2022 removed the requirement for USPS to fully prefund this obligation. But in 2024 Louis DeJoy was appointed Postmaster General. It has been apparent that his long term job is to privatize the USPS, plus hamper voting wherever possible. There have been many Daily Kos diaries about this, and I have my own opinion on a darker motive. This is opinion:

The postal service owns small post offices in nearly every small town, often the center of the community. They also own huge commercial processing facilities in the center of many large cities. Indeed, the commercial success zones grew up around those centers,

They want all that real estate, worth billions and billions of dollars. They will be sold to private interests for pennies on the dollar.

Am I paranoid or am i right? How’s your mail service been lately? We still do pretty well worldwide. USPS has the most affordable domestic letter price of the 31 countries we studied.

Well, that’s pretty dreary for a Kitchen Table, so…….what are you cooking tonight?

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