Just set for a second aside the clear, unquestionable illegality and unconstitutionality- boy oh boy would I not want to politically own a postal service reorganization. Literally zero upside and cavernous risk.
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Besides SS, it's probably the one thing that will make people immediately lose their minds. A perfect example of taking govt services for granted until they're gone
Yeah, DeJoy fscked it up royally. The brand spanking new multimillion distribution center below Atlanta is a train wreck; NOTHING works and mail is fscked up from there all the way up thru Tennessee.
They wanted to close the Reno center & have all our mail sorted in Sacramento. You know what’s between Reno & Sacramento? Donner Summit. You know, the Donner Party. The interstate is regularly closed during the winter. 🙄 Dumbest idea possible. There are times our shelves get bare b/c of closures.
It took 14 days for a doc I sent to get from Chattanooga to Knoxville. You can *drive* there in 1.5 hours. I also had a package boomerang back to the distribution center THREE TIMES & get sent to different places each time. It took 47 days to reach me. I think the Pony Express may have been quicker!
Exactly! It’s crazier since you can track your mail. At one point I told my husband, if a guy set out on a bicycle carrying my package, it would have gotten here quicker (which he understood as a distance cyclist 😂).
And anybody who thinks privatisation will help is on drugs. FedEx is the same. Took 4 days to get some poor bastid's settlement check from Chattanooga, TN to Dalton, GA - a 45 min. drive. 4 DAYS. I could have driven it there on my way home. I was so embarrassed. Luckily his attorney was cool w/ it.
USPS is wildly popular. The people who would execute this are currently ridding the federal workforce of millennia of expertise and institutional knowledge. Republicans would own every late delivery and missed package. And what possible benefit? None at all. One of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard
Don't the inefficiencies of the postal service generally benefit rural districts that are overwhelmingly Republican? Basically like Amtrak, I always assumed.
Amtrak is mostly a thing for the East Coast as far as I know, but even if that isn't true, even if USPS mostly benefits rural districts, why would that be a reason not to care?
I do care but also there is some responsibility here for Republicans to fight on behalf of their constituents. It cannot be the case that Democrats have to fight for everything.
My parents aren't less important than I am just because I have a Dem Representative and they've got a GOP one, and for a nationwide system, you can't just break it for the people you dislike or save it for the people you do like.
I'm not saying we need to abandon them. But even if you disagree about prioritizing Democratic energy, it is simply the case that, practically, without bipartisan support, there is no sustaining an economically inefficient USPS. It's time to put the onus on Republicans to step up.
they haven’t owned the terrible deficits in service and higher prices that came with the republican mandate that usps turn a profit, why would they end up getting the rightful blame for this?
It's not going to matter when ballots mailed from people registered as Democrats are no longer delivered nationwide. This is the end of legitimate elections
The Republican party is populated by evil people with no sense of the public interest, indeed active hostility towards it. If they see a public need that is being met by the government, they see something they could take and wring personal profit from. Mail, retirement, medical, school, anything.
Valid point. But it’s not so much what you break as who gets blamed. Trump did everything wrong on Covid, people literally died, yet Fauci is the villain in the eyes of many we’re hoping will learn “this time”.
he hates them so much - people with non-zero amounts of courage and loyalty. 73,000 unemployed "suckers" would delight him and he could point to what "losers" they are
Paying for asking a (rhetorical, immediately answered) question but the answers are split between versions of “totalitarianism” and “to kill mail-in voting” which are mutually exclusive and imo don’t make much sense. Angry people will vote in person and USPS would be way down a dictator to-do list
Once he owns the USPS, he will appoint goons who will help him throw out "the illegal votes" in 2028. Sure, it will be illegal as all hell, but who's going to stop him?
More likely it's idiosyncratic with Trump's want to be recognized as a dealmaker/businessman; with the idea itself coming from one of his clingers. Or a direct lever to fuck with Amazon/Bezos.
Once again, I think you're getting tripped up by the fact that fascism is at its core a rejection of rationality. It's absolutely possible for the people burning down the govt to be playing for both outcomes simultaneously.
Sure, angry people might vote in person but they also might not want to get assaulted (or even just intimidated!) when trying to exercise their constitutional right to vote in a country that is currently, if you haven't noticed, absolutely trashing its constitution.
Like much of what he does, it's about "correcting" perceived slightly against him. He actually believes mail-in voting cost him the election in 2020. He actually believes Ukraine is hiding dirt on Biden. He actually believes NATO countries pay into some defense fund.
Maybe it’s some wily plan but the guy often does idiotic things because he is an impulsive egomaniac who has systematically rid himself of people who will tell him when his ideas are dumb
"Republic Party bankrupts itself politically for a guy who governs like a complete lunatic when Republican Party fails to control him" is a very possible outcome right now.
This is it. I think the other outcomes are just ‘whatever’ to him. As usual, he’s high on his own supply. He thinks he has an iron grip on power now, and he’s just doing mad king shit because he can
And yeah, best-case the whole thing...goes smoothly. Which is to say the public never notices and you get no credit for the whole boondoggle (nor do you deserve any). But with THESE clowns what are the chances it goes smoothly?
