The Bygone Letter

Trey Smith

Hold one thought in your mind every time you read about the "crisis" the U.S. Postal Service is in: There is a crisis, but it's a manufactured one. If Congress wasn't busy applying the Shock Doctrine, the postal service would face a challenge, but one it had time to meet. Instead, we're being told by Congress and by high-level management at the post office that the crisis is now and that massive cuts are the only answer — that degrading the services the postal service offers will save it.

But before we look at the cuts being proposed, what's so manufactured about this crisis?

In 2006, the postal service generated a profit. That was the last time it did so, because in late 2006, a lame duck Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which among other things forced the postal service to fund its retiree health benefit obligations 75 years into the future, and to do so within 10 years.
~ from Shock Doctrine at the Post Office: How the GOP Manufactured a Crisis and Too Many Dems Went Along by Laura Clawson ~

For my entire lifetime, mailing a letter has been a simple procedure. You write it and then put it in an envelope. After affixing the destination address plus a return address, you put a stamp in the upper right hand corner and drop it in a mailbox. You know there is a 99% chance the letter will reach its destination in a timely fashion.

But those days may soon be of the past. Like in the case of Social Security, corporations want to get government out of the business of providing basic needed services and instead have these services turned over to them. If this happens, you can bet there will be few price controls put in place and the services that we depend on will be degraded at will.

As with the health care debate, there are some services that simply don't need to be part of the profitability scheme. I don't know about you, but I think postal services need only be a break even proposition. The ability to communicate is basic to democracy and, when we hand that ability over to corporate masters, we can be assured that our communications will become more cumbersome...and costly!