10 ms·

US post office carriers "forced to work fewer hours," leaving "buckets of mail"

118 points by cs702 6y ago

Scoundreller 6y ago
> DeJoy instructed USPS employees to leave mail behind if it delayed carriers from their routes I mean, this does make sense. The more time you can spend doing the route itself, instead of waiting or coming back mid-way for whatever couldn’t be sorted in time in the morning is more “lean” efficient. While some mail would take an extra day, it results in more mail delivered per carrier-hour.
- bengotow 6y ago
  Hmm, it does make sense, but I think delaying carriers from starting their routes probably put backpressure on the upstream team to complete their work on time. Really hard to say if this is good or bad without more knowledge of the internal incentive structures that keep the system running smoothly.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  It makes sense in isolation except that it’s illegal and leads to delays in delivering or attempting to deliver, say, first class mail.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    If they already have stuff waiting for days to be delivered, I don’t understand the insistence on delivering stuff that arrived in the afternoon. Either way they’re out of compliance with the law.
    - marklyon 6y ago
      Are they? How is "detains" and "delays" defined? It doesn't seem like requiring delivery of late-arriving mail on the same day is the intent of that law.
- kube-system 6y ago
  But should the USPS operate that way? The purpose of a government-operated mail service arguably is to guarantee the quality and types of services that free-market competitors can’t or don’t want to offer.
  - adsjhdashkj 6y ago
    The irony of so many anti-service people is that most of them turn around and hate big corporations just as much. It's like they envision a Comcast-esque corporation taking over USPS, but forget that they hate Comcast. Disliking corporations and anti-competitive behavior of big corporations seems to be a non-partisan issue; and yet there seems to be much support for making everything ran by massive corporations. I don't understand their line of thinking here.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      I'm not sure if they're the same people or not -- but I don't think it really matters. There are pros-and-cons to any system of organization. Whether you have chosen the right one depends on the goals of the organization. Be wary of anyone who fanboys too hard for anything in particular without discussing its merits and weaknesses versus the alternatives. They likely don't have a full understanding of either.
- iron0013 6y ago
  According to mail carriers, the actual result is an ever-growing backlog of undelivered mail. The first mail to be delayed may only be one day late, but as the backlog grows, the undelivered mail gets later and later on average.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    It sounds like carriers are being given more than they could possibly deliver in a day. If that’s true, it’s still better to leave with what you can first-thing in the morning, than wait at the depot or return to the depot mid-shift. Trying to deliver something that arrived at noon today doesn’t make sense when you have stuff from 2-3 days ago still waiting.
    - iron0013 6y ago
      Somehow I suspect that the folks at the USPS have put at least as much thought into the logistics of mail delivery as HN commenters in this thread have—maybe even a little more if such a thing can be conceived!
      - Scoundreller 6y ago
        If we all thought that way, this place would be dead.
stingraycharles 6y ago
Genuine question: seems like this is mostly a political post without much relation to the typical content one would expect on HN. Is there some kind of “off-topic” policy at HN for these things, or is it fair game given that enough people upvote it? Edit: article seems to be flagged now, guess I have my answer.
- curiousgal 6y ago
  It's all fair game until the mods bump it off the frontpage.
  - rectang 6y ago
    That's not an accurate summary. HN users flagging an article is the primary reason articles go missing from the front page.
- dokka 6y ago
  Yeah, why was this posted?
  - ffpip 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- avmich 6y ago
  If I remember correctly, HN is supposed to have information interesting and useful for thinking people. This example doesn't qualify as off-topic then.
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    > If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic This is part of the framing from the guidelines, this type of article would very much be covered.
  - stingraycharles 6y ago
jorblumesea 6y ago
It's interesting to see that in America, some government services can run at a loss but others are expected to be solvent. No one complains that the military doesn't pay back the 700 billion a year it takes but if public transportation goes over budget or the post office, suddenly it's a big deal. I honestly don't get it. Most services in most countries run at a loss but they provide huge public benefits so it's worth it. The USPS allows people to vote, seniors to get their medication, people to pay mortgages or send packages. It seems so non-political and yet somehow even the most basic of services provided by the government are now a battleground. I feel like this country has just collectively lost its mind.
- badwolf 6y ago
  Possibly due to those services charging fees and generating income tends people to envision them as a business instead of a service.
