DON’T LET THEM TAKE YOUR POST OFFICE AWAY
This spring, President Trump
created an inter-agency federal task force to propose structural reforms in the
U.S. Postal Service.
In only two months, the task
force (comprised entirely of top Trump officials) zapped out a down-and-dirty
report with this key recommendation: “Prepare [USPS] for future conversion from
a government agency into a privately-held corporation.”
Privatization! Are they not
aware that our public postal agency is enormously popular and important to…
well, to the public?
A February Pew Research poll
finds that an astonishing 88 percent of Americans give the
Postal Service a thumbs up.
Even the president’s executive order setting up the task force conceded that the post office “is regularly cited as the Federal agency with the highest public approval rating.”
Even the president’s executive order setting up the task force conceded that the post office “is regularly cited as the Federal agency with the highest public approval rating.”
The 640,000 middle-class postal workers and letter carriers merit such kudos because they literally deliver for us.
Working from 31,585 local offices, they trundle 150 billion pieces of mail a year, 4 million miles a day, to 157 million addresses across the land — from inner-city neighborhoods to back roads — delivering all with remarkable speed.
USPS does this without taking a
dime in taxpayer funds, financing its operations entirely from its sales and
services to customers.
This is a genuine public good linking all of America’s people together.
This is a genuine public good linking all of America’s people together.
For decades, though,
anti-government propagandists have pushed the narrative that government is
inherently incompetent, wasteful, and a social evil that must to be eliminated.
But the problem for these ideologues is that USPS is not only a government agency that works, but millions of folks see it working for them daily.
But the problem for these ideologues is that USPS is not only a government agency that works, but millions of folks see it working for them daily.
Therefore, to maintain the
negative political narrative about public entities, the far-right corporatists
are desperate to kill our public post offices. To help save them, go to:
USMailNotForSale.org.
OtherWords columnist Jim
Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.