USPS enables us to send and receive mail to and from other countries, something I don't believe UPS or FedEx does. This would be one more way of isolating the United States from the rest of the world.
The goal is to break down the concept of a nation-state entirely, so that a bunch of oligarchs can try to make their "network states" (think decentralized corporate fiefdom city-states run like a business where they're King CEOs).
He thinks the mail in ballots were fraudulent in 2020 and he wants to stop anyone from voting by mail ever again. He doesn’t give a shit about any of the rest of it, he just wants the power to stop the thing that directly impacted him
except that USPS has over 80 years in retirement funds, whoever gets this will do the following
take a loan out against all that money
Spin the loan and some bad assets into another company
after a year declare bankruptcy from that company
announce that all retirement funds are gone by bankruptcy
It's going to suck for everyone, but I suspect that there may not be a faster or better way for the administration to show the average Trump voter just how much they done fucked up than to hit them square, and hard, in the daily comforts, conveniences, and affordances they've taken for granted.
The fact that Mussolini "made the trains run on time" is greatly exaggerated, but if a fash "ruler" CAN'T even *pretend* to make the trains run on time, then the span of time between him toasting his wins and him hanging from the very proverbial and not at all literal street lamp gets much shorter.
I'm afraid that the only way we're going to get past this without having a literal dynastic succession of Trump nepo-babies is to grit our teeth, girl our loins, and let the people responsible suffer the consequences of their actions without having done the above ... at least we know to expect it.
The people putting these "policies" into place aren't geniuses or 4D chess players. In fact, they're all really quite foolish and shortsighted. Musk is a less than mediocre nepo-baby goober, not some super genius. They don't really do long term cost-benefit analyses. When they try, they fail.
“Dear American Seniors, we regret that these changes to the USPS will cause many of you to miss receiving your Social Security checks.” See, Dems, it’s not so hard to tell the truth and fight with bare knuckles at the same time.
Ehh @fritschner.bsky.social I’m with you on all of this except “the USPS is wildly popular”
Literally I would rather poke my eyes out than go to my local post office. There’s usually 2 people working, 72 people in line & the service is horrible
But I agree about not wanting to be the one to fix it
It's one of the few agencies that my mother, who is totally sucked into the cult, actually cares about and would fight tooth and nail for. Older generations still write letters and send cards, and her small town PO is speedy. It's also critical for last mile.
Have you ever mailed something via FedEx or UPS that wasn’t a prepaid situation? The price differential for the same thing at the private companies is massive.
Are they seizing it to sell it, steal it?
I rented an apt once in a building where the manager sold the washers/dryers from the common area then rented the space to someone to sleep. Pocketed it all, the owner never knew.
USPS.
They don't want the people to "benefit." The destructiveness and oppression IS THE POINT.
Stop asking what is the "benefit." This is not about what is good for Americans. This is autocracy creating a new feudal system in the 21st century.
The ability to rebuild infrastructure will take a huge amount of time. The institutions & processes supporting social & economic infrastructure & security are being rapidly dismantled. The mechanisms to stop illegal onslaught are in quick sand. The naivety of Americans voting for Trump is shocking
Republicans have been trying to privatize the post office for years. Now is their chance. It's all about money. High prices for terrible service and plenty of people will have no choice but to pay.
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We are leaving democracy. All Trump needs to do is get the GOP judges to vote [sic] the right way and legislate from the bench.
> cavernous risk
In a democracy.
Elon’s tell is that he burns bridges
I don’t believe you.
I have no idea how he voted in 2024. I think I know how he’ll vote in 2028.
- eliminate absentee voting
- enforce comstock act by fiat
- 250,000 vehicles that are not currently Teslas
Still, where’s the $$ already put in
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/g-s1-49659/journalist-describes-trumps-movements-as-a-regime-change-towards-authoritarianism
if there are any more votes/elections
Look at WI education since Act 10 and current scores. They gutted it and now complain it’s failing.
It’s all long-game marketing and ferreting out legal loopholes.
They don't care.
take a loan out against all that money
Spin the loan and some bad assets into another company
after a year declare bankruptcy from that company
announce that all retirement funds are gone by bankruptcy
Also, for those of you who hate going to the post office... those of us in rural areas depend on it.
Also - massive privatization.
The government will keep paying for delivery of many things, but the work will be done by private contractors making a nice profit.
Literally I would rather poke my eyes out than go to my local post office. There’s usually 2 people working, 72 people in line & the service is horrible
But I agree about not wanting to be the one to fix it
MOST of the time, it's the most reliable service and reasonably priced.
So, yes, it's popular.
Including with big companies. I actually wonder how Bezos feels about this.
Print books would become more expensive by default if that went away.
The US is now owned by theocrats and kleptocrats. Why do you think they have anything constructive in mind?
I rented an apt once in a building where the manager sold the washers/dryers from the common area then rented the space to someone to sleep. Pocketed it all, the owner never knew.
USPS.
Stop asking what is the "benefit." This is not about what is good for Americans. This is autocracy creating a new feudal system in the 21st century.