  - convery 6y ago
    A service is just a specialized business though.
    - avmich 6y ago
      Interesting. If there are two objects with fields a, b and c, and one object initializes them to 1, 2 and 3, while another - to 1, 2 and 4. Does it make sense to derive the second object from the first? Or the other way around? I thought business can be viewed as a specialized service. But both approaches are possible, so the choice of "default" says about our preferences.
    - adsjhdashkj 6y ago
      Yea but your critique-reply is to that of an explanation on why people are thinking illogically here. Of which, your reply seems unsound. Ie, people seem to be thinking illogically here but your comment seems to counter their illogical stance, which is already described as illogical, rather than supporting/countering what is being discussed - their pattern of thinking. To the issue at hand though; much of America is embroiled in various angles of anti-taxation. There seems to be wide support for the idea that the government is incapable of doing anything right and any amount of money going towards them is viewed in a negative light. I think government in America really needs to step up on the deliverables and communication of deliverables. Efficiency likely could be improved, i don't deny, but i also think that the lack of "Here's what you paid for, here's what you got" leads people to think they get nothing for their money. Regardless of what your personal opinions are of taxes, i think it's safe to say that America has a problem with them - and doesn't know how to solve it. This infighting over mail delivery, a staple of communication, just highlights a deeply rooted issue.
curiousgal 6y ago
> Trump himself has admitted to wanting to starve the postal service of funds so that mail-in voting will become difficult, as tens of millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic. This is why I can't help but admire Trump, the fact he remains untouched proves how cunning him and his team are. Either that or how fragile the checks and balances system truly is.
- prions 6y ago
  How is anything about his hamfisted (publicly admitted) attempt to disenfranchise voters even close to cunning? Maybe it’s because his party and half of America is also on board with it?
  - andrewxdiamond 6y ago
    Be careful to not challenge people’s beliefs too much, they’ll get upset and start screaming about censorship
  - asabjorn 6y ago
    If someone can stand in line for the cashier at Home Depot and Whole Foods, they can also do so at the voting booth. Mail-in voting has no tracking of the voter receiving the ballot and if a filled out ballot is counted. It also has no verification of who votes and no protection to make the vote anonymous.
    - psadauskas 6y ago
      Yeah, none of that is true. There was a recent article about how it works in Colorado: https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/16/colorado-denver-mail-voting-usps-2020-election/ https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/16/colorado-denver-mail-v...
      - asabjorn 6y ago
        I am talking about the "last-mile" problem of securing that the mail carrier getting the ballot into the voters hands and securing that the ballot gets from the mail box to the counting location. At a physical voting location you know 100% a person gets a ballot and you track the ballot from it's put into the voting box. As far as I can tell this process deals with neither of these problems.
cs702 6y ago
I posted this article. To dang and the other moderators: I hesitated quite a bit before posting this, due to its possible interpretation as a "political post"... but after some thought decided to go ahead and post it, because I find it both important and interesting, in the sense described in the HN guidelines, so I felt it was on-topic. But if you judge the OP is off-topic or should be flagged to avoid unproductive commentary, please leave it flagged; I know it's a matter of judgment and I trust yours :-)
aty268 6y ago
USPS has been bound to fail for years. Isn't HN all about efficiency? What's so great about wasting money on a company that can't compete in the private markets and refuses to innovate? Give it to the markets, but give them tax breaks or loans for offering services USPS offered. (Shipping to far away areas for a low cost, for example) It's incredibly that some people still think we should have this cash burning & horrible service business alive.
- carnivor 6y ago
  Copy/pasting jorblumesea's comment above that I think answers your questions. "It's interesting to see that in America, some government services can run at a loss but others are expected to be solvent. No one complains that the military doesn't pay back the 700 billion a year it takes but if public transportation goes over budget or the post office, suddenly it's a big deal. I honestly don't get it. Most services in most countries run at a loss but they provide huge public benefits so it's worth it. The USPS allows people to vote, seniors to get their medication, people to pay mortgages or send packages. It seems so non-political and yet somehow even the most basic of services provided by the government are now a battleground. I feel like this country has just collectively lost its mind."
  - aty268 6y ago
