The universal service commitment makes possible the provision of regular mail delivery to relatively isolated rural locations. If the Postal Service were an unregulated, profit-making concern, mail delivery would cost a premium for customers in such areas. That is why, when push comes to shove, you can find conservative members of Congress from rural districts sticking up for their relatively costly local post offices and mail routes.

...

The point here is that the spurious notion that the U.S. Postal Service should be financially self-sufficient — which goes back decades — helped give rise to the ability of Trump’s crony in charge of the Post Office, the conflict-of-interest-ridden Louis DeJoy, to cut services in the name of accounting solvency. For his part, Trump has acknowledged openly that his refusal to provide necessary supplementary funds to ensure effective delivery of the mail is founded on his determination to frustrate the vote-by-mail system.

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    1 year ago

    you can't just make a post linking an article with no original content, that's not fair

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    The democrats are on board with gutting the post, too. It's a bipartisan joint. They're reaching across the aisle to help hold the garrote.

  • mkultrawide [any]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    How the fuck is Louis DeJoy still head of the post office? I thought Brandon had the power to fire him?

    I mean, I know why, but still.

    EDIT: Apparently the President can't fire the Postmaster General. What a stupid system.

  • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    In my many decades of living in the US, the post office has always worked pretty well. But it's also visibly obvious (everything looks like shit) that it's always been run with the smallest amount of funding any congress thought they could get away with.