How to Steal the People's Post Office
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is being dismantled one brick at a time. Not only are many of the classic buildings gone, but missing also are the collection boxes where one can mail their letters. The USPS claims that it is removing the boxes because of declining mail volume, not to interfere with mail ballots. But this has been going on for a long time. One motive is to reduce the number of postal employees, another is to make it more difficult to use the post office, thereby increasing public anger and making it easier to abolish the postal service entirely.
Who would want to destroy the post office? Three suspects come to mind: UPS, FedEx and Amazon. While it is common knowledge that the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, is a big-time Trump fund raiser, what is not known is that this billionaire held large amounts of stock in UPS and Amazon, which he divested upon assuming his government position. However, he did not divest $30–$75 million in stock in XPO Logistics, a private subcontractor for USPS, specializing in home delivery of heavy goods and appliances. XPO had $16.65 billion in net revenue in 2019 and employed 100,000 workers.
A defunct, or fully privatized, Postal Service, which is the $1.5 trillion centerpiece of the mailing and packaging industry, would enable private corporations, also including Walmart and Target, to assume postal activities and make big bucks. Wall Street would be thrilled to pick over the dead carcass of what had been one of the greatest achievements of the U.S. government.
The origin of the unofficial motto:
Herodotus, in about 440 BC, describes the Persian postal system which had been perfected by King Darius about half a century earlier:
'There is nothing in the world which travels faster than the Persian couriers. The whole idea is a Persian invention, and works like this: riders are stationed along the road, equal in number to the number of days the journey takes - a man and a horse for each day. Nothing stops these couriers from covering their allotted stage in the quickest possible time - neither snow, rain, heat, nor darkness. The first, at the end of his stage, passes the dispatch to the second, the second to the third, and so on along the line, as in the Greek torch-race which is held in honour of Hephaestus.'
Herodotus, The Histories, translated Aubrey de Sélincourt, Penguin 1954, 1972, page 556
The Post Office version: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"
Growing Up with the Mail
More than 50 years ago, the U.S. Post Office Department (as it was known then) was a miraculous organization. Imagine letters, costing three cents to mail, crossing the country in one day. Mail was delivered to downtown businesses up to nine times a day. Whole industries, like the railroads and airlines, succeeded only because they were subsidized by the post office.
The Postal Service currently employs more than 600,000 workers, of which 39 percent are people of color and 40 percent are women. Nearly all are unionized and the medium wage is $25/hour. They were hired, not by favoritism, but by test scores.
During the New Deal days, monumental post office buildings that became the centerpieces, and pride of cities, were constructed throughout the country. Priceless murals were painted which graced ornate lobbies, and gave hope and beauty to working people caught in depression and war. Most had themes showing feats by workers or a promise of a better future. Some of the WPA (Work Projects Administration) artists snuck in representations of Lenin or FDR in their paintings.
Back in the last century, when I was a toddler, the high point of my day that was filled with so many wonders, was sitting behind the front door every morning and waiting for the postman to shower letters through the slot. I didn’t care if they were personal letters or bills, as long as they floated to the floor for my squeals of enjoyment. And then, if I wasn’t napping, I would go back to my little chair and watch the afternoon mail delivery perform for my entertainment.
Yes, twice a day delivery happened every day but Sunday in my working class neighborhood of Flushing, New York, and in communities all over the United States. As I grew up, I hardly noticed that the Postman (officially called the Letter Carrier) visit only once a day, and carried more and more junk mail.
Flash forward 25 years, after a well-earned year-long vacation after being an Army draftee, I went to work for the Santa Monica Post Office. My first day on the job I was introduced to the union president, who walked a route just like everyone else. Before I got my own route, I drove “Special Delivery” mail directly to the addressee. That service is long gone.
When I got my route in Ocean Park (once an independent city), I had time to stop and talk to lots of people along the way, and yet, I would finish delivering all my mail sometime between noon and 3 pm. We weren’t allowed to check in at the PO until 5 pm (union rules?) so we would go to the donut shop or someone’s house.
Nowdays, letter carriers are lucky if they finish their routes by 8 pm. In other industries, they call it “speedup.” Here it’s longer and longer routes, layoffs, and greater and greater stress. The term “going postal,” came from the large number of post office workers who couldn’t take it any longer, and began shooting their bosses and co-workers.
The Purpose of the Post Office
The original purpose of the Postal Service was not to deliver Christmas gifts or iPads but to deliver democracy. It was the conduit for political discussion and debate, tying a geographically dispersed population into a single, somewhat informed electorate. – Dr. Michael I Niman
By the late ‘70s neo-liberalism had struck the Post Office. It took everyone by surprise. The “dark of night,” became a regular companion of the workers. A 22-year veteran of the Venice Post Office, Dean Henderson, told me that when letter carriers were routinely out on their routes only one of their cute little vehicles even had headlights.
The Post Office had functioned as a socialist enterprise, more or less, since the Second Continental Congress had appointed Benjamin Franklin, in 1775, to be the first Postmaster General. The Post Office was one of the few government agencies to be written into the U.S. Constitution in 1789.
