Make them all electric.
Posted on 12/14/2024 9:24:43 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
President-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.
Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.
Told of the mail agency’s annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations.
Trump’s specific plans for overhauling the Postal Service were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the nation’s mail carrier as president in 2019, trying to force it to hand over key functions — including rate-setting, personnel decisions, labor relations and managing relationships with its largest clients — to the Treasury Department.
“The government is slow, slow, slow — decades slow on adopting new ways of doing things, and there’s a lot of [other] carrier services that became legal in the ’70s that are doing things so much better with increased volumes and reduced costs,” said Casey Mulligan, who served as a top economist in the first Trump administration. “We didn’t finish the job in the first term, but we should finish it now.”
The postal system is older than the nation itself, founded in 1775 with Benjamin Franklin as its chief, revitalized with free rural delivery at the start of the 20th century, then transformed into a financially self-sustaining agency...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Didn’t the post office become a semi-independent agency in 1971? I’ve heard since that year, the postal service is not officially a department of the government
Yes and the post office and the military are the only required departments mandated by the constitution. Probably need a constitutional amendment to change it.
During the election campaign, someone posed the question- "Would you put $100 in an envelope and mail it to yourself? If not, who would you trust your vote to the US Postal Service?"
Wasn’t there a film in the late 60’s? that had most of the government employees in Presidential succession killed and the postmaster general, an African American gentleman become President by succession?
Not to mention the USPS helps them commit election fraud. Fire them all and let the private sector hire back the professionals.
Will the Postmaster General still be a General?
I hope they don’t mess up the Post Office.
I know a lot of people have complaints about it, but in my area it’s the most reliable of all the different shipping outfits.
who = why
Great idea! It will also prevent Congress from raping the USPS yearly profits into their own slush-funds.
BRILLIANT!
Exactly.
Mandated in the Constitution.
I agree that they should be privatized, just to get rid of their Trump-hating union (since they handle mail-in ballots) but I’ll still defend them at times.
For example, once I needed to send a box of light bulbs (real ones, not the Leftist type) and UPS wanted $40 at their little store front. The guy there was shocked when I simply walked out. Then I went to the P.O. and they charged me $11. I think UPS has little or no interest for us ‘little guys’ as I’m sure they would have at least come close to matching the USPS $11 charge.
Since I only send a package about once every 5 years, I’m still cool to privatize, but beware, just like privatizing highways (God help us if DOGE goes there), the cost to us ‘little guys’ may wind up being far more than we ever bargained for.
Nixon started the habit of bailing it out.
Make them all electric.
The Post Office could be fixed using standard business practices.
Figure out which elements of the business make money and which are money losers.
Slash over-head.
Reduce service levels as needed.
Use mechanization and AI to streamline operations.
The Constitution requires its existence in some form—but it does not require a billion dollar a year loss.
Yes and the post office and the military are the only required departments mandated by the constitution. Probably need a constitutional amendment to change it.
—
That is my understanding as well
One change the post could make that would save money - drop Saturday deliveries. Go five days a week.
“Wasn’t there a film in the late 60’s?”
Most likely the movie “The Man”.
We can probably privatize it.
But they may still need a subsidy from the federal government.
If you live in a cabin somewhere in Alaska, the Post Office will still deliver to you.
It is amazing that they lost 10 billion this year. And they don’t even have to provide retirement pensions seventy years into the future like the last twenty years. But I hope they don’t screw up the post office as well. Still the cheapest way to send things.
I guess. It’s going to suck paying ten bucks to send a letter. I know most don’t but those who do will never get the great deal the post office offers.
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