Don’t Let King Donald Kill the Public Postal Service

What are the odds that Elon Musk might buy a privatized postal service?

By Jim Hightower 

Uh-oh. King Donald is hearing voices again.

And the voices are telling him to do something truly stupid. As he puts it, “There is a lot of talk about the Postal Service being taken private.” He adds, “It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time.”

Hmmm, I haven’t heard even one voice say our phenomenal public mail service should be privatized. 

Indeed, it’s a widely popular government agency because it works for everyone — rich and poor, urban and rural.

When he claims that “a lot of people” like the idea of postal privatization, how many? Six? Six million? And what kind of people? Working stiffs, poor people, rural residents? He gives a coded answer to that when he refers to the Post Office being “taken” private.

Taken by whom? Of course — by the corrupt profiteering billionaires who funded Trump.

Postal Workers Union blasts plan to further slow down service

Cuts don't help to save the Postal Service - improved service will

Mark Dimondstein  

Here is a Statement from APWU President Mark Dimondstein on the Postal Service’s Proposal to Further Slow Mail Processing and Delivery:

The American Postal Workers Union is deeply concerned regarding the August 22nd announcement from postal management, with the support of the Postal Board of Governors, that they are once again planning to slow down much of the country’s mail.

The APWU understands that change is needed to address the profound and permanent changes that the internet and social media have caused in the way people communicate. 

Letters continue to significantly decline, and the Postal Service must gain more of the growing package market. 

While we remain open to change for the long run viability of the public postal service and our job security, we refuse to accept that a winning strategy includes further slowing first-class mail and providing overall worse service to the people of the country.

Management is already failing to meet the current first-class mail service standards even after lowering delivery targets in 2021. Rather than fix the service delays and problems, these new management proposals are to simply “move the goalposts.”

The proposed service standard changes announced on August 22nd will be reviewed by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). As we saw in 2021, the PRC issues only an Advisory Opinion on the proposals and ultimately lacks the power to stop them outright. 

We urge the Commission to do a thorough analysis of the impacts of the proposed changes, and for the Postal Service to seriously consider the PRC’s views before it proceeds in further degrading service. 

But make no mistake: our union and postal workers across the country will join with the public, leaders in Congress, and others, in rejecting this proposal and instead favor plans to bring mail service back to the high standard the public deserves and is promised under the law.

We demand a solution from the Postmaster General and the Board of Governors that fixes service delays, rather than further slowing the service standards for delivery. Management has the tools to improve service while at the same time improve the Postal Service’s finances. 

In addition to the growing package market, they need to focus on new and expanded services. Management can improve staffing and retention by working with the postal unions to ensure every postal job is a good job – with fair pay, decent benefits, and career opportunities. 

Instead of slowing service standards and accepting bad performance, management needs to put every effort behind improving all forms of mail service and regaining the public’s confidence that the Postal Service is in fact “Delivering for America.”  The people of the country deserve nothing less.

Anti-abortion activists want to use the Comstock Act to ban all abortions in the nation, and most birth control pills and devices as a bonus.

Abortion Rights and the Cold, Dead Hand of Anthony Comstock

THOM HARTMANN for ThomHartmann.Com

Your Honor, this woman gave birth to a naked child!
[Cartoon from The Masses, September 1915.]

The Supreme Court session on March 26 was a loud and persistent warning: America needs to pay attention.

During oral arguments, the Comstock Act was invoked repeatedly by Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Erin Hawley, the wife of Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who was arguing before the court that the abortion drug, Mifepristone, should be banned nationwide.

Now that it’s fairly clear the “sad doctors” argument before the court yesterday was so pathetically weak they can’t use it to ban Mifepristone, anti-abortion activists are talking about finding a case they can push up to the court next year that will allow it to ban all abortions in the nation, and most birth control pills and devices as a bonus.

How do they plan to do it? With the Comstock Act. You could see and hear the set-up of this future court case in Yesterday’s arguments.

Justice Sam Alito said:

This [Comstock Act] is a prominent provision. It’s not some obscure subsection of a complicated, obscure law. Everybody in this field knew about it.