    Would you want a socialized fast food chain, or computer company? Probably not, and do you know why? It's because these are services clearly designed for the market to solve. I hope we can agree there. Delivery is just something that's FAR more efficient in the markets. And the difference in inefficiency is just going to grow. Look at what UPS has been doing the past x years. They constantly reinvest money into new tech and decreasing labor, and USPS just gets more money from the government. It's a fair question to ask "at what difference in cost should we stop giving USPS money because we're wasting so much of it". I think we've reached that difference already. You know what happens when you raise a child with an unlimited allowance and no incentive to work? America will stay ahead because of our belief in the private markets. Socialization of services can do good in the short term, but almost always looses out to competition in the long term.
carnivor 6y ago
Shame that this got flagged. From the site Guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon..." I'd say that rampant voter suppression in the United States is a an interesting new phenomenon.
- Yetanfou 6y ago
  Voter suppression would be when people are actually kept from going to polling stations to cast their votes. Limiting mail-in voting is not voting suppression, it is limiting access to a specific - and rather contentious - way to cast your vote. These are not the same things, at all.
  - lanewinfield 6y ago
    First of all, that is absolutely not the definition of voter suppression— it is much broader voter disenfranchisement, from voter ID in neighborhoods with low ID ownership, to this example, which is giving people who do not want to risk their lives to vote the option to vote remotely in a manner that is proven as secure.
    - Yetanfou 6y ago
      From what I gather - correct me if I'm wrong - voter ID is not a thing which is limited to 'neighbourhoods with low ID ownership' but a state-mandated policy where 36 of 50 states require some form of voter ID [1]. There seem to be possibilities to vote without an ID, the procedure varies from state to state and the eligibility may hinge on the voter presenting ID at a later moment. Also, people who do not want to risk their lives to vote the option to vote remotely in a manner that is proven as secure is quite a bit of hyperbole in many ways. The risk[ing] their lives part should be clear, there is no reason for a visit to a polling station to be more risk-filled than a visit to the supermarket. Those who really can not vote in person can still request absentee ballots as far as I can tell, it is not as if the USPS is being dismantled. The part about a manner that is proven as secure is just untrue as can be seen by the percentage of mail-in votes which are marked as invalid (up to 10%) and the fact that the registers used to send out ballots seem to be heavily polluted with ballots being sent out for dead people, for previous inhabitants, for pets (!) and more. The system suffers from a garbage-in-garbage-out problem, as long as those registers are polluted that part of the problem remains. Mail-in voting also suffers from the problem of enabling voter coercion in which someone - say a gang leader - uses a threat of force to coerce people into voting for 'his' candidate. [1] https://www.usa.gov/voter-id https://www.usa.gov/voter-id
sparrish 6y ago
"prohibited employees from working overtime" Cause they can't pay them overtime rates.
BrandonM 6y ago
The article says: > Trump said on 13 August that he opposes providing additional funding to the USPS to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots. That comment links to another article, where the first paragraph states: > Donald Trump admitted on Thursday he opposed additional funding for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in order to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots. I searched Google and YouTube but can't find the original source, only commentary on it. Does anyone have a link? Edit: Maybe it's referring to https://youtu.be/0ieLG29X_oE?t=840 https://youtu.be/0ieLG29X_oE?t=840. I don't know much about the facts here, but Trump seems to be asserting that Congress is bundling $15–25B in USPS funding in a mega-bill that includes trillions of dollars of bailout money for states, and thus the bill has stalled. He also keeps harping on the failures of mail-in voting (but says absentee works well). I don't know what to make of it, but it's certainly frustrating that multiple news orgs are claiming that Trump is intentionally hamstringing the USPS to harm democracy, when I don't take away any such conclusion from that shitshow of an interview.
- vzqx 6y ago
  The source is this Fox News interview: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-seeks-to-starve-post-office-to-limit-mail-in-voting https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-seeks-to-starve-post-... No timestamp because I couldn't bring myself to listen to all 40 minutes.
  - BrandonM 6y ago
    Thank you. Yeah, these interviews are painful to listen to. Trump said: > [Democrat representatives] want $3½ billion for the mail-in votes, universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion for the post office. They need that money in order to have the post office work so that it can take these millions and millions of ballots. Now those are just two items [in the bill]; if they don't get there, they can't have mail-in ballots. [A bunch of rambling about failures of mail-in ballots in VA, NJ, etc.] He seemed to me to be saying that if the Democrats want mail-in ballots, they're going to have to find a way to get this bill passed that would give more funding to the post office. Trump emphasized repeatedly that they're asking for $3.5 billion dollars ("that's a lot of money") for the mail-in ballots.

