One of the arguments against the Republican Party’s objective to privatize the U.S. Postal Service is that postal rates would skyrocket for those least able to afford them. The record has shown that in every country where the postal service has been privatized there has been the same result: increased prices and a decline in service.
This editor recently had to send a large document, about two pounds in weight, to London in the United Kingdom. The document is a 2002 police and autopsy report on the suspicious death in late 2001 of Dr. Don Wiley, a Harvard virologist who was investigating the anthrax attacks and was said to have committed suicide by jumping off a Memphis bridge into the Mississippi River. There is new interest in the case by a team of medical researchers in London.
Amazingly, the Postal Service has now outsourced its international next day and two-business days delivery services to Federal Express, the logo of which now appears on U.S. Postal Service international express envelopes alongside the familiar U.S. Postal Service eagle symbol. The cost of the joint FedEx/Postal Service postage on a 2 pound package to London is a whopping $94 or about 13 percent of a round trip airline ticket to London.
There is not much difference in cost if one uses the same week delivery service. The cost to use that to send the package came to a hefty $66, a major cost to someone on a fixed or low income wanting to send gifts to England for the holidays.
Today, if one were to order an item from Amazon, there is a good chance that it will arrive via United Parcel Service at a local U.S. post office first and then be delivered to the customer by the post office. This, in effect, makes U.S. postal service drivers outsourced employees to UPS.
The creeping privatization of the U.S. Postal Service began under George W. Bush.
In 2001, the Postal Service outsourced overnight packages and Express Mail to FedEx. FedEx was also permitted to place its offices and drop boxes at U.S. Postal Service facilities across the country. And what did the taxpayers get in return for allowing FedEx to use taxpayer-owned property for its private business? $66 to send a package to London with a five day delivery time.
In 2013, more creeping privatization of the U.S. Postal Service occurred when a contract was signed between the U.S. Postal Service and the Staples office supply chain that permits non-union and minimum wage Staples employees to sort the mail.
The Post Office is rapidly closing processing centers, laying off large numbers of postal workers, and closing small rural post offices in direct violation of the federal rural free delivery law of 1904. Right-wing conservatives maintain that the postal service is a New Deal “give away” by the Franklin Roosevelt administration. The kooky libertarian Cato Institute, which is funded mainly by the tobacco, liquor, porn, and gun industries, has been lobbying Congress to totally privatize the U.S. Postal Service.
Never steeped in any appreciable knowledge of history, anti-government fanatics like the Cato Institute and their libertarian heroes, like Rand Paul and Representative Darrell Issa, fail to understand that the U.S. Post Office was created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775 as a key Cabinet department. The Post Office’s major promoter and architect, Benjamin Franklin, became the nation’s first Postmaster General in 1792. The Post Office helped create the United States by establishing the first standard means of communications for the nation.
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may spur the privatization of the U.S. Postal Service. One of the goals of the TPP is to establish “groundbreaking new rules designed to ensure fair competition between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private companies.”
The give away by the taxpayers to FedEx and UPS actually opens the door to another idea. Restore the U.S. Postmaster General to a Cabinet-level position, nationalize the assets of FedEx and UPS in retaliation for their massive taxpayer rip-off, and create a new U.S. Postal Service that provides banking services, such as small guaranteed savings accounts, to the general public. If that’s socialism, so be it. Socialism is infinitely better than spending $66 or $94 to send a small package to London. Benjamin Franklin, who sent his fair share of letters and packages to London in his day, would be appalled at the current postal rates, even if inflation is considered.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
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The creeping privatization of the U.S. Postal Service
Posted on November 12, 2015 by Wayne Madsen
One of the arguments against the Republican Party’s objective to privatize the U.S. Postal Service is that postal rates would skyrocket for those least able to afford them. The record has shown that in every country where the postal service has been privatized there has been the same result: increased prices and a decline in service.
This editor recently had to send a large document, about two pounds in weight, to London in the United Kingdom. The document is a 2002 police and autopsy report on the suspicious death in late 2001 of Dr. Don Wiley, a Harvard virologist who was investigating the anthrax attacks and was said to have committed suicide by jumping off a Memphis bridge into the Mississippi River. There is new interest in the case by a team of medical researchers in London.
Amazingly, the Postal Service has now outsourced its international next day and two-business days delivery services to Federal Express, the logo of which now appears on U.S. Postal Service international express envelopes alongside the familiar U.S. Postal Service eagle symbol. The cost of the joint FedEx/Postal Service postage on a 2 pound package to London is a whopping $94 or about 13 percent of a round trip airline ticket to London.
There is not much difference in cost if one uses the same week delivery service. The cost to use that to send the package came to a hefty $66, a major cost to someone on a fixed or low income wanting to send gifts to England for the holidays.
Today, if one were to order an item from Amazon, there is a good chance that it will arrive via United Parcel Service at a local U.S. post office first and then be delivered to the customer by the post office. This, in effect, makes U.S. postal service drivers outsourced employees to UPS.
The creeping privatization of the U.S. Postal Service began under George W. Bush.
In 2001, the Postal Service outsourced overnight packages and Express Mail to FedEx. FedEx was also permitted to place its offices and drop boxes at U.S. Postal Service facilities across the country. And what did the taxpayers get in return for allowing FedEx to use taxpayer-owned property for its private business? $66 to send a package to London with a five day delivery time.
In 2013, more creeping privatization of the U.S. Postal Service occurred when a contract was signed between the U.S. Postal Service and the Staples office supply chain that permits non-union and minimum wage Staples employees to sort the mail.
The Post Office is rapidly closing processing centers, laying off large numbers of postal workers, and closing small rural post offices in direct violation of the federal rural free delivery law of 1904. Right-wing conservatives maintain that the postal service is a New Deal “give away” by the Franklin Roosevelt administration. The kooky libertarian Cato Institute, which is funded mainly by the tobacco, liquor, porn, and gun industries, has been lobbying Congress to totally privatize the U.S. Postal Service.
Never steeped in any appreciable knowledge of history, anti-government fanatics like the Cato Institute and their libertarian heroes, like Rand Paul and Representative Darrell Issa, fail to understand that the U.S. Post Office was created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775 as a key Cabinet department. The Post Office’s major promoter and architect, Benjamin Franklin, became the nation’s first Postmaster General in 1792. The Post Office helped create the United States by establishing the first standard means of communications for the nation.
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may spur the privatization of the U.S. Postal Service. One of the goals of the TPP is to establish “groundbreaking new rules designed to ensure fair competition between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private companies.”
The give away by the taxpayers to FedEx and UPS actually opens the door to another idea. Restore the U.S. Postmaster General to a Cabinet-level position, nationalize the assets of FedEx and UPS in retaliation for their massive taxpayer rip-off, and create a new U.S. Postal Service that provides banking services, such as small guaranteed savings accounts, to the general public. If that’s socialism, so be it. Socialism is infinitely better than spending $66 or $94 to send a small package to London. Benjamin Franklin, who sent his fair share of letters and packages to London in his day, would be appalled at the current postal rates, even if inflation is considered.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2015 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).