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Explain how the millions of qualified voters who physically cannot vote in person are going to vote if not by mail ballot. Trump is afraid those voters will make a difference in his butt getting kicked out. Most intelligent republicans say Trump is wrong on this issue.
All this hullabaloo is to convince people their mailed ballot isn't safe, therefore they either vote in person or don't vote.
Republicans then make voting in person an arduous affair in some areas.
Post Office could easily turn more profit if it could CHOOSE which routes it could eliminate. unprofitable delivery to rural America cost money that the more populous areas subsidize . Any price increases also must be approved by Congress, which Congress is reluctant to do.
actually it costs MORE in the urban areas than it does out in the sticks
the USPS has been operating at a loss since 2001
The USPS lost money atomist every year from 2001 through 2010, according to its financial reports. By the end of the decade, the semi-independent government agency's losses had reached a record $8.5 billion (in 2010)(new record set in 2112 with a 15 billion loss) (2019 was a 8.8 billion loss), forcing the Postal Service to consider seeking an increase in its $15 billion debt ceiling or face insolvency.
The Postal Service’s business model is broken. The demand for its services has plummeted, and private couriers and 21st century delivery modes (drones and delivery robots, for instance) pose tough competition
early April, USPS leadership tried again, telling the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the agency needed an eye-popping $75 billion to avoid going belly-up.
postal operating costs tend to go up because collective bargaining always produces agreements that raise compensation costs. Unions are right to drive a hard bargain for their members, but they are aided and abetted by federal arbitrators who almost always side with the unions over management. The law should be amended to require that collective bargaining decisions consider the financial health of the USPS. The late Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) pushed hard for this reform years ago, but was stymied by complaints from postal unions. This change is way overdue — USPS cannot be expected to survive if most of its overhead cost is uncontrollable, especially in an era of lower demand for mail.
how much has usage of USPS dropped in those 25 years? I don't know - but it's certainly a valid question.
There's 31K post offices. That's
a post office every 122 sqmi. That basically means if you travel 5.5 miles in any direction, you'll get to one.
a post office for every 5,000 households.
In many cases there are long term leases and floor space is still needed as the shift from first class letters to bulk magazine sized advertising and now to parcels took place. I see a need for more, not less floor and dock space at local post offices. The vehicles have also increased in size from a WWII era jeep with a hard shell to basically 2-ton truck sized vehicles as the next standard delivery vehicle.
There have been some relative newly built stations in urban and suburban areas in which multiple zip codes share the facilities and docks but it is the far flung rural stations that when an area USPS manager proposes its elimination that the local Congressman gets complaints and those stations remain open. Processing plants however have seen closures and consolidations
It is simply not believable that humans will be able to sort mail more efficiently than these sorting machines.
As to the "explanation" that perhaps the number of letters being sorted has gone down and therefore they are not needed is equally ridiculous. We are entering an election cycle with all sorts of campaign literature being mailed out, not to mention the ballots.
These machines are in operation one day, and removed the next.
Not people hand processing, a truck driver takes the mail to another location and it moves through that machine instead of having that machine remain idle due to lack of need.
“I’m not sure you’re going to find an answer for why [the machines being removed] makes sense,” said Iowa Postal Workers Union President Kimberly Karol, “because we haven’t figured that out either.”
she's welcome to make her case beyond a sound bite.
WaPo article about the "46 states warned". You'll need the ability to read a lot, and scroll down a long way to see the map of piece reductions by locations.
Iowa has 3 that are all decreasing by less than 100K pieces each. Could be 10K each, could be 99.9K each. We don't know. We don't know how much Iowa's volume is down. We don't know how many postal employees are needed to serve Iowa's 3.1MM people even though obviously it's a mostly very rural state.
An April WaPo article on the USPS. Again, scroll waaaay down and see how much mail is/isn't getting delivered.
During the Bush administration, Congress passed a law requiring the USPS to prefund 75 years of retiree health benefits in the span of 10 years -- $110 billion.
No other private enterprise or federal agency is required to prefund retiree health benefits on any sort of comparable timetable.
This is why the Post Office is running in the red.
Not people hand processing, a truck driver takes the mail to another location and it moves through that machine instead of having that machine remain idle due to lack of need.
Has there been any evidence that any of these machines were idle due to lack of need?
Has there been any evidence that any of these machines were idle due to lack of need?
You mean besides the postal service removing machines and consolidating plants for 25 years?
I guess you can look at the old testimony every time someone in Congress questioned the removing of a plant in his district
This is part of a larger problem from what Ive seen...in order to progress, we have to get rid of obsolete things/services.
Back in the days when the first car was created, no one was fighting to keep horse and buggy companies around, just for the sake of having those services/jobs, they realized progress makes some sectors unnecessary at a point in time.
I am honestly appreciative that at least 1 D gets it.
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