Post office blues

There’s an effort underway to privatize the post office, or at least defund it so it runs poorly and the private companies like FedEx, UPS, and DHS can compete with it. (NYT)

Faced with declining revenue, the Postal Service is asking Congress to allow it to close more than 3,700 post offices and 250 processing centers, and to eliminate Saturday delivery of mail.

In other countries, post offices double as banks or sell insurance or cellphones. In the United States, Congress has barred the Postal Service from entering many of these areas. In the 1990s, forecasting a decline in first-class mail, the Postal Service tried several nonmail products, like phone cards, money transfers and e-mail accounts. But Congress said the ventures created unfair competition for the private sector and did not seem to make much money.

 

The strain of libertarianism is hard to miss.  It’s good some westerners are speaking up for the rural post offices (WaPo):

Western lawmakers upset with the Postal Service’s plans to close tiny rural post offices want to bar USPS from closing rural offices for two more years, and then only if the next-nearest post office is no more than 10 miles away.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) called plans to close rural postal offices “callous, unnecessary and irresponsible.” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) called the plans “devastating and economically idiotic.”

It is pretty idiotic to fire workers in the middle of a recession, with the false claim of budget cutting.  It’s quite obvious (maybe not) that these people not only pay taxes (deficit, remember), but they also buy things, like food, cars, etc. which other people sell and need employees for.  Now if only the rest of us had a steady paycheck (demand), even from the evil GOVT, we might have some success in this economy.

It should be obvious that firing people that were earning a living and paying taxes, and putting them in the unemployment/welfare/foodstamp/housing assistance/medicaid line where they are not, is bad for the economy.  Yet these same GOP’ers are using that fact to scream ‘Look how much gov’t has grown under communist Obama!! The debt/GDP ratio! Argh!’  Maybe we are in a huge recession which threw millions into poverty.  Maybe GDP has shrunk and gov’t has grown because of automatic spending, like UE, medicaid, foodstamps, other gov’t assistance, and people taking early Social Security and Medicare.

But these postal workers also do important work, you know.  I live in a rural area.  Our main city post office (Sandpoint) won’t close, but there are others in Naples, Elmira, Cocollalla, etc. which serve small numbers but I’m sure those ‘moochers and parasites’ would like to keep their quite efficient and cost-effective mail delivery.

I wonder if the Randroids think mail delivery is even a government function.  Or the Koch brothers.  Or street addressing, car registration, licensing, etc.  How about car titling?  Should we write our own car titles, since the DMV is ‘men with guns’ forcing us to not use DMV inc.,instead of the fantasy privatized DMV with different standards in every state?

The folly of beating up on ‘welfare queens’

I’m seeing more and more hostility towards the very poor lately, with the facebook memes galore.  They are obviously from conservative-leaning sites.  This is just one example of ‘conservatives’ speaking out about lazy, do-nothings that just suck up our tax dollars for no good reason.

Never mentioned, not even on their radar screen, is corporate policy.  This contains two elements:  First, one must ignore or be unaware of the huge amounts that are funnelled into corporate coffers at taxpayer expense, either as tax breaks, credits, deductions, subsidies, or even the bailouts which the non-libertarian right wing (hypocritically, in my opinion) decried as violating the basics of capitalism, a practice in which they are, to put it mildly, well versed.   Rarely will you find a major news story about these huge giveaways, especially one that would condemn it.  Conversely, stories about the lower classes (as well as the government) ‘wasting’ money are fair game, often with exaggerations, or even outright falsehood (see the DOJ $16 muffin ‘scandal’).

Second, the constant barrage of advertising, inculcation of values (from television and the internet, as well as other sources), along with generally accepted attitudes about the poor (along with the shitty economy) seem to be a major factor in peoples drive to stop the lazy and shiftless (minorities?) from stealing their hard-earned tax dollars for such immoral and useless endeavors as eating, housing, and health care.  Reality television, as Chris Hedges will tell you, does a great job of humiliating the poor, putting them in their proper place, and keeping us thinking right by blaming their situation on their morality or actions alone, as if they existed in a vacuum independent of society at large.

As noted yesterday on this segment on Up with Chris Hayes, the majority of  people on SNAP (foodstamps) and TANF (temporary assistance for needy families) are single mothers and children.  So if we are to condemn them broadly for their moral and financial failings, we condemn the children with them.  As any sensible person knows (which doesn’t include a large swath of the population), you can’t blame the kids and they shouldn’t suffer needlessly, whether the fault of the parent(s) or society at large.

Basically, this is a classic and well-honed strategy of ‘divide and conquer’, getting people in the same or similar classes to be at each others throats for sharing (wasting) resources that could be put to much better use (tax cuts and wars).  Meanwhile, the ultra-minority at the top siphons wealth from us all, neglecting public needs, and directing anger at the government.  (Tea party, anyone)?