They do manage to make it sound petty that we expect to get Saturday delivery. And just plain out-of-touch when most of us send letters by email these days.
Let Jon Stewart add a little perspective here:
This would be the time, if we were a nation seeking to do better rather than cheaper, when neighborhood post offices would be allowed to provide a drop-off/pick-up point for private delivery services for a fee, rather than private companies lobbying to kill public mail service in order to lose the competition.
Because government does do it better, and cheaper. Government provides decent jobs that provide a service that will never, ever be offered by private industry.
USPS provides the same service to the poor and those living in rural areas that it gives to those in the cities and suburbs. Despite its regular, and it pains me to say it, not unreasonable cost increases, it continues to provide more for less than private companies.
And I have to say that both Jon Stewart and Claire McCaskill miss the point: this government service still provides a lifeline to those of us without internet, and there are far too many of us out here. It is not a matter of making the postal service profitable, any more than a public option for health care should be profitable. It is a service that is necessary and affordable because there is no profit motive. And we need to be very aware of how out-of-touch most of us are regarding the many, many people who continue to live for, and even because of, their mail delivery.
And what will happen when our republican Congress does kill the postal service? Private service will become even more expensive, and will provide less.
This is the same logic, in reverse, that applies to health care. If ObamaCare included a public option, private companies would have been forced to compete with more options and lower costs. Which is why the insurance industry fought like rabid dogs against even the mildest form of a public option. And why they continue to fight with dollars and bought politicians to kill ObamaCare, and for that matter, Medicare.
I wonder if we will fight back hard enough as the right wing politicians, in the pocket of the corporations, continue to dismantle our government.
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