Top blogging in August

At No. 1 was an old one from 2018, highly relevant with last Sunday's Movement for a People's Party convention, and that is "Roses, sunflowers and red flags on Twitter." Roses being the DSA Roseys, ie, Berniecrats as today's Roseys, behind MPP, sunflowers being the Greens (which I am for now) and red flags being socialists, which I am of some sort, or communists, which I will never be.

Speaking of? No. 2 was "Fuck the Movement for a People's Party."

No. 3, from early in August, was "Georgia schools get an F on COVID after one week."

No. 4 is an old favorite, trending again: "Timothy Treadwell was really fricking nuts." And he was!

No. 5 is from just this last week, about The Three Sleezekeeters of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, state Sen. Pat Fallon and state Rep. Drew Springer on the timing of a special election to fill Fallon's seat.

No. 6? One with personal relevance. I dissected Kroger's Kabuki theater PR bullshit over the coronavirus, masks, and "Kroger Andy" in Louisville. (I've started boycotting Kroger.)

No. 7? As I know professionally, because they're not going to save mail in general, No, FedEx and UPS aren't going to save mail voting.

No. 8 and 9 are related. No 8 is my discussion of "Coronavirus 2021 and beyond," starting with the fact that we WILL NOT have a vaccine both safe and effective by the end of this year.

No. 9 was this week's installment of my split version of the Texas Progressives roundup, looking at coronavirus, reinfection, Deborah Birx a Trump toady again, Stephen Hahn maybe starting to be, and much more.

No. 10? It's about how both L//l-libertarians and neoliberal Democrats refuse to recognize the fact that behavioral economics undercuts their economic ideas base.

No, FedEx and UPS aren't going to "save" mail voting

Texas is one of most states of the union where the Postal Service has said it cannot guarantee delivery of mail ballots to meet state law. How much is the fault of the USPS and specifically the postmaster general, per Vice, and how much is general systemic issues, per Vox, is a matter of debate. To a degree. Even if part of this is systemic, Vice's Aaron Gordon has repeatedly had the goods on USPS actions that seem deliberate by new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, though Gordon does note system issues at the last link, and also notes that the destruction of mail sorters started before DeJoy took over.

Adding to the whole problem is Trump's open admission that he doesn't want states to expand vote by mail, so if he starves the USPS beast ....

Further adding to the problem is the drive to kill the USPS is not new. Wall Street on Parade notes that it's got Koch money behind it, and the Kochs themselves have had this as one of their libertarian wet dreams for 40 years.

The sad part is that many librulz on Twitter think either FedEx, UPS, or both, is the answer. Reality? One: Neither has the experience with USPS volume. Two: Neither has the equipment to handle first-class mail. Outside of packages, there's other types of mail, too. Second class is your "community" type newspapers sent by mail, newsletters, and magazines. National trade groups have asked and neither FedEx nor UPS wants them. In the long haul, neither would want first-class mail unless rural free delivery were ended. That's something that red-state, especially rural red-state, legislators continue to refuse to discuss.

How Charles and David Koch would explain all of these facts, I have no idea. I don't think they've ever been directly confronted with it. 

Besides, as both companies note, they legally cannot deliver vote-by-mail ballot. Or any other first-class mail. (That piece is not bad on whether FedEx and UPS, both legally and in terms of infrastructure, CAN do first-class mail, including ballots, right now. It's a "fail" in that it doesn't ask either company if they WANT TO in the future.)

AP follows with a question and answer explainer. It notes that the five states that already have universal vote-by-mail options should still be OK. Other states expecting a surge in mail ballot requests? Not. And, it's true that local and state election officials, as well as the USPS, aren't prepared for this.

