From the WaPo: (brackets by Wrongo)
“President Trump on Friday threatened to block an emergency loan to shore up the U.S. Postal Service unless it dramatically raised shipping prices on online retailers…“The Postal Service is a joke,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. [In order] To obtain a $10 billion line of credit Congress approved this month, “The post office should raise the price of a package by approximately four times…”
The USPS is enshrined in the US Constitution. BTW, killing it might accomplish a few things for Trump:
- It obstructs any Congressional effort to mandate mail-in voting.
- It rewards private sector delivery carriers like FedEx and UPS that compete with the USPS. Many of them have donated both to Trump and Republican candidates.
The USPS is entirely self-funded. If you buy stamps, you’ve funded the Post Office. Its operations are profitable. It loses money on paper because of Congress’s unique requirement for the USPS to pre-pay all future pension liabilities, something no other American corporation or institution is required to do. That was imposed by Republicans in 2006 in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.
He’s trying to make the Postal Service unprofitable. And when it’s a shell of its former self, sell it to UPS or FedEx who would be delighted to have one of their biggest competitors destroyed. On to cartoons.
Our grim future:
MAGA-ites drink the healing Kool aid:
Your lockdown inconveniences my freedumb:
Georgia takes aim at the lockdown:
Nursing homes account for 25% of US COVID-19 deaths. Remember the elderly and infirm:
The oil glut has forced the oil companies into the suburbs:
Republicans also hate government employees, and ridding the USA of postal workers, especially unionized ones, is a Republican goal all its own. If the Post Office is destroyed, what will happen is the even greater isolation of rural America as neither Fed Ex nor UPS will be able to serve them as they do densely populated places like NJ.