White House rejects bailout for Postal Service battered by coronavirus

[postareale]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/wh ... r-BB12ub09

White House rejects bailout for Postal Service battered by coronavirus

By Jacob Bogage
The Washington Post

Screen Shot 2020-04-12 at 07.22.26.png

Through rain, sleet, hail and even a pandemic, mail carriers serve every address in the United States, but the coronavirus crisis is shaking the foundation of the U.S. Postal Service in new and dire ways.

The Postal Service’s decades-long financial troubles have worsened dramatically as the volume of the kind of mail that pays the bills at that agency ― first-class and marketing mail ― withers during the pandemic. The USPS needs an infusion of money, and President Trump has blocked potential emergency funding for the agency that employs around 600,000 workers, repeating instead the false claim that higher rates for Internet shipping companies Amazon, FedEx and UPS would right the service’s budget.

Trump threatened to veto the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or Cares, Act if the legislation contained any money to directly bail out the postal agency, according to a senior Trump Administration official and a congressional official.

“We told them very clearly that the president was not going to sign the bill if [money for the Postal Service] was in it,” the Trump Administration official said. “I don’t know if we used the v-bomb but the president was not going to sign it, and we told them that.”

Instead, Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) added a last minute $10 billion Treasury Department loan to the Cares Act, to keep the agency on firmer ground through the spring of 2020, according to a Democratic committee aide.

Lawmakers had originally agreed to a $13 billion direct grant of money to the Postal Service, which wouldn’t have had to be repaid. But that effort was blocked by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who warned such a move could blow up the relief bill. A committee aide said Mnuchin told lawmakers during negotiations: “You can have a loan or you can have nothing at all.”

Only the $10 billion loan to the Postal Service made it into law, over Mnuchin’s objections.

Without the loan, which still has not been approved by the Treasury Department, USPS would be “financially illiquid,” by Sept. 30, according to estimates provided to lawmakers. Advocates for the Postal Service worry the agency is in a vulnerable position. As its main funding source dwindles, the Postal Service could be seen as ripe for a makeover; conservatives have long talked about privatizing the mail delivery in the United States.

The Postal Service projects it will lose $2 billion each month through the coronavirus recession, while postal workers maintain the nationwide service of delivering essential mail and parcels, such as prescriptions, food and household necessities, to fill in the gaps for other delivery companies.

That work often comes at great personal risk. Nearly 500 postal workers have tested positive for the coronavirus and 462 others are presumptive positives, USPS leaders told lawmakers. Nineteen have died; more than 6,000 are in self-quarantine because of exposure.

And while the Trump Administration and Mnuchin pushed through private-sector bailouts in the Cares Act — $350 billion to the Small Business Administration loan program, $29 billion to passenger airlines and air cargo carriers, and economic incentives for the construction, energy and life sciences industries, among others — Mnuchin has signaled any postal relief funds in a “Phase IV” stimulus package currently under negotiation would amount to a poison pill.

Postmaster General Megan Brennan asked lawmakers Thursday for another $50 billion — $25 billion to offset lost revenue from declining mail volume due to the coronavirus and $25 billion for “modernization” — plus another $25 billion Treasury loan and a mechanism to pay down $14 billion in existing public debt.

House Democrats, led by Virginia Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, cautioned that without the funding, the Postal Service may not make it past September without missing payrolls or service interruptions. Senate Republicans insist the $10 billion loan from the Cares Act provided sufficient short-term liquidity, the staffer said, and the Senate would not vote to extend more money to an agency unlikely to make good on its borrowing.

“I’m so frustrated at how difficult it has been for a long time to galvanize attention and action around an essential service,” Connolly said in a phone interview. “And maybe the pandemic forces us all to refocus on this service and how essential it is and how we need to fix it while we can before it gets into critical condition.”

Trump has long been antagonistic of the post office, calling it once in a tweet Amazon’s “delivery boy.” The Postal Service often serves as a vendor for Amazon, UPS, FedEx and other shipping companies, delivering the “last mile” service to often rural and remote areas. It is a crucial service for the Postal Service, for which package delivery is a growing part of its business.

Much of Trump’s invective on the Postal Service is aimed at Amazon’s founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. Trump has advocated for increasing the prices on Amazon deliveries, against the recommendation of shipping experts and the agency’s own Board of Governors, a majority of whom Trump appointed.

“They should raise, they have to raise the prices to these companies that walk in and drop thousands of packages on the floor of the post office and say, ‘Deliver it',” Trump said at a news conference Wednesday. “And they make money, but the post office gets killed. Okay? So they ought to do that and we are looking into it and we’ve been pushing them now for over a year.”

But raising rates too much would lead private-sector competitors to develop their own cheaper methods to deliver packages, said Lori Rectanus, director of physical infrastructure at the Government Accountability Office. And even if a rate increase generates revenue, the total would be marginal to the total U.S. Postal Service debt, almost all of which comes from a congressional requirement to prepay pension and retiree health care costs for all employees, even those who haven’t yet retired.