The real problem? Besides the prefunding of USPS pensions, is the whole issue of expecting the Postal Service to be making money. Pre-1971, the old, socialist (government ownership of the means of "mail production") US Post Office was NOT expected to do so at all. But? Neoliberal national Dems in the left hand of the duopoly won't tell you that. Reminder: Almost all Democrats joined almost all Republicans in washing their hands of Post Office problems by creating the USPS. (Nixon saw the 1970 postal workers strike as the key to gutting the old Post Office.) Now, the old Post Office wasn't perfect. And it needed investments in things like ... mail sorting machines, to be anachronistically ironic. It also needed to adjust to the new age of delivery; it was at this general time that mail delivery by plane passed that by rail and then that separate airmail rates were gotten rid of, specifically, in 1976, but the handwriting was on the wall at this time. But, in the past, the government would have funded the sorting machines, and other needed changes, out of the general budget. Instead, and going along with Richard Nixon engaging in a bit of would-be strikebreaking, both parties decided to agree on one of the first major neoliberal actions in D.C. and create the Postal Service.

And, we're in Kabuki theater, Dem-style, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks about recalling the House early from recess over the issue. If Mitch the Turtle doesn't do the same for the Senate, this is bupkis. Beyond that, except possible Sanders and a few others, no Congressional Dems want to tackle the real issues. Even Dems generally don't talk about the pension prefunding boat anchor, and about nobody outside of Sanders may mention things like postal banking.

Sidebar: Nick Harper cleans up some misconceptions, such as the idea that the Constitution mandates some sort of government postal operations (it doesn't explicitly, but I would argue it does so implicitly [update: as the Constitution mandates the federal government has responsibility for estabilishing post offices as well as post roads, and if we want to go all originalist, private postal services for the masses didn't exist in any country of the world back then]), that the USPS is supposed to prefund pensions (only retiree health care) and that it's doing so right now (it's not). That said, his piece is a narrow fiscal framing issue, which doesn't tell how we got here, and also doesn't tell people that FedEx and UPS don't want your mail. 

(Oh, and per a cry by modern left-liberals and beyond? The old Post Office also had postal banking.)

More neoliberal MSM-blog stupid Trump bashing on international postal rates and Chinese cheap costs

File this one from Talking Points Memo, and the link within TPM from Vox, as with many, under "the neoliberal mainstream media not getting it." Burying the lede about Trump having legitimate beefs with the Universal Postal Union as backdoor vote suppression (TPM) is just stupid. Vox burying the lede on UPU member listing is almost as bad.

I mean, the Paris climate change accord essentially moved China out of "developing nation" to "semi-developed nation status. Why can't the UPU do the same? The analysis of Vox is all wet otherwise, unless Trump expands this to a mail trade war beyond China. And, Jen Kirby, the steno there, does give up the game when she says that "experts tell me ... a better deal ... is the most likely scenario."

If the concern really is about overseas voters, as in TPM, Bill Daniels over at Kuff (where I first saw this) has the easy solution. You bring them to an embassy or consulate, or mail them there, in China or whatever foreign country you the voter live, and they go to America by diplomatic pouch. That, in turn would address states' concerns about mail time stamps, as well.

Otherwise, effect-wise, this isn't that much different from a carbon tariff, which I highly support (and which would require a carbon tax first). And, otherwise, this strikes me overall as more #TheResistance stupidity.

As far as what an agreement would do in the big picture?

Not much. If this makes the made-in-China crap too expensive to be made in China then shipped to the USofA, those jobs won't come here. They'll move to places like Vietnam.

Actually, if we're lucky, and not wishing people out of work, but ...

If we're lucky, some of those jobs will disappear, and more importantly, the made-in-China crap created in those jobs will simply disappear.

Americans don't need this cheap crap. Dollar stores don't need to sell it.

We need to de-capitalize away from some of this stuff.

That's especially true because a lot of this is made with oil-derived plastics. (Not that Trump is thinking about climate change and environmental degradation.)

Postal Service could default? Blame government

A "wow" story indeed. Facing a deficit of as much as $9.2 billion, and a $5.5 billion payment due the end of this month USPS is saying it could shut down by winter.

Here's the problem, in part, though the NYT bollixes things by noting this is an apples-and-oranges comparison in general, or, vis-a-vis FedEx, apples and broccoli:

At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.

