By Chuck Zlatkin for Big Apple Coffee Party
“The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.”
—Title 39. U.S. Code as adopted in the
Postal Reorganization Act
On March 23, 2021, the United States Postal Service released “Delivering for America — “Our Vision and Ten-Year Plan to Achieve Financial Sustainability Service Excellence.” The 57-page document begins with a Letter from the Postmaster General and the Chairman of the United States Postal Service Board of Governors. The two of them signed the presentation. Louis DeJoy is the 75th Postmaster General of the United States. Ron A. Bloom is the current Chair of the Postal Board of Governors, this is their plan.
Members of the press and elected officials in Congress have studied the plan. The plan clearly calls for policies that will slow delivery of the mail dramatically, while raising prices, shortening hours at post offices, and with the promise of more cutbacks in service to come. Ostensibly, the plan is to help the Postal Service deal with the expected financial shortfall over the next ten years. The implementation of this plan as written will drive people away from using the Postal Service, eventually bringing about its demise. What is billed as a rescue plan is actually the de facto privatization of the Postal Service. DeJoy and Bloom make one think of the ancient proverb, “A fish rots down from the head.” And the more that is learned about who Louis DeJoy and Ron A. Bloom are, how they got into the positions they now hold, and how they do business, the more we can understand that the public Postal Service is right now threatened most by those in charge of it.