118 points by cs702 6y ago

> DeJoy instructed USPS employees to leave mail behind if it delayed carriers from their routes I mean, this does make sense. The more time you can spend doing the route itself, instead of waiting or coming back mid-way for whatever couldn’t be sorted in time in the morning is more “lean” efficient. While some mail would take an extra day, it results in more mail delivered per carrier-hour.

bengotow 6y ago
Hmm, it does make sense, but I think delaying carriers from starting their routes probably put backpressure on the upstream team to complete their work on time. Really hard to say if this is good or bad without more knowledge of the internal incentive structures that keep the system running smoothly.
faitswulff 6y ago
It makes sense in isolation except that it’s illegal and leads to delays in delivering or attempting to deliver, say, first class mail.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  If they already have stuff waiting for days to be delivered, I don’t understand the insistence on delivering stuff that arrived in the afternoon. Either way they’re out of compliance with the law.
  - marklyon 6y ago
    Are they? How is "detains" and "delays" defined? It doesn't seem like requiring delivery of late-arriving mail on the same day is the intent of that law.
kube-system 6y ago
But should the USPS operate that way? The purpose of a government-operated mail service arguably is to guarantee the quality and types of services that free-market competitors can’t or don’t want to offer.
- adsjhdashkj 6y ago
  The irony of so many anti-service people is that most of them turn around and hate big corporations just as much. It's like they envision a Comcast-esque corporation taking over USPS, but forget that they hate Comcast. Disliking corporations and anti-competitive behavior of big corporations seems to be a non-partisan issue; and yet there seems to be much support for making everything ran by massive corporations. I don't understand their line of thinking here.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    I'm not sure if they're the same people or not -- but I don't think it really matters. There are pros-and-cons to any system of organization. Whether you have chosen the right one depends on the goals of the organization. Be wary of anyone who fanboys too hard for anything in particular without discussing its merits and weaknesses versus the alternatives. They likely don't have a full understanding of either.
iron0013 6y ago
According to mail carriers, the actual result is an ever-growing backlog of undelivered mail. The first mail to be delayed may only be one day late, but as the backlog grows, the undelivered mail gets later and later on average.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  It sounds like carriers are being given more than they could possibly deliver in a day. If that’s true, it’s still better to leave with what you can first-thing in the morning, than wait at the depot or return to the depot mid-shift. Trying to deliver something that arrived at noon today doesn’t make sense when you have stuff from 2-3 days ago still waiting.
  - iron0013 6y ago
    Somehow I suspect that the folks at the USPS have put at least as much thought into the logistics of mail delivery as HN commenters in this thread have—maybe even a little more if such a thing can be conceived!
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      If we all thought that way, this place would be dead.

stingraycharles 6y ago

Genuine question: seems like this is mostly a political post without much relation to the typical content one would expect on HN. Is there some kind of “off-topic” policy at HN for these things, or is it fair game given that enough people upvote it? Edit: article seems to be flagged now, guess I have my answer.

curiousgal 6y ago
It's all fair game until the mods bump it off the frontpage.
- rectang 6y ago
  That's not an accurate summary. HN users flagging an article is the primary reason articles go missing from the front page.
dokka 6y ago
Yeah, why was this posted?
- ffpip 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
avmich 6y ago
If I remember correctly, HN is supposed to have information interesting and useful for thinking people. This example doesn't qualify as off-topic then.
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  > If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic This is part of the framing from the guidelines, this type of article would very much be covered.
- stingraycharles 6y ago

jorblumesea 6y ago

It's interesting to see that in America, some government services can run at a loss but others are expected to be solvent. No one complains that the military doesn't pay back the 700 billion a year it takes but if public transportation goes over budget or the post office, suddenly it's a big deal. I honestly don't get it. Most services in most countries run at a loss but they provide huge public benefits so it's worth it. The USPS allows people to vote, seniors to get their medication, people to pay mortgages or send packages. It seems so non-political and yet somehow even the most basic of services provided by the government are now a battleground. I feel like this country has just collectively lost its mind.

