Harry Reid Stands With Bernie Sanders Against Cuts To The US Postal Service

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has joined with Sen. Bernie Sanders to speak out against proposed cuts to the US Postal Service.

According to a statement from Sen. Sanders,

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has added his crucial backing to calls for a one-year moratorium on U.S. Postal Service plans to close up to 82 mail processing plants, slow down mail delivery and eliminate up to 15,000 jobs.

Reid added his signature to those of 50 other senators who signed a letter calling for a ban on Postal Service cuts as part of must-pass legislation to keep the government running into the new fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) organized the effort to block the cuts proposed by Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe.

“This one-year moratorium will give Congress the time it needs to enact the comprehensive postal reforms that are necessary for the Postal Service to function effectively into the future,” the senators wrote in the letter to Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Richard Shelby (R-La.), the chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “At a time when our middle class is disappearing, the loss of 15,000 good-paying Postal Service jobs will harm our local communities and economies,” the senators added.

The proposed cuts are all part of a scheme to drive the Postal Service into privatization. Republicans imposed a mandate on the Postal Service that required them to fund 75 years worth of future retirees health care benefits over a ten-year period. Even though revenues are outpacing expenses, the Postal Service is losing money on paper because of the funding mandate.

In real world terms, the loss of 15,000 jobs and slower mail service would have a devastating impact on several local economies. One of the biggest Republican lies is that the Postal Service is losing money. The USPS would be profitable if Republicans would not have forced it into deficit.

Privatization would mean more expensive, but less frequent mail delivery. The profit motive would direct private postal carriers to provide the best services to the biggest customers. Rural areas would likely be cut out of the postal delivery system, and postal workers would see lower wages.

Killing the Postal Service is an ideological Republican dream that Harry Reid, fifty Democrat senators, and Independent Bernie Sanders are standing together to stop.

Don't Believe the Haters—The Truth About the U.S. Post Office

One public service that people really like and count on is the post office -- which literally delivers for us. 

Anti-government ideologues and privatization dogmatists, however, hate the very word "public," and they've long sought to demonize the U.S. Postal Service, undercut its popular support and, finally, dismantle it. Their main line of attack has been to depict it as a bloated, inefficient, outmoded agency that's a hopeless money loser, sucking billions from taxpayers. Never mind that USPS doesn't take a dime of tax money to fund its operation -- it's actually a congressionally chartered, for-profit corporation that earns its revenue by selling stamps and providing services to customers. And here's something that will come as a surprise to most people: The post office makes a profit -- expected to be more than a billion dollars this year. 

Yet, the media keeps reporting that the USPS is losing billions of dollars each year. What they fail to mention is that those are phony paper losses manufactured by Congress at the behest of corporate privatizers. 

Late in 2006, the lame duck Republican Congress rammed into law a cockamamie requirement that the Postal Service must pre-fund the retiree health benefits of everyone it employs or expects to employ for the next 75 years. Hello? That includes workers who're not even born yet! No other business in America is required to pre-fund such benefits for even one year. To add to Congress' cockamamie-ness, the service is being forced to put up all of that money within just 10 years -- which has been costing USPS more than $5 billion a year. That artificial burden accounts for 100 percent of the so-called "losses" the media keep reporting. 

It's like tying an anvil around someone's neck, throwing the person out of a boat, and saying, "Swim to shore, sucker." 

As if that's not enough of a weight to carry, the men and women who actually do the work and make service more than just a word in the U.S. Postal Service's name have had another unfair burden hung around their necks: A Postmaster General who has thrown-in with the privatizers. As PMG, Pat Donahoe is the titular head of this proud group of postal workers, letter carriers, mail handlers and rural letter carriers. They take pride in moving our mail to us wherever we are -- from inner cities all the way to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where a Native American Tribe lives. 

But Donahoe is not making the workforce proud, for he abandoned them, their millions of customers, and USPS's historic dedication to service. HE is deliberately monkey-wrenching out service -- including slowing delivery, reducing staff and hours of service, closing neighborhood and historic post offices, shutting down processing centers, constantly pressing Congress to end Saturday delivery, badmouthing his own agency's performance, steadily corporatizing public functions and transforming decent, union-scale jobs into the low-wage retail economy. 

One gross and portentous example of Donahoe's determination to bust the wages and undermine the performance of USPS is the sweetheart privatization scam he's set up with Staples. He's letting this big-box retailer place official postal kiosks in its 1,500 stores -- only they're not staffed by highly trained, publically accountable postal workers, but by Staple's own poverty-wage, high-turnover floor staff. In at least one case, Donahoe even cut the hours of service at post offices around a Staples store in San Francisco, and then put a sign directing postal customers to the Staples outlet. Rather than being dedicated to customer service and the public interest, the private "post officettes'" priority is to serve Staples' profit interests. 

Mark Dimondstein -- the new, feisty president of the American Postal Workers Union -- calls Donahoe "Wall Street's Trojan Horse, the privatizer from within." But says Dimondstein, "We intend to stop him." His union has launched a Dump Donahoe campaign as well as a national boycott of Staples stores.

Harvey Milk Postage Stamp Unveiled at White House

Marriage equality is becoming a reality for all, and a Harvey Milk postage stamp was unveiled in the grandest place in the world. Yeah, things are getting better. Watch HERE.

BEHOLD! THE HARVEY MILK COMMEMORATIVE STAMP!

Linnis.com Stamp News just revealed the design for the U.S. commemorative "forever stamp" honoring San Francisco political figure and gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

According to Linnis.com:

The stamp will be issued on Harvey Milk Day, May 22, in a location or locations yet to be determined. Both Washington, D.C., and San Francisco are potential first-day cities. U.S. Postal Service officials announced the stamp subject in October 2013 but have not formally revealed the image.

As we reported last fall, "the campaign advocating for a stamp in Milk's honor began back in 2009... [this] stamp will be the first to feature an openly LGBT elected official."

The Washington Blade also has an in-depth story on the contentious campaign to get the stamp made in the first place.

Paul targets ‘Post Office Gun Ban’

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee met yesterday to tackle an important bill that probably won’t get too much attention: a wide-ranging postal reform package. It’ll tackle several key areas of postal policy, including postage rates, post-office banking, pensions for USPS employees, etc.

 

But during the hearing, Sen. Rand Paul had a new postal provision he’s apparently excited about. The Kentucky Republican wants to include a provision in postal reform that would “remove a federal ban on guns in post offices.”

Paul said his gun rights amendment would allow licensed gun owners to carry weapons inside post offices, rather than having to unholster them and keep them in the car. Guns are banned in federal buildings, including post offices.

Yep, when it comes to postal reform, Paul’s priority is allowing more guns in post offices.

 

As Lisa Rein’s Washington Post report noted, the senator’s provision wasn’t added to the legislation – committee members said the idea “would require more study” – but some on the far-right nevertheless seem quite excited about the possibility.