It's apples-and-oranges with both because neither one delivers mail, just packages. And, neither one would touch it as long as  the old Rural Free Delivery requirement is in place.

It's apples-and-broccoli with FedEx because, unlike UPS and USPS both, FedEx isn't unionized.

That said, speaking of RFD, more rural post offices will have to be shut. Period. End of story. As for the Norman Rockwell image of rural America being shattered? There was a time, back when, when most those burgs and unincorporated hamlets didn't have post offices. And before RFD. The post offices, at least, need to go.

So, too, does Saturday mail delivery. Even if it only cuts a small portion of the budget, as claimed in the story. (That said, making the layoffs that ending Saturday delivery would allow would save more than just the 2 percent of ending Saturday delivery.)

Anyway, the Saturday delivery issue speaks to another problem. This is one area where the undemocratic Senate, not undemocratic in the sense of GOP filibustering but in the sense of equal representation of all states, has the potential to exacerbate the problem.

Other solutions? I don't necessarily want us to go Europe and have USPS enter the commercial sales arena. That said, putting more post offices inside commercial buildings isn't a bad idea. But, we're not worried about needing new post offices in most the country.

As for postal workers being alarmed and angry? Hey, if you were dumb enough, selfish enough, or a mix of both, in the personage of your union leadership, to push for a no-layoff contract in May, at the same time Patrick Donahoe as postmaster general was dumb enough or threatened enough by strike talk to grant it, you should look in the mirror. That was the time to negotiate good layoff terms instead of insisting on a no-layoff clause.

You'd better act now, Mr. Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, before Darrell Issa gets nutbar momentum behind his idea of going nuclear on your contracts.

Donahoe is talking about wanting to lay off one-third the force. Or one-fifth. I don't know which, because this story is a fuck-up there, by reporting both, and either 100,000 or 220,000 workers, in two different locations in the story.

That's only one of a number of problems with the story. The reporter doesn't mention how low postal rates are here compared to most of the world; how, in Europe, postal privatization is carefully regulated, details of postal pension plans and more information that would undercut part of the trend of the article.

Wingnuts like Issa want to privatize USPS while ignoring that private parcel service has been cherry-picking, that the government has  forced USPS into much of its problems, that UPS at least can be sucky on service and more.

Fix USPS — just not the Big Biz way

I agree with Business Week — the United States Postal Service is in serious financial trouble and needs help.

But, not what it proposes.

First, there's a big geographic and population spread difference between the U.S. and Europe, by and large.

Most privatization schemes ignore how much more rural "flyover" country is in the US is compared to anything in Europe this side of Russia. And, those older Red State rural voters who still mail lot of stuff will squawk if it's a buck a letter.

Scanning mail and converting it to digital formats? Would be great if broadband Internet, especially in rural areas, is as fast and reliable as in Europe. But it ain't, in part because union-busting Big Biz types that Business Week loves, and their GOP allies in Congress, vehemently oppose the government here getting involved with improving that.

But, given the way the GOP eats its young, like a threat to refuse disaster aid to VERY "reddish" Joplin, Mo., don't doubt it would do that, i.e., privatize the mail without requiring the retention of rural free delivery, that is, rural rates the same as urban ones. Ditto on Red State GOPer switching USPS to digitally-scanned mail without improving infrastructure. When you see how much the GOP refuses to pay for road and bridge upgrades, you know this ain't happening.

"Digital mail" in its other aspects? Utilities and other folks already have online bill-pay; that part of digital mail would go nowhere in the U.S.

NOT mentioned in this biz-friendly story — increasing the price of junk mail. On the revenue side, that would vastly help USPs, as well as unclogging mailboxes. Also not mentioned, and related — a comparison of U.S. and European junk mail rates.

Otherwise, this article seems to be an exercise in singing the praises of privatization, and of union-bashing. No shock, coming from an oftimes kinder, gentler, subtler version of Faux News that is Bloomberg.