Bill McKibben writes frequently about the environment, climate change, and rural life for the New Yorker.. Here he writes that Trump’s attack on the Postal Service Threatens democracy. The irony, McKibben points out, is that rural voters who heavily support Trump will lose the most by his actions.
I’ve lived most of my life in small towns in pretty remote rural areas. Some were in red regions, some were purplish-blue—but every last one of them centered on the local post office. I remember years of picking up the mail from a little window in the postmaster’s living room. (If you called her the postmistress, she would tartly reply, “Uncle Sam can’t afford mistresses.”) Eventually, she needed her parlor back, to have room to work on her genealogy projects, so the community built a small freestanding building. Where I live now, the local post office takes up a third of the space in the only business in our town, a country store complete with potbellied stove and rocking chairs. It’s probably why we still have a store: if you’re there to pick up mail, you might as well get some eggs, too.
All of which is to say that I really hate what the Republicans are trying to do to the post office. It’s by now pretty obvious that the Trump Administration is attempting to sabotage mail delivery in order to cast some kind of shadow over the November election. Donald Trump’s newly installed Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, who earned the position with more than two million dollars in donations to the Trump campaign and other Republican causes since 2016, has eliminated all overtime; a memo to employees declares that, as a result, “if we cannot deliver all the mail due to call offs or shortage of people and you have no other help, the mail will not go out.” Last week, as the Washington Post reports, in what’s being called the Friday Night Massacre, DeJoy obliterated decades of institutional knowledge, by reassigning or displacing twenty-three highly ranked officials in the postal service. Not only that but the Postal Service almost tripled the postage for mailing ballots to voters.
Behind that assault on a right guaranteed in our democracy, however, lurks something less immediate but almost as ugly: the long-standing G.O.P. effort to gut the postal service and replace it with a privatized entity—an effort that, if it succeeds, will suck out what life remains from too many of the rural communities that many of those Republicans theoretically represent. It’s hard to imagine New York City without a post office; it would be devastating to lose the postal workers and an utter shame to no longer wait in line in the Art Deco gem at 90 Church Street, among other historic buildings. But, at least in the wealthy parts of the city, some mix of the Internet and bike messengers and double-parked courier-service trucks could probably get the job done. For Americans who live in sparsely populated and poorer areas far from big cities, though, postal workers perform an irreplaceable role.
“Post offices are the center of any rural town, and it connects us to friends and family as well as markets for small businesses,” Jane Kleeb, who lives in Hastings, Nebraska, told me. I got to know her because she was, and is, a remarkable leader in the fight against the Keystone XL oil pipeline. She’s also the chair of Nebraska’s Democratic Party, and—with her recent book “Harvest the Vote”—an outspoken advocate for getting progressives to take rural America seriously. So she understands about the mail. “When we go into the post office in our small town, we know the staff behind the counter, and we catch up on each other’s lives,” she said. “I can’t tell you the number of times also in our post office here in Hastings where a new immigrant is making our town their home, and they go into the post office for help on cashier checks for rent, or questions on the census, or how to get the utilities turned on. The staff always help, even if that is not part of their ‘job,’ because they also know post offices are seen as a hub for our government.”
In 2012, when the Postal Service planned on closing 3,830 branches, an analysis by Reuters showed that eighty per cent of those branches were in rural areas where the poverty rate topped the national average. You know who delivers the Amazon package the final mile to rural Americans? The U.S.P.S. You know how people get medicine, when the pharmacy is an hour’s drive away? In their mailbox. You know why many people can’t pay their bills electronically? Because too much of rural America has impossibly slow Internet, or none at all. These are the places where, during the pandemic, teachers and students all sit in cars in the school parking lot to Zoom with one another, because that’s the only spot with high-speed Wi-Fi. You want the ultimate example? Visit one of the sprawling Native American lands in the West and you’ll see how, as a member of the Mandan-Hidatsa tribe in North Dakota told Vox, the postal service helps keep those communities “connected to the world.” Should the government destroy the service, she said, “It would just be kind of a continuation of these structures in the U.S. that already dispossessed people of color, black and indigenous people of color, and people below the poverty line.” The mail, Kleeb said, “is a universal service that literally levels the playing field for all Americans. It is how we order goods, send gifts to our family, and keep small businesses alive. In the era of the coronavirus, mail is now our lifeline to have our voices heard for our ballots in the election. In fact, in eleven counties in our state, they have only mail-in ballots, because of how massive the county is land-wise.”