badwolf 6y ago
Possibly due to those services charging fees and generating income tends people to envision them as a business instead of a service.
- convery 6y ago
  A service is just a specialized business though.
  - avmich 6y ago
    Interesting. If there are two objects with fields a, b and c, and one object initializes them to 1, 2 and 3, while another - to 1, 2 and 4. Does it make sense to derive the second object from the first? Or the other way around? I thought business can be viewed as a specialized service. But both approaches are possible, so the choice of "default" says about our preferences.
  - adsjhdashkj 6y ago
    Yea but your critique-reply is to that of an explanation on why people are thinking illogically here. Of which, your reply seems unsound. Ie, people seem to be thinking illogically here but your comment seems to counter their illogical stance, which is already described as illogical, rather than supporting/countering what is being discussed - their pattern of thinking. To the issue at hand though; much of America is embroiled in various angles of anti-taxation. There seems to be wide support for the idea that the government is incapable of doing anything right and any amount of money going towards them is viewed in a negative light. I think government in America really needs to step up on the deliverables and communication of deliverables. Efficiency likely could be improved, i don't deny, but i also think that the lack of "Here's what you paid for, here's what you got" leads people to think they get nothing for their money. Regardless of what your personal opinions are of taxes, i think it's safe to say that America has a problem with them - and doesn't know how to solve it. This infighting over mail delivery, a staple of communication, just highlights a deeply rooted issue.

curiousgal 6y ago

> Trump himself has admitted to wanting to starve the postal service of funds so that mail-in voting will become difficult, as tens of millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic. This is why I can't help but admire Trump, the fact he remains untouched proves how cunning him and his team are. Either that or how fragile the checks and balances system truly is.

prions 6y ago
How is anything about his hamfisted (publicly admitted) attempt to disenfranchise voters even close to cunning? Maybe it’s because his party and half of America is also on board with it?
- andrewxdiamond 6y ago
  Be careful to not challenge people’s beliefs too much, they’ll get upset and start screaming about censorship
- asabjorn 6y ago
  If someone can stand in line for the cashier at Home Depot and Whole Foods, they can also do so at the voting booth. Mail-in voting has no tracking of the voter receiving the ballot and if a filled out ballot is counted. It also has no verification of who votes and no protection to make the vote anonymous.
  - psadauskas 6y ago
    Yeah, none of that is true. There was a recent article about how it works in Colorado: https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/16/colorado-denver-mail-voting-usps-2020-election/ https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/16/colorado-denver-mail-v...
    - asabjorn 6y ago
      I am talking about the "last-mile" problem of securing that the mail carrier getting the ballot into the voters hands and securing that the ballot gets from the mail box to the counting location. At a physical voting location you know 100% a person gets a ballot and you track the ballot from it's put into the voting box. As far as I can tell this process deals with neither of these problems.

cs702 6y ago

I posted this article. To dang and the other moderators: I hesitated quite a bit before posting this, due to its possible interpretation as a "political post"... but after some thought decided to go ahead and post it, because I find it both important and interesting, in the sense described in the HN guidelines, so I felt it was on-topic. But if you judge the OP is off-topic or should be flagged to avoid unproductive commentary, please leave it flagged; I know it's a matter of judgment and I trust yours :-)

aty268 6y ago

USPS has been bound to fail for years. Isn't HN all about efficiency? What's so great about wasting money on a company that can't compete in the private markets and refuses to innovate? Give it to the markets, but give them tax breaks or loans for offering services USPS offered. (Shipping to far away areas for a low cost, for example) It's incredibly that some people still think we should have this cash burning & horrible service business alive.

carnivor 6y ago
Copy/pasting jorblumesea's comment above that I think answers your questions. "It's interesting to see that in America, some government services can run at a loss but others are expected to be solvent. No one complains that the military doesn't pay back the 700 billion a year it takes but if public transportation goes over budget or the post office, suddenly it's a big deal. I honestly don't get it. Most services in most countries run at a loss but they provide huge public benefits so it's worth it. The USPS allows people to vote, seniors to get their medication, people to pay mortgages or send packages. It seems so non-political and yet somehow even the most basic of services provided by the government are now a battleground. I feel like this country has just collectively lost its mind."
- aty268 6y ago
  Would you want a socialized fast food chain, or computer company? Probably not, and do you know why? It's because these are services clearly designed for the market to solve. I hope we can agree there. Delivery is just something that's FAR more efficient in the markets. And the difference in inefficiency is just going to grow. Look at what UPS has been doing the past x years. They constantly reinvest money into new tech and decreasing labor, and USPS just gets more money from the government. It's a fair question to ask "at what difference in cost should we stop giving USPS money because we're wasting so much of it". I think we've reached that difference already. You know what happens when you raise a child with an unlimited allowance and no incentive to work? America will stay ahead because of our belief in the private markets. Socialization of services can do good in the short term, but almost always looses out to competition in the long term.

carnivor 6y ago

Shame that this got flagged. From the site Guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon..." I'd say that rampant voter suppression in the United States is a an interesting new phenomenon.

