4 ms·

Pretty clear this is an intentional move by the Trump appointee DeJoy. It's a classic Republican tactic. Appoint someone to screw up a public service. Use that

Pretty clear this is an intentional move by the Trump appointee DeJoy. It's a classic Republican tactic. Appoint someone to screw up a public service. Use that as an argument that it doesn't work. Privatize it so your rich friends can make a killing. It also has the added benefit of complicating mail in voting which might help the Republicans keep the senate and presidency. While I agree the postal service has some issues the current problems are entirely artificial. Intentional mismanagement due to ideology and greed. https://fortune.com/2020/07/24/usps-mail-delivery-postmaster-general-louis-dejoy-us-postal-service/ https://fortune.com/2020/07/24/usps-mail-delivery-postmaster... > The Postal Service is a joke,” said the President in May. > “Every time we’ve slowed down mail, we’ve lost revenue,” said Dimondstein. The new postmaster general, he said, instituted sweeping policy change after just one month in his position and without consulting any unions or representatives with deep institutional knowledge. > “These changes are happening because there’s a White House agenda to privatize and sell off the public Postal Service,” said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union.

lozaning 6y ago
I was inclined to correct your spelling of 'du jour' before I realized I just don't know the name of the Postmaster General.
pjscott 6y ago
On the one hand, that sounds plausible on the face of it. Underhanded political shenanigans aren't rare. On the other hand, I hear this used as a fully general explanation for every messed-up public service, including ones in places like the Bay Area, where government-run services are usually run very poorly and Republicans have near-zero influence. And there are so many other reasons why a public service is likely to end up poorly run eventually: bad incentives, otherwise-good incentives that don't incentivize their own preservation, accumulation of increasingly heavyweight bureaucracy and procedures, gradual transfer of power from leaders who know how to do new things to leaders who only know how to do the same things, and so on. Blaming everything on political sabotage doesn't seem like a great fit. (Maybe in the case of the USPS it really is a case of political sabotage, but this is why I'm skeptical of those claims in general.)
- ilikehurdles 6y ago
  I totally get your concern, and I'm sure people tire of having partisan politics used as explanation too often for issues of the day, but that seems pretty darn explicit in the case of the USPS[1] Anecdotal stories should be taken at a grain of salt, but I've heard more complains about package delivery in the last couple weeks from people who didn't know anything about the political rumblings at USPS, and that combined with the recent appointment news makes me doubt that it's just a coincidence. [1]:https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/14/postal-service-trump-dejoy-delay-mail/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/14/postal-se...
- stormbrew 6y ago
  Who said only republicans do this? Defunding public services is basically a bipartisan agreement in the US since the clinton days. And the overton windows of the parties are not the same in California as they are in Alabama, anyways.

lozaning 6y ago

I was inclined to correct your spelling of 'du jour' before I realized I just don't know the name of the Postmaster General.

pjscott 6y ago

On the one hand, that sounds plausible on the face of it. Underhanded political shenanigans aren't rare. On the other hand, I hear this used as a fully general explanation for every messed-up public service, including ones in places like the Bay Area, where government-run services are usually run very poorly and Republicans have near-zero influence. And there are so many other reasons why a public service is likely to end up poorly run eventually: bad incentives, otherwise-good incentives that don't incentivize their own preservation, accumulation of increasingly heavyweight bureaucracy and procedures, gradual transfer of power from leaders who know how to do new things to leaders who only know how to do the same things, and so on. Blaming everything on political sabotage doesn't seem like a great fit. (Maybe in the case of the USPS it really is a case of political sabotage, but this is why I'm skeptical of those claims in general.)

ilikehurdles 6y ago
I totally get your concern, and I'm sure people tire of having partisan politics used as explanation too often for issues of the day, but that seems pretty darn explicit in the case of the USPS[1] Anecdotal stories should be taken at a grain of salt, but I've heard more complains about package delivery in the last couple weeks from people who didn't know anything about the political rumblings at USPS, and that combined with the recent appointment news makes me doubt that it's just a coincidence. [1]:https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/14/postal-service-trump-dejoy-delay-mail/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/14/postal-se...
stormbrew 6y ago
Who said only republicans do this? Defunding public services is basically a bipartisan agreement in the US since the clinton days. And the overton windows of the parties are not the same in California as they are in Alabama, anyways.