You’d think that the Republican Party, which depends on the undue weight given to rural voters for its continued political life, would be particularly solicitous of the post office. But, at the higher reaches, its ideological preoccupations are stronger: the post office is a government service, and therefore bad; it should be run instead by people who can make money from it. The postal service, though, is the most popular government agency in the country, with a ninety-one-per-cent favorability rating, and it’s equally popular among Democrats and Republicans. So, the Party has generally had to proceed by stealth. Most notably, in 2006, President George W. Bush signed a law that makes the U.S.P.S. fund the health-care benefits of its retirees seventy-five years into the future. No one else does that; it’s why, even though the postal service ekes out an operating profit most years, it is saddled with a huge deficit.
But Donald Trump specializes in saying the quiet part out loud. In April, he told reporters that the post office was “a joke” and that he’d oppose any bailout unless it quadrupled the rate for mailing packages. (Along with the postal service’s role in our democracy, the President seems upset about its contracts with Amazon, because it is owned by the same man who owns the Washington Post, which Trump thinks is mean to him, which is just daily life in a tinpot wannabe-dictatorship.) “Trump and the Republican Party use rural communities and give speeches about how connected they are to our rural way of life in order to get elected, and then turn around and abandon everything we care about, from our schools, to the post office, to our family farmers, and to our rural hospitals,” Kleeb told me.
The situation has grown so alarming that even some Republican legislators are objecting: last week, Representative Greg Gianforte and Senator Steve Daines, both of Montana, each sent letters to DeJoy, asking him to get the postal service back to work. “Do not continue down this road,” Gianforte wrote. But, for the most part, it’s the usual partisan battle. Last week, eighty-four members of the House signed a letter demanding that the postal service do its job; eighty of them were Democrats. “All of the bills Democrats are writing, and the policy papers Joe Biden has focussed on rural communities, are strong,” Kleeb said. But “now we need to see them in our towns. … Showing up is critical to us in order to know you see our faces and you understand the struggles we are facing.” In fact, a visit—even a virtual one—might inspire politicians to see how much could easily be done. Senator Bernie Sanders—the rare progressive who represents a mostly rural constituency—has long advocated offering banking services at post offices, something that’s routine in most of the world, and which would put a crimp in the payday-lending operations that ring the small towns of this country. (Senator Elizabeth Warren supports the idea, too.) It wouldn’t even be without precedent here: in 1910, President William H. Taft inaugurated a postal savings system for immigrants and poor Americans that lasted until 1967. Today, though, the banking lobby firmly opposes the measure.
As the economic damage of the pandemic wears on, city dwellers are coming to terms with loss: favorite restaurants or stores are closing. People in rural America know how this feels—they lived through decade after decade of school consolidation, of dioceses deciding that they can’t support a church in town anymore. The post office was among the first public buildings in most American communities, and now it’s often among the last. A decade ago, the postal service tried to close our local branch office. That would have forced everyone to make a twelve-mile round trip to a town at the bottom of the mountain to pick up the mail, so together we fought the service, and it finally relented. Robert Frost once lived in our town, and he maintained that good fences made good neighbors. But he was wrong: it’s the post office that does the trick.
De-Joy
/dəˈ/joi/
verb: remove all goodness from – especially as relates to right-wing corporate attacks on the public sector : “The Putin puppet sought to dejoy the election by installing a zero-experience lackey to tank the Post Office.”
