![\"mailboxes\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2020\/08\/USPS_mailboxes.jpg\")
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You know what I mean: the claims by the Left that the federal government is, variously,<\/p>\n
With respect to the first, I will remind readers that the Post Office is meant to stand on its own two feet, rather than being a subsidized government agency.\u00a0 (You can read more of my thoughts on this and throw me some page-view love at Forbes<\/a>, where I also quote Trump extensively to refute claims that he openly acknowledged trying to \u201csabotage the Post Office.\u201d)\u00a0 Calls to fight against \u201cdefunding the Post Office\u201d simply make no sense, yet this is the new rallying cry, even at the virtual Democratic Convention last night<\/a>:\u00a0 \u201cAnd now he is putting the lives of Nevada\u2019s seniors at risk by trying to defund the post office. Here\u2019s what that means: they won\u2019t be able to get their prescriptions, because he wants to win an election.\u201d\u00a0 An activist group called Social Security Works is aggressively trying to tie the two programs together, for example in a tweet<\/a> in which they say, \u201cThe Post Office and Social Security are the two most beloved government programs in the US.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, postage rates in the US are actually considerably lower than other Western countries<\/a> \u2014 in the German Postal Agency\u2019s comparison<\/a>, we are near the bottom compared to EU countries; ahead only of Cyprus and Malta.\u00a0 The average rate is EUR 1.12, or USD 1.37.\u00a0 You get what you pay for, and limiting stamp price increases to the rate of inflation while volume declines and wages increase is a recipe for increasing service delays, with the only question being whether mail is slow but consistent or slow and unreliable.<\/p>\n What about locking up mailboxes?<\/p>\n Yes, that\u2019s a hoax.<\/p>\n A twitter account with the handle @RexChapman posted a picture of locked mailboxes<\/a>, calling it \u201ca disgrace and immediate threat to American democracy,\u201d and got 46,600 likes and 24,800 retweets.\u00a0 The reality is that the mailboxes were locked to prevent theft<\/a>, a growing problem which was reported on in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another account \u201cwent viral\u201d with a picture of a pile of mailboxes<\/a>, claiming, \u201cthey are sabotaging USPS to sabotage vote by mail.\u201d\u00a0 128,400 likes, 82,800 retweets.\u00a0 The reality, according to journalist Gary He<\/a>, is that this is a photo of a company with a government contract for refurbishing mailboxes; He calls out Reuters, which provided these images without this relevant context.<\/p>\n What about the larger changes in the works at the USPS, the prohibition of overtime, the practice of leaving mail to wait until the next day?<\/p>\n Byron York at the Washington Examiner<\/em> provides the explanation<\/a>:<\/p>\n Whatever its other concerns at the moment, the Postal Service does have chronic financial problems. This year, Trump chose DeJoy, who made a fortune in shipping and logistics and whose former company was a contractor of the Postal Service for many years, as the new postmaster general. (DeJoy is also a major donor to Republicans and the Trump campaign.) DeJoy has attempted to deal with some of the Postal Service\u2019s systemic problems with a pilot program to make deliveries more efficient while reducing the Postal Service\u2019s crippling overtime costs, which added up to more than $1 billion in fiscal year 2018.<\/p>\n In the past, postal delivery worked this way: A worker would arrive in the morning and work on various things in the office \u2014 sorting mail, handling holds on mail, waiting for incoming mail to arrive to prepare for delivery. That often involved waiting around for hours and then starting an actual delivery route later in the day. Once started, a route has to be finished, and that involved workers going into overtime as they delivered through their route as evening approached.<\/p>\n DeJoy\u2019s plan, now being implemented in a pilot program in about 200 cities, is called Expedited to Street\/Afternoon Sortation, or ESAS. Under it, a worker would arrive in the morning, collect all the mail that was ready to go out, and head out for delivery \u2014 \u201cretrieve, load, and go.\u201d Then, after finishing the delivery route, the carrier would return to the office and do in the afternoon the office work that used to be done in the morning. That way, when the end of his or her shift arrived, that would be the end of the workday, with no overtime incurred. Mail that arrived to the office in the afternoon, while the carrier was doing office work, would be delivered in the next morning\u2019s route. It would be ready and waiting when the carrier arrived for \u201cretrieve, load, and go.