Erin Hawley was emphatic:

We don’t think that there’s any case of this court that empowers FDA to ignore other federal law. The Comstock Act says that drugs should not be mailed… either through the mail or through common carriers.

And Clarence Thomas laid out the possibility of future litigation when he essentially threatened the lawyer for Danco Laboratories, the manufacturer of Mifepristone:

“How do you respond to an argument that mailing your product and advertising it would violate the Comstock Act?” He went onto note that the law “is fairly broad, and it specifically covers drugs such as yours.”

In other words, they want the act enforced today.

Bloomberg news laid it out yesterday:

“Do we think the Supreme Court majority is going to rule on the Comstock Act in this case? The answer to that is no,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California at Davis who specializes in reproductive rights. “Do we think that the Comstock Act is going to come up again at some point in the future? The answer to that is definitely.”

So, what the heck is the Comstock Act and why are Republicans trying to revive it before the Supreme Court and in threatening letters to pharmacy chains?

You’ve probably never heard of Anthony Comstock, a Civil War Union soldier and New York postmaster, who died in 1915. You need to learn about him and his legacy, however, as his long fingers are about to reach up out of the grave and wrap themselves around the necks of every American woman of childbearing years.

Anthony Comstock was a mama’s boy who hated sex. His mother died when he was 10 years old, and the shock apparently never left him; women who didn’t live up to her ideal were his open and declared enemies, as were pornography, masturbation, and abortion. He was so ignorant of sex and reproduction that he believed a visible human-like fetus developed “within seconds” of sexual intercourse.

Comstock spent decades scouring the country collecting pornography, which he enthusiastically shared with men in Congress, and harassing “loose women.” For example, when he visited a belly-dancing show (then a new craze) in Chicago at the Cairo Theatre during the World’s Fair of 1893, he demanded the show be shut down.

Holdover Trumper is killing the Postal Service

Two new appointments need to be made to fire DeJoy

JESSICA CORBETT

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you don't think the problems being created by Trump's appointee Louis DeJoy doesn't affect you, think again. According to a small posting in last week's Providence Journal, the property holding Charlestown's post office was sold on January 25 has been sold to a California-based real estate company. 

UNKNOWN: the future of postal service in Charlestown.  - Will Collette

As the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors last week held a meeting in Washington, D.C., frustrated USPS workers, customers, and union officials rallied outside to protest a new limit on public comment and the agency's austerity plan.

While the quarterly meetings have previously included an hour of in-person and virtual public testimony, the USPS board has shifted to only taking comments once annually, a move that outraged critics of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—a GOP donor appointee of former President Donald Trump—and his 10-year "Delivering for America" plan.

"We won't be silenced!" read signs held by protesters on Thursday that urged the board to allow public testimony.

"Let us tell the truth about DeJoy's 10-year plan," the signs added, calling for an end to cuts, closures, and mail delays.

In a statement about Thursday's protest, an American Postal Workers Union local and Communities and Postal Workers United noted that opponents of the plan have long argued it "will slash jobs and shrink processing centers and post offices."

Heists Worth Billions

The art and craft of the con

David Maimon, Georgia State University and Kurt Eichenwald, The Conversation

In January 2020, Debi Gamber studied a computer screen filled with information on scores of check deposits. As a manager for eight years at a TD Bank branch in the Baltimore suburb of Essex, she had reviewed a flurry of account activity as a security measure. These transactions, though, from the ATM of a tiny TD location nestled in a nearby mall, struck her as suspicious.

Time and again, Gamber saw that these checks were payable to churches – many states away from the Silver Spring shopping center branch – yet had been deposited into personal accounts, a potential sign of theft.

Digging deeper, she determined that the same customer service representative, Diape Seck, had opened at least seven of the accounts, which had received more than 200 church check deposits. 

Even fishier, the purported account holders had used Romanian passports and driver’s licenses to prove their identities. Commercial bankers rarely see those forms of ID. So why were all these Romanians streaming into a small branch located above a Marshall’s clothing store?