Yetanfou 6y ago
Voter suppression would be when people are actually kept from going to polling stations to cast their votes. Limiting mail-in voting is not voting suppression, it is limiting access to a specific - and rather contentious - way to cast your vote. These are not the same things, at all.
- lanewinfield 6y ago
  First of all, that is absolutely not the definition of voter suppression— it is much broader voter disenfranchisement, from voter ID in neighborhoods with low ID ownership, to this example, which is giving people who do not want to risk their lives to vote the option to vote remotely in a manner that is proven as secure.
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    From what I gather - correct me if I'm wrong - voter ID is not a thing which is limited to 'neighbourhoods with low ID ownership' but a state-mandated policy where 36 of 50 states require some form of voter ID [1]. There seem to be possibilities to vote without an ID, the procedure varies from state to state and the eligibility may hinge on the voter presenting ID at a later moment. Also, people who do not want to risk their lives to vote the option to vote remotely in a manner that is proven as secure is quite a bit of hyperbole in many ways. The risk[ing] their lives part should be clear, there is no reason for a visit to a polling station to be more risk-filled than a visit to the supermarket. Those who really can not vote in person can still request absentee ballots as far as I can tell, it is not as if the USPS is being dismantled. The part about a manner that is proven as secure is just untrue as can be seen by the percentage of mail-in votes which are marked as invalid (up to 10%) and the fact that the registers used to send out ballots seem to be heavily polluted with ballots being sent out for dead people, for previous inhabitants, for pets (!) and more. The system suffers from a garbage-in-garbage-out problem, as long as those registers are polluted that part of the problem remains. Mail-in voting also suffers from the problem of enabling voter coercion in which someone - say a gang leader - uses a threat of force to coerce people into voting for 'his' candidate. [1] https://www.usa.gov/voter-id https://www.usa.gov/voter-id

sparrish 6y ago

"prohibited employees from working overtime" Cause they can't pay them overtime rates.

BrandonM 6y ago

The article says: > Trump said on 13 August that he opposes providing additional funding to the USPS to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots. That comment links to another article, where the first paragraph states: > Donald Trump admitted on Thursday he opposed additional funding for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in order to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots. I searched Google and YouTube but can't find the original source, only commentary on it. Does anyone have a link? Edit: Maybe it's referring to https://youtu.be/0ieLG29X_oE?t=840 https://youtu.be/0ieLG29X_oE?t=840. I don't know much about the facts here, but Trump seems to be asserting that Congress is bundling $15–25B in USPS funding in a mega-bill that includes trillions of dollars of bailout money for states, and thus the bill has stalled. He also keeps harping on the failures of mail-in voting (but says absentee works well). I don't know what to make of it, but it's certainly frustrating that multiple news orgs are claiming that Trump is intentionally hamstringing the USPS to harm democracy, when I don't take away any such conclusion from that shitshow of an interview.

vzqx 6y ago
The source is this Fox News interview: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-seeks-to-starve-post-office-to-limit-mail-in-voting https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-seeks-to-starve-post-... No timestamp because I couldn't bring myself to listen to all 40 minutes.
- BrandonM 6y ago
  Thank you. Yeah, these interviews are painful to listen to. Trump said: > [Democrat representatives] want $3½ billion for the mail-in votes, universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion for the post office. They need that money in order to have the post office work so that it can take these millions and millions of ballots. Now those are just two items [in the bill]; if they don't get there, they can't have mail-in ballots. [A bunch of rambling about failures of mail-in ballots in VA, NJ, etc.] He seemed to me to be saying that if the Democrats want mail-in ballots, they're going to have to find a way to get this bill passed that would give more funding to the post office. Trump emphasized repeatedly that they're asking for $3.5 billion dollars ("that's a lot of money") for the mail-in ballots.