The attack on the post office parallels the attack on public education. In both cases wealthy individuals bought politicians to rig the system against the public service. With the USPS it was an expensive pension plan to bleed money from the postal service. With education it was “school choice” and NCLB with test and punish policy. In both cases political pawns have served the interests of the wealthy. Privatization is not about providing innovation or better service. It is about stealing a public asset and transferring its value to wealthy, private individuals. People generally end up paying more for less as a result of the public service loss.
McKibben also makes a good case for some measure of equity in poor communities.” To some degree public services attempt to level the playing field. Poor people may not own a car, but they can ride the subway or bus. Poor and rural people can mail a letter for the same price as a wealthy person in the city. Public schools like the Post Office serve all community students. They often cross the economic and racial divide, and they must remain a public service.
I think it’s well past time to re-establish the Post Office as a constitutional government office and undo all the Reagan Regime subversions which turned it into a pseudo-corporation. It was never purposed to be profit-greedy business but a necessary function of a democratic republic.
Pretty much all the current problems can be traced back to Ronny “Bedtime for Bonzo ” Raygun.
But of course, he was such a nice guy. Such a fine upstanding moral character.
See charts in this thorough article from Steve Hutkins, editor of savethepostoffice.com.
Data provided by USPS, which tracks % on-time delivery wkly & reports results qtrly. Qytrly report including July isn’t out yet, but USPS provided wkly reports to him & in presentations to business customers. Despite pandemic, USPS was managing ontime delivery 90-95% — until July, after DeJoy was installed & implemented “efficiency”– canceling overtime, removing drop boxes, & destroying mail-sorting eqpt. Ontime delivery across the nation’s postal districts immediately tanked to 79%– in some districts as low as 70%.
Open link & scroll to Aug 21 article, “Watchdog asks postal regulator to seek USPS data on mail delays”: https://www.savethepostoffice.com
Funny…now I know what happened. My sister lives in a DE seaside town. Amazon packages are delivered via USPS. Most of her deliveries late June /early July were “no show” by the Amazon delivery date (held up in Baltimore MD) and when she contacted Amazon, she was refunded $$$….and then the package would show up 5-10 days later. What a way to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
DeJoy would have us believe that the diminished efficiency is not intentional, even though he is a big Trump donor and owns his own logistics company. More lies from Trumplandia!
My sister has been making cloth masks & sending to relatives. She sent us some in late April– during pandemic lockdown in our two states– that arrived in 3 days. The batch she sent in early July [new improved design] never arrived. She ended up overnighting us some certified at a cost of $25 in late July to make sure we got them for our MA vacation.
This is as good a place to post this as any: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/08/22/a-lesser-evil-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
Incidentally, we all still do remember that Biden voted for the Bush era Post Office pension bill that crippled the Post Office in the first place, right?
Dienne,
I have a question for you:
Your constant criticism of Biden and Harris has only one purpose.
You made me misty-eyed when you posted a song! Girl!
It was passed during a lame duck session with unanimous consent in the Senate and little discussion and by voice vote (no record) in the House. Sound suspicious? Given that it was introduced with bipartisan support I wonder if we need to know a little bit more about its history and its other provisions before we castigate Joe biden and his evil empire.
This latest GOP attack on the USPS is really criminal. The intentional hobbling and crippling of a vital public service should disqualify the GOP hacks from ever holding office again in this country. However, we have a huge contingent of people who constantly vote against their own best interests because they are so beholden to such flame throwers as Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Hannity, Lou Dobbs, O’Reilly, etc., ad nauseam.
If DeJoy is lying and he is following direct orders or a wink-wink nod-nod to disrupt the election that’s a bigger scandal than… last week’s scandal of the week.
If DeJoy is telling the truth – election aside – and the USPS needs an overhaul, then his narrative and story doesn’t matter, today – so deal with that later.
What does matter is the President has admitted he wants SUPPRESS VOTING. Using the USPS deal just happens to be an opportunity of which he is taking advantage.
“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting; they just can’t have it.”
So where’s the outrage about that? The man wants to call in troops and poll watchers to intimidate voters for which they were court order restrained in 1982.
The media and the DNC can’t let the post office become the issue. The president admitting he wants to undermine the election should bring forth another round of impeachment charges.
