From The Atlantic: Who Killed the Postal Service?
Today, the Postal Service announced roughly $3 billion in service cuts that will slow down the delivery of first-class mail for the first time in 40 years. Starting in April, it plans to shutter more than half of its 461 mail processing centers, stretching out the time it will take to ship everything from Netflix DVDs to magazines. One-day delivery of stamped envelopes will all but certainly become a thing of the past....And should you wonder why, (hint: it was a privatization scheme), from Think Progress:
At the very end of that year, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). Under PAEA, USPS was forced to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in an astonishing ten-year time span” — meaning that it had to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees it hasn’t even hired yet, something “that no other government or private corporation is required to do.”
The outgoing Republican controlled congress of 2006 did this for the express purpose of making the USPS go bankrupt so they can sell off its assets to private companies like UPS and FedEx. Fuckers.
And for the uninformed who says "gee that's no so bad, I like UPS!", look at the fucking costs. It costs $.44 to send a letter anywhere in the United States by mail. The absolute cheapest UPS option is over $26. Assholes.
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