politics for the 99%

Published on truthout.org, by Douglas Jamiel, May 4, 2014.

The historical cost of building our postal network, its unique characteristics and efficiency, the nefarious efforts to privatize and cripple it, and the economic and personal costs of losing it are considered … //

… Since the 1970s, the right has patiently tried to wrest control of the US Postal Service from the government using a three-step strategy characterized by:   

• a) ideologically legitimizing its effort through scholarship cooked up in Koch-funded think tanks like Cato and the American Enterprise Institute;
• b) politically codifying it in generic, legal templates drawn up in legislative boiler rooms like the
• American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and c) economically executing their plan by forcing USPS to operate in a commercial arena where it would be squeezed on one side by government constraints, and, on the other, forced to compete with global private carriers like FedEx and UPS not subject to the same legislative mandates.

Each  strategy deserves scrutiny, for each is a piece of a puzzle which, when we step back and view it from afar, reveals the right’s goal of undermining and co-opting this venerable institution.

Clearing the Post Road: … //

… 1970: Mail Incorporated: … //
… One for the Gipper: Reagan, PATCO and beyond: … //
… Chart A: … //
… Chart B: … //
… Alphabet Soup: Stirring the Public Pension Pot: … //
… Chart C: … //
… Chart D: … //

… The Cost of Privatizing: Be Careful What You Ask For:

For decades, the Postal Service has inspired a wealth of derision, serving as everything from an institutional synonym for inefficiency and ineptitude to a corruption of the very word “postal” from a benign adjective to a word denoting an irrational act of murder. Yet, even in the face of such calumny, the men and women of USPS head out to their trucks and their sorting facilities each day and provide us with the most efficient postal system on the face of the earth. Those free-market cheerleaders who scoff at such a notion, who pine for the day when the privatization genie will swoop down and transform the postal system’s trucks, post offices and machinery into numbers on a Wall Street trading board should pause for a moment and reflect on the experience of those countries that have subjected their postal system to the vagaries of the market. In many European countries it has, in fact, been done, and the outcome might not be so appealing for average citizens, not to mention postal workers, after an objective look at the results.

Since the formation of the European Union, its member countries have struggled to coordinate a patchwork of postal systems, some of which are now completely privatized, others a blend of private/public services with markedly different workforces, work rules, compensation and union representation. Below are examples of countries with differing privatization regimes along with some of the results, the first two drawn from a 2007 Pique report commission by the EU: … //

… The network, the nexus, and the “final mile”: … //

… (full long long text).

Links:

United States postal system USPS on it’s official website and on en.wikipedia;

Truthout Interviews Dr. Brian Moench on Skyrocketing Autism Rates in the US, by Ted Asregadoo, May 4, 2014;

West doing same to Ukraine as it did to Yugoslavia in 1990s, on Russia Today RT, May 4, 2014.