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
Stop the Republican Party and Donald-Eek-Thinly-Skin-Always-Lying-Trump from destroying OUR (the people) U.S. Post Office.
It is interesting how many rural Americans are for Trump. If democrats tried to understand this, they might have a better chance to win the election. Demonizing Trump will not win over those on the Conservative state of mind.
My son lives in a rural area and while he is not a Trump supporter, I think he understands and agrees with some of the feelings that have lead to Trump support. People where he lives are used to handling things for themselves, and while they appreciate a helping hand, they prefer it be their neighbors. In their minds, government “help” often comes with a string of regulations that make life more difficult and take away personal agency. I can’t fault them for that feeling that government/bureaucracy is not very good at cleaning out the dead wood but just seems to add on layers.
I wonder if the good folks in those rural areas are rejecting Social Security and Medicare. If they really want to reject government aid, that’s a good place to start.
The usual grumbles are about city folk who move to the country and then want city regulation. When your neighbor lives a half mile down the road, and your town center is a few blocks long, zoning seems like overkill. In some ways, it is akin to the problems of the urban lower classes. The developers move in to “improve” your neighborhood, and all of a sudden, you can’t afford it any longer.
There’s a style of ingratitude born of taking for granted all the things a civilized democratic society does for “Folks Like Us” — roads and bridges, postal system, public schools, rural electrification, internet as it was in the beginning, patent office, police and armed forces, airports and air traffic controllers, disaster relief, too many things to mention — when it’s stuff we need, when we need it, we just know we’re entitled to it and it falls form the sky like manna from heaven.
It’s only them damn liberals and their socialism when Other Folks need it. It’s a life of blissful unconsciousness shared by the GDIs (goddamned independents) of the rural republicans and the Western State Way, the rugged individualist fantasies of the corporate libertarian, and the Self-Made Men at the top of the ruling class.
You’d think they’d at least pipe down a little for the duration of the hurricane and now the derecho season … but no, the bliss of their ignorance runs too deep.
I would like to hear from some people who have lived in rural areas for a long time. I certainly don’t count. I’m just one of those “damned liberals and socialists” who vacation there. I do have family beyond my son who live(d) in a rural community. (College educated relatives, even, if you can believe that!) I really have trouble with the blanket characterization of rural communities the same way we blame them for labeling all suburban/urban dwellers as libtards. We really need people in government who see beyond the labels and stereotypes and LISTEN. Somewhere in between the extremes are areas where agreement can be reached. Public schools and P.O.s come to mind for a start. Policing and fires are often handled quite differently in rural areas. If you don’t have a fire pond chances are whatever caught fire is “toast” and the local police station may be two or three towns over. People make do. It’s just part of life. There are a lot of people “making do” right now, both country and city. I will vote for the Biden/Harris ticket because I see a team that will listen to everyone and govern everyone. They won’t get it perfect for anyone, but if you demand “perfection,” whatever that is, you might try the Pearly Gates ( and I don’t mean Bill and Melinda).
From the age of five till I left for college (1954–1967), aside from a couple of temporary transplants where the oil fields took my Dad and a brief but excruciating stint in a military school, I lived in what was mainly a cotton-pickin’ farm town of about 10,000 Texican souls. I despair of even trying to convey what a different sort of place that was then from what all the cliches and stereotypes, just or unjust, about Texas today no doubt paint in most folks’ minds.
Maybe I can give a hint by pointing out that Texas was still a dyed-in-the-blue-jeans Democrat State when I left it, at least where I lived, for all their staid and stoic conservatism, you know, what conservatives used to be. And that, I guess, was largely because the Depression was still fresh in everyone or their parents’ minds and they knew it was FDR and the New Deal that saved their bacon and continued to support their market prices. No bitchin’ about socialism there, at least not from anyone who was half-aware of what side of the aisle their bread was buttered on.
What happened after I left I do not know — some say it was on account of some New York lawyers who tried to steal their oil rights — but I personally think it’s just that some lessons have to be learned anew, and always the hardest possible way.