Suspecting crimes, Gamber submitted an electronic fraud intake form, then contacted TD’s security department to inform them directly of what she had unearthed. Soon, the bank discovered that Seck had relied on Romanian documents for not just seven accounts but for 412 of them. The bank phoned local police and federal law enforcement to report that an insider appeared to be helping criminals cheat churches and TD.

Nine months after TD’s tip, agents started rounding up conspirators, eventually arresting nine of them for crimes that netted more than US$1.7 million in stolen checks. They all pleaded guilty to financial crimes except for Seck, who was convicted in February 2023 for bank fraud, accepting a bribe and other crimes. He was sentenced in June 2023 to three years in prison.

Post Office jobs in Charlestown

I remember when Post Office jobs where considered among the best (shows how old I am)

Senate Sends USPS Reform Bill to Biden's Desk

'Signed. Sealed. Delivered.'

JESSICA CORBETT for Common Dreams

Postal reform advocates on Tuesday welcomed the U.S. Senate's passage of House-approved bipartisan legislation that was held up last month by GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.

A day after overcoming a filibuster, the Postal Service Reform Act passed the evenly split Senate in a 79-19 vote, with several Republicans joining Democrats to send the bill to President Joe Biden's desk.

"Every day tens of millions of Americans rely on the post office for their daily essentials—seniors and veterans, small business owners, small-town rural Americans, people waiting for wedding invitations, birthday cards, letters—so we know that the Postal Service is really beloved," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a press conference after the vote.

The U.S. Postal Service is "an important institution in American life" and was long in need of a revamp, he added, calling the bill's passage a win for bipartisanship, postal workers, and the public.

5 Things You Should Know About ‘Free’ At-Home Covid Tests

Postal Service website off to a good start

Damon Darlin 

I ordered mine the day the Postal Service website went live.
No delays. No glitches. Prompt acknowledgement. We'll see
if the delivery comes in - Will Collette

Americans keep hearing that it is important to test frequently for covid-19 at home. But just try to find an “at-home” rapid covid test in a store and at a price that makes frequent tests affordable.

Testing, as well as mask-wearing, is an important measure if the country ever hopes to beat covid, restore normal routines and get the economy running efficiently. To get Americans cheaper tests, the federal government now plans to have insurance companies pay for them.

The Biden administration announced Jan. 10 that every person with private insurance can get full coverage for eight rapid tests a month. You can either get one without any out-of-pocket expense from retail pharmacies that are part of an insurance company’s network or buy it at any store and get reimbursed by the insurer.

Congress said private insurers must cover all covid testing and any associated medical services when it passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, or CARES, Act. The have-insurance-pay-for-it solution has been used frequently through the pandemic. Insurance companies have been told to pay for PCR tests, covid treatments and the administration of vaccines. (Taxpayers are paying for the cost of the vaccines themselves.) It appears to be an elegant solution for a politician because it looks free and isn’t using taxpayer money.

New technology and an old crime

How cybercriminals turn paper checks stolen from mailboxes into bitcoin

David Maimon, Georgia State University

Mailboxes are increasingly becoming the scene of a crime. 
GregAIT/E+ via Getty Images

While cybercrime gets a lot of attention from law enforcement and the media these days, I’ve been documenting a less high-tech threat emerging in recent months: a surge in stolen checks.

Criminals are increasingly targeting U.S. Postal Service and personal mailboxes to pilfer filled-out checks and sell them over the internet using social media platforms. 

The buyers then alter the payee and amount listed on the checks to rob victims’ bank accounts of thousands of dollars. 

While the banks themselves typically bear the financial burden and reimburse targeted accounts, criminals can use the checks to steal victims’ identities, which can have severe consequences.

I founded and now direct Georgia State University’s Evidence Based Cybersecurity Research Group, which is aimed at learning what works and what doesn’t in preventing cybercrime. For the past two years, we’ve been surveilling 60 black market communication channels on the internet to learn more about the online fraud ecosystem and gather data on it in a systematic way in order to spot trends.

One thing we didn’t expect to see was a surge in purloined checks.

