Recently our local post office branch was closed, temporarily we hope, due to an unplanned rendezvous with a BMW. It happened at night. I don't think anyone was hurt.
Local coverage is here.
So when I ran out of stamps the other day, rather than schlepping 10 blocks to the next post office, I thought I'd just order them online. Should be here in a day or two, I guessed. No rush.
But nope. I got an email yesterday - 3 business days after the order went in. The email says the order has been processed! And then today (day 4) I saw that the order had been mailed to me (in NYC) from...get this... Kansas City!
I know it's the busy season and all. But seriously, this is not good service. Three days, for the post office just to tell me the stamps are being processed. And then two or three more days because they are mailing them 1500 miles.
So it seems like it takes a week for the USPS to send their bread and butter product. That's just not smart. Don't they want people to mail things?
I'm not praising the private sector or the "market" as engines of efficiency. When I hear talk of 'privatization' I immediately wonder who's getting a cut.
I realize the USPS is under tremendous ideological pressure from people who want to privatize everything and from hidden subsidies to private package carriers. Kossack jpmassar diaried about some of the union-busting pressures earlier this week.
We need a post office.
The post office was actually at the logistical heart of our democracy once. Without a low cost flow of information, ideas can't spread. Magazines and newspaper were given below cost rates to facilitate the spread of ideas. Well into the last century most people got most 'long-read' information from periodicals.
For example anti-slavery pieces in "The Liberator" and "The North Star" and the serialized version of Uncle Tom's Cabin in "The National Era" were crucial in uniting most Americans (in the north) against slavery.
TV and radio can't really cover as many things in depth as print journalists - the production costs are too high.
So the postal service is still a vital public asset - even if it has been privatized, even if a lot of its business has been ceded to other corporations. They still need to do a better job so that ideologues don't exploit its weaknesses to push their union bashing corporate agenda.
I'm writing my Senators and Congressman.