In 1970 there was one of the largest labor strikes in U.S. history when more than half a million postal workers walked. The following year, President Richard Nixon turned the Cabinet-level Department into a quasi-private organization called the U.S. Postal Service. It became self-supporting instead of being funded by federal money. Stamps and other services skyrocketed.
However, it did function better than expected, until email took away most of the letters that it had been delivering. The Post Office bounced back with package delivery, which could be performed more cheaply than for-profit corporations, such as Amazon. Then came the bipartisan The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. One of the three co-sponsors was Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, a supposed California liberal.
This bill was nearly the death knell of the post office. It prohibited the post office from selling anything other than mailing goods, such as, stamps, and envelopes. No greeting cards, post cards, let alone a coffee bar, copy machine, t-shirts, etc. were allowed. This was a far cry from the old days when the post offices also functioned as a poor peoples savings bank. Sen. Bernie Sanders and others have advocated restoring the banking services, to no avail.
Worse yet was the 2006 requirement that the postal service pre-pay 75 years of health premium, at a rate of $5.5 billion per year. This was a bizarre requirement that no other government agency is required to perform. Without this burden, the postal service would be showing a profit. Instead, it is getting deeper in debt by the year. The so-called Great Recession took place, followed by the Depression and Pandemic of 2020.
Ripping the Heart out of the City
The catastrophe that is the Postal Service came home to me in 2013, when it was announced that the 72-year-old, beautiful post office at the center of my town, Venice, California, was to be sold.
We immediately formed a broad-based committee of friends, and enemies, to save the building, and the mural inside, entitled The Story of Venice, by noted artist, Edward Biberman. People who hadn’t spoken to each other in years, mainly over the homeless issue, came together to save this monument.
Unfortunately, we were met with indifference by the Postal Service and politicians. Neither of our U.S. Senators would do anything, and neither would our Congressional Rep. Henry Waxman, who was the one who got us into this mess in the first place (see above). To make matters worse, when President Obama had an opening to fill on the USPS Board of Governors, but he appointed a Republican.
Here is an excerpt from my book, about Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland. When we sued to stop the sale, our plea landed in Garland’s court.
Judge Garland, in his decision of July 8, 2014, discounts the 2006 law, above, and claims it does not supersede a 1974 provision that exempts post office closings from judicial review until the PRC (Postal Review Commission) has made its ruling. Garland took this to mean that no court review was necessary even after a PRC ruling.
Our excellent attorney, Elaine Mittleman, told me, “I can’t overstate how flawed this opinion is. Agencies must know that their final orders can be reviewed in court – that is part of what should make agencies operate properly. Judge Garland missed this very fundamental point?”
Not only had the 2006 law, The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, given the Postal Service a big push toward bankruptcy, but it had insulated the Post Office from accountability from the public. In other words, forget it if you have a beef with the PO.
Just one more indignity. We had gone to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office to seek her help in stopping the sale of the Venice Post Office. Her staff was sympathetic even though the Senator didn’t show, and said they would do everything possible to help us. Weeks later, nothing had been done. We found out then that Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, was board chairman of the CBRE (Richard Ellis Group Inc.) which had an exclusive contract to sell 56 Post Offices. CBRE won the contract over six other firms. Big odds unless your wife is a senator.
Bottom Line:
The plight of the Postal Service will transcend this election and continue to be a major issue between real democrats and those who want it to be privatized. The solution is simple: restore the Post Office to its status before 1971 as an official government department. If we call it vital to the national defense, it will receive plenty of funding. And, indeed it is vital. I got my draft notice through the mail. Without the Post Office, we might have lost the war in Viet Nam.
It is likely that the Post Office will be able to deliver all the votes to local registrars. The question is how long will it take. If they do not arrive by election day, and Trump is ahead in the count, he, and the lame-duck Republican leadership in the Senate, will likely declare him elected. It will then be up to Biden to contest that announcement, perhaps to the Supreme Court.
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(A Poem to our lost Venice Post Office)
Our Sacred Places
There are sacred places in the woods
first recognized by the Tongva people
and revered to this day.
And who would not stand in awe
of a mountain spring,
or a mighty tree thrusting towards heaven,
amid the woodland silence, and the subtle sounds.
The Sacred is where you find it.
Here in Venice, the hidden Redwoods,
Japanese gardens and impossible flowers.
And walking toward the center, the Circle,
there is a Temple on a rise of ground.
Inside is a space like the Greeks once knew.
In ancient times they looked up in awe at the mighty
Apollo, or the wise Athena, until their calm places
were pulled down by Barbarians, blind to the Sacred.
Inside our Post Office, the deified Abbot looks down
and watches us through the journeys of our lives
as we embrace the Sacred, or turn away.
And now we face the loss of our holy place
where joy and sorrow are carried in a letter
as the new Barbarians pull down our temple.
from The Dinner Party Before the Revolution
by Jim Smith