Death of 1000 cuts: How Trump’s Appointees Continue to kill the Postal Service

But the Big Postal Unions Won’t Join the Effort to Force Trump hold-outs from Their Posts

By JOE MANISCALCO

The men Donald Trump handpicked to run the U.S. Postal Service into the ground continue to do The Don’s dirty work, intentionally slowing the mail and outsourcing vital services to private delivery companies. But the heads of the nation’s four postal service unions are too spellbound to react.

That’s the view of postal workers across the country who are seeing service standards deteriorate and privatization expanded under the watch of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service Board of Governors Chair Ron A. Bloom. And the postal workers want to give both men the boot. 

Last month, 77 public interest groups comprising the Save The Post Office Coalition signed a letter urging President Joe Biden not to extend Bloom’s term after it expires in December.

Notably absent from the appeal, however, were any of the four postal worker unions — American Postal Workers Union (APWU), National Association of Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU), National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) or the National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA). 

In March, 50 House Democrats called on Biden to can the entire board  — including Bloom — but NALC reportedly stepped in to throw cold water on the irate legislators. 

NPMHU spokesperson Katie Maddocks — the union representing more than 50,000 postal employees — concedes that her union’s priority is moving the Postal Reform bill forward and that the NPMHU, at least, wants to make sure that “if Mr. DeJoy is ousted, that won’t mess up our bill.”

Are Trump & His Cronies Guilty of Mass Murder?

Thousands of Americans died horrible deaths from COVID because of Trump

By Thom Hartmann for the Independent Media Institute

EPA-EFE

Families broken and shattered; husbands, wives, children and grandchildren left bereft; doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants dying along with them or holding their hands as they draw their final, tortured breath. Many of those deaths were absolutely unnecessary. 

All across America this past year-and-a-half 700,000 people have died an agonizing, terrifying, drowning-in-their-own-fluids death, their relatives helpless, saying goodbye using Zoom or FaceTime. 

They happened because of decisions made by a small group of people led by Donald Trump.

If you or I made any decision, grounded in the desire to gain a political or other type of benefit, that caused even one single person to die we’d be on our way to prison. Look at people who simply decide to text while driving…and then kill a pedestrian. Prison. 

Trump not only caused over 130,000 Americans to die unnecessarily (according to Dr. Deborah Birx’s sworn testimony before Congress last week), but there’s a pile of evidence — which I’ll lay out below — that he did it because he believed the virus was hitting Blue states and Black people the hardest.

If this is true (and I’m building a case here that it is), it’s called second-degree murder, which, to use the definitions of the State of Florida where Trump lives (there is no federal homicide law) constitutes:

“The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual, is murder in the second degree and constitutes a felony of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment for a term of years not exceeding life…”

Save our Post Office

Don't Abandon First-Class Postal Service

CHRISTOPHER W. SHAW

Starting with Benjamin Franklin, one postmaster general after another endeavored to speed up the U.S. Mail. In this ongoing quest to move mail faster, a series of transportation advances were eagerly adopted, from stagecoaches to steamships to railroads to airplanes. 

But the current postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, is pursuing a course of action that departs from the goals and aspirations of his predecessors. 

While previous postmasters generals sought faster mail delivery, DeJoy stands out for his wish to make it slower. Beginning this October 1, many Americans can expect permanently slower mail, especially if they live on the West Coast.   

DeJoy claims that lowering service standards offers an outstanding opportunity to cut costs because hauling mail overland on trucks will prove cheaper than using air transportation. 

Lost in this short-term calculus is the cost to American citizens and to the health of the Postal Service in the long run. Degrading standards of service and discarding competitive advantages is not a formula for long-term relevance.

While DeJoy's actions will curtail air transportation of first-class mail, airmail as a separate class of mail actually ended back in 1977.  By that point, advances in service standards had made the category itself superfluous, since most first-class mail was being transported on airplanes. 

Rhode Island AG Peter Nerohna one of 20 State AGs suing over plan to sabotage Postal Service

Trump holdover Louis DeJoy must be fired

JON QUEALLY for Common Dreams

Twenty state Attorneys General on Friday filed a joint complaint in an effort to block changes to the U.S. Postal Service enacted last week by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and which critics warn are an overt effort to cripple the mail service from within by slowing delivery times while also increasing the cost to consumers.