\u201d<\/p>\n The effect to customers would be that mail that was delivered to the office in the afternoon would be delivered the next morning, instead of that evening. The effect to the Postal Service would be to save an enormous amount of money in overtime.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This does not sound particularly nefarious to me.\u00a0 It sounds instead like a matter of saving a lot of money, at the cost of half a day\u2019s average delay in mail delivery.\u00a0 (Could the same result be achieved by having workers start their shift in the afternoon?\u00a0 I suppose, but then you\u2019d take the 9 \u2013 5 workday away from the workers.)<\/p>\n Over at Reason<\/em><\/a>, Nick Gillespie observes that the Post Office processes such a monumental amount of mail (even still, in our internet age, just less than in the past) that \u201ceven if\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0voters used the mail and posted their ballots on\u00a0exactly<\/em>\u00a0the same day, that would comprise only 30 percent of the amount of mail the USPS says it processes\u00a0every single day<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 (Politico<\/a> and Nick Harper writing at Medium<\/a> also try to dial down the panic.)<\/p>\n But that didn\u2019t stop Chicago\u2019s own Mayor Lightfoot from jumping into the fray:<\/p>\n Mayor Lori Lightfoot cast President Donald Trump and Republicans as \u201cenemies of democracy\u201d who are mounting a \u201cfull-out assault\u201d on the integrity of the November election by undermining the U.S. Postal Service and making it more difficult for people to vote by mail amid a pandemic. . . .<\/p>\n \u201cEvery day the importance of this fall\u2019s election grows and grows, and every day, unfortunately, we see increasing evidence that this administration is mounting a full-out assault on every pillar of our democracy, including the integrity of our elections,\u201d Lightfoot said. \u201cThis is real, folks. It\u2019s not an exaggeration. It\u2019s not a conspiracy theory.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why we cannot allow this administration to undermine the Postal Service in a way that is clearly trying to drive the Postal Service to its knees, making mail service unreliable \u2014 putting postal workers at risk by changing hours and stretching into the night and failing to give the post office the resources that it needs to fulfill its basic mission,\u201d Lightfoot said. \u201cThis assault, of course, is about election integrity.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is nonsense.\u00a0 But this sort of demagoguery \u2014 asserting not that \u201cthere\u2019s only you and me and we just disagree,\u201d but \u201cmy opponent is an enemy of democracy,\u201d is dangerous.\u00a0 If Trump should win, what kind of chaos will be unleashed by people who have been primed to believe that this was the result of election interference, that Trump had cheated?\u00a0 \u00a0And, yes, I know that Trump is stoking fears of fraudulent mail-in voting, and, to be honest, I am likewise concerned about fraud and mismanagement by entities that don\u2019t have experience, don\u2019t take care with their voter rolls, etc. \u2014 and to go from mailing out absentee ballots upon request, to sending a ballot to everyone who is on the rolls, is a huge step which requires, well, a substantial degree of competence.\u00a0 But there\u2019s a difference between raising concerns, and generating hysteria simply to demonize your opponent \u2014 and the latter is the true \u201cassault on our democracy\u201d when it sets us up for a malfunctioning political system, riots and looting in the streets, and worse.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:USPS_mailboxes.jpg; EraserGirl \/ CC BY (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You know what I mean: the claims by the Left that the federal government is, variously, Defunding the Post Office, Locking up mailboxes, or removing them entirely, and\/or Causing the entire postal system to collapse via mismanagement, in order to foil vote-by-mail plans, disenfranchise at-risk-of-covid voters, and steal the election for Trump? With respect to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":17403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[390,325],"class_list":["post-17398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-post-office","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\n