This spring, President Trump created an inter-agency federal task force to propose structural reforms in the U.S. Postal Service. In only two months, the task force (comprised entirely of top Trump officials) zapped out a down-and-dirty report with this key recommendation: “Prepare [USPS] for future conversion from a government agency into a privately-held corporation.”
Privatization! Are they not aware that our public postal agency is enormously popular and important to… well, to the public? A February Pew Research poll finds that an astonishing 88 percent of Americans give the PO a thumbs up. Even the president’s executive order setting up the task force conceded that the postal service “is regularly cited as the Federal agency with the highest public approval rating.”
The 640,000 middle-class postal workers and letter carriers merit such kudos because they literally deliver for us. Working from 31,585 local POs, they trundle 150 billion pieces of mail a year, 4 million miles a day to 157 million addresses across the land, from inner-city neighborhoods to back roads — delivering all with remarkable speed. USPS does this without taking a dime in taxpayer funds, financing its operations entirely from its sales and services to customers. This is a genuine public good linking all of America’s people together.
For decades, though, anti-government propagandists have pushed the narrative that government is inherently incompetent, wasteful and a social evil that must to be eliminated. But the problem for these ideologues is that USPS is not only a government agency that works, but millions of folks see it working for them daily. Therefore, to maintain the negative political narrative about public entities, the far-right corporatists are desperate to kill our public post offices. To help save them, go to: USMailNotForSale.org.
This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.
For more information on Jim Hightower’s work — and to subscribe to his award-winning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown — visit www.jimhightower.com.
