U.S. Postal Service, "Relaxed Standards"

Still working this job at crisis overtime levels, which in itself shows this is not so much about saving money as about eliminating jobs, unions and the public in public service. Because of this I have not the actual time to conduct this thread so I can proudly claim I share the management's failure to communicate to the American people.

First class mail in point of fact, which CAN be delivered overnight, at least to those scattered zones which are still left to do after the collection mail arrives is simply shoved aside. IF there is a need to pump up the numbers to prevent logjams(this supposed to be a grand opportunity to regulate the mail flow but is spoiled by naive use of computer projections) THEN advertising mail is advanced. Granted this uneven handling in what has turned out to be general chaos can affect that cut rate standard class mail too. But why should mailers tolerate paying a bit more for bulk first class mailings that get delayed or advanced?

Would there be an uptick in people trying to avoid personal harm in purchasing priority(2 day guarantee only) or the bargain of postal Express mail? So much has been attempted with this sweeping change- and any change is mishandled and expensive and destructive of service especially in the Bush holdovers controlling the upper echelons.

A small attempt so far has started in the House to reverse this. In the enactment, opposed by the government and postal regulators purposely subverted by the GOP Congress in particular, I would like to comment on one pattern.

Generally this type of gutting precedes dismantling of a service while claiming otherwise. Remember Special Delivery? Probably not. First you gut the service even without challenging the standards, removing workers or the ability to process or care for the operation. Many other examples through the decades. Then you phase it out. SOP to make it fail first before arguing that it needs to be replaced. Kind of progressive in a way.

So goes first class mail itself without a whisper of juggernaut wheels. When service is "relaxed" it is no such thing. Overnight delivery of local mail has been hardcore destroyed and reasons created that only partially justify the crime. Savings are secondary to the "plan" while the attitude, rampant, not creeping, is that first class mail standards per se don't matter anymore. A deadly attitude among management and unprecedented for the already shaken to the roots work force- which by the way still gets the job done.
A lot of what workers could do to make the old standards happen has been stripped away in very costly fashion.

The national infrastructure profits enormously from and still relies on the service- which instead is getting the "business" from profiteers who have only personal and short gain in mind.

You already pay a hidden "stamp tax" to support the machinations of privatizers who have been bold enough to ask for the profit making shrink wrapped processing installations while your stamps, the return of government subsidies(hence even more tax spending and political interference on behalf of private profit) will sustain the infrastructure.

Of course once ALL the mail is either advertising or overnight or shipping the infrastructure might very well- and prematurely collapse simply by people taking the box down and the irony of expensive door to door delivery taking its place. I suppose when everyone has computers and local 3-d printers such a national infrastructure would naturally collapse- but first the vultures.

Even the mailer Pitney Bowes and titillating stock offerings could thrive in the short run before running their own business into the ground along with the infrastructure, but the stockholders and billionaires will just run to another wanderer in the American desert of public responsibility. Pitney Bowes by the way offfered an expert reform which seems to guide like the Holy Spirit the USPS management despite all protests to the contrary. Pitney Bowes which on the first week of relaxed standards screwed up thousands upon thousands of first class imprint letters through mislabeled trays(at least locally, probably millions nationally considering the sweep of the errors).

But, as i Have said, the impetus of all this is immediately defraud the stamp buyer of first class service and waste millions on a tragically mismanaged sweeping and hasty "reform" and in the long run shove citizen communication wholly aside in favor of consumer marketing mail.

When the economy goes up the postal service profit precedes or follows despite the usual doom and the never quite arriving future replacement of electric universal coverage. The vultures could care less. For them the future is a meal. And that meal has several courses of unions, money and you.
Will Forever stamps only have ironic significance from here on? Will consumers launch a class action lawsuit for that 49 cent betrayal?

Might as well make Mitt Romney Postmaster General.