The official complaint filed by the 20 AGs is directed at the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), which is charged with providing independent oversight of the USPS, but which the suit alleges betrayed its mandate by allowing the controversial plan put forth by DeJoy to move into implementation on October 1 without proper review.

According to a statement from the office of Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson:

The complaint details DeJoy’s failure to follow federal law in making harmful Postal Service changes. Ferguson asserts these major Postal Service changes, which range from eliminating working hours, slowing delivery of first-class mail and removing equipment, threaten the timely delivery of mail to millions of Americans who rely on the Postal Service for delivery of everything from medical prescriptions to ballots.

“Millions of Americans depend on the mail every day to receive their prescriptions, pay bills, receive Social Security checks, send rent payments and more,” Ferguson said in the statement. 

Even Your Dog Knows Better Than to Let Corrupt GOP 'Fix' Our Postal System

Let the Post Office provide the community with MORE, not less

By Jim Hightower for Creators.com

It was surprising when Donald Trump declared he would make fixing the U.S. Postal Service one of the top personal priorities of his four-year White House adventure. 

It quickly became obvious, though, that he was using the word "fix" in the same way your veterinarian uses it when you bring in your dog.

Yes, Trump was saying, "Let's fix this puppy," and he wasted an inordinate amount of his presidential power and prestige in a failed attempt to neuter an agency that literally delivers for the people. 

Think about it: For a 55 cent stamp, America's extraordinary postal workers and letter carriers will take your piece of mail and deliver it by truck, car, airplane, boat, motorbike, mule—and, of course, by foot—to any address across town or across the country. 

The post office is a public system that works; it is both essential and effective. Indeed, the U.S. Postal Service ranks at the top of federal agencies in popularity, with 91% of the public approving its work. Thus, an uproar of protests (including by Republicans) spread across the country, killing Trump's attempt to gut the agency.

When it comes to bad public policy, however, failure is just a way of saying, "Let's try the back door." Trump was defeated, but he left behind an undistinguished Postmaster General named Louis DeJoy, who had only two qualifications for the job: He was a Trump megadonor, and he was a peer of corporate powers that've long wanted to privatize the Postal Service. 

In March, before the new Joe Biden presidency had taken charge of the postal system, DeJoy popped through the back door with his own "10-year Plan" to fix the agency.

Save our Post Office

The Postmaster General’s New Attack on the Mail is a Fig Leaf for Privatization

Dennis O’Neil 

The battle over the future of the Postal Service, which was a focus of American political life last year, is still on.

Corrupt and incompetent Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced in March (with the backing of the present Postal Board of Governors, headed by Chair Ron Bloom) a “10-year plan” to remake the post office from a constitutionally mandated public service into a corporate entity.

The DeJoy-Bloom plan openly promises slower delivery times for much of the mail, steadily increasing postal rates, and reduced access to post offices. (What a combo!) It sets out the next terrain of battle in our fight to save our public postal service.

This plan was pushed out in a hurry as a pre-emptive strike before the Senate could vote to fill the open seats on the Postal Board of Governors with Biden’s nominees—who are apparently all pro-public postal service, pro-democracy, pro-union, and unlikely to support key elements of a plan like this.

DeJoy to Unveil Plan to Slash Post Office Hours, Hike Postage Prices

Senate needs to confirm Biden nominees to postal board so DeJoy can be fired

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams

Graeme Jennings/Bloomberg News

In the face of growing calls for his ouster, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is reportedly expected to unveil a plan to slash Post Office hours, hike postage prices, and extend first-class delivery times—changes likely to worsen nationwide mail slowdowns that began following implementation of DeJoy's initial round of operational reforms last year.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the details of the new plan, "DeJoy is expected to emphasize the need for austerity to ensure more consistent delivery and rein in billions of dollars in financial losses" that Democratic lawmakers and postal advocates say are largely attributable to a 2006 law requiring USPS to prefund retiree benefits decades in advance.

"Most of DeJoy's changes will not face regulatory road blocks. The postmaster general unilaterally controls operating hours at post offices, and the board of governors appears to back DeJoy's changes to delivery times," the Post reported.