Under normal market conditions, the Postal Service nearly breaks even, save for the pension account debt, despite cratering volume on deliveries in recent years. In 2010, USPS delivered 77.6 billion items of first-class mail, on which it makes a lucrative profit margin. In 2019, it only delivered 54.9 billion first-class items. The service handled 3.1 billion packages in 2010, and 6.2 billion in 2019, although processing packages doesn’t earn the agency as much revenue as first-class mail delivery.

But the coronavirus has completely upended consumer behavior and the quantity of items in the mail. Volume in the first week of March declined 30 percent, postal agency officials told lawmakers. At the end of June, the agency projects volume to be down 50 percent, and it could lose $23 billion over the next 18 months.

“We are at a critical juncture in the life of the Postal Service,” Brennan, the postmaster general, said in a statement. “At a time when America needs the Postal Service more than ever, the reason we are so needed is having a devastating effect on our business.”

The Postal Service has faced financial troubles for more than a decade, as digital communication morphed and took off, giving lawmakers many opportunities to debate its future. The Postal Service is so foundational to the country that it’s enumerated in the Constitution.

The agency’s troubles have renewed conservative conversations about structural changes in the agency that would force it to act more like a corporation, with steps such as eliminating the prepaid pension requirement, and easing its universal service obligation to deliver to every address in the United States, including ones so remote.

“If we’re concerned about the Postal Service and its workers,” said Romina Boccia, an economist at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, “the best thing we can do is to free up the Postal Service to operate like a business so they can try to get back into the black.”

[PostmanBitesDog]

This effing sucks the big one. Only yesterday I was watching this news report from CBS Denver...



The U.S. mail carriers are barely getting by with whatever personal protective equipment that's issued to them, and with staggered working hours and social-distancing signs and floor markings in their sorting offices. But then this bombshell from the White House lands. What's the bet the Republicans wanted to hamper the vote-by-mail ballots that the U.S.P.S. were prepared to deliver later this year?

FactCheck.org (April 10, 2020) - Trump’s Latest Voter Fraud Misinformation

Election experts told us that Trump is exaggerating the amount of voter fraud via mail-in ballots. They say it is more common than in-person voting fraud (something that Trump has repeatedly distorted), but still rare.
[...]
Trump ended his attack on mail-in voting on April 8 with his usual call for voter identification laws that require voters to present valid identification at a polling place in order to be allowed to vote. Voter ID laws are justified, he said, because, “there’s a lot of fraudulent voting going on in this country.”
As we have written before, numerous researchers who have studied the issue, say it’s simply not true that “there’s a lot of fraudulent voting” in the U.S.

[PostmanBitesDog]

A petition by U.S. Mail Not For Sale: Tell Congress: During This Pandemic, Support Our Public Postal Service

US Mail.jpg

The US Mail Not for Sale is a worker-led campaign sponsored by the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers. The campaign brings together labor unions, elected officials, member organizations of A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service, community supporters and the public to fight plans to sell the public Postal Service to the highest bidder.

[SpacePhoenix]

[Youtube]https://youtu.be/SHxVvAVM-c4?t=120[/Youtube]

Is it me or does it look like he's using his own car?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Is it me or does it look like he's using his own car?

Its you

[SpacePhoenix]

Looks like USPS security standards aren't as strict as RMs. I'm surprised that the US equivalent of OFCOM would allow them to use a vehicle that could be broken into so easily

[NWpostie]

Different county different standards, breaking into cars like is not that common, its an armed society and with that is certain trepedition in case the owner haszahand gun within reach, tempering with mail is a federal offence not state, prison conditions differs.
Easier targets elsewhere.

In the UK all they get is a slap on the twist

[postareale]

Different county different standards, breaking into cars like is not that common, its an armed society and with that is certain trepedition in case the owner haszahand gun within reach, tampering with mail is a federal offence not state, prison conditions differs.
Easier targets elsewhere. In the UK all they get is a slap on the twist

NWpostie's comments are spot on. US Postal Service has it's own separate law enforcement agency, the US Postal Inspection Service (https://www.uspis.gov/). Postal Inspector have police powers, are armed and carry 12 gauge shotguns in the trunk of their vehicles.

Check out this link, "Former postal worker sentenced to nearly five years for stealing":

https://www.wfmj.com/story/41284510/for ... gift-cards

This type of jail term for mail theft is fairly common in the USA.

[PostmanBitesDog]

Different county different standards, breaking into cars like is not that common, its an armed society and with that is certain trepedition in case the owner haszahand gun within reach, tampering with mail is a federal offence not state, prison conditions differs.
Easier targets elsewhere. In the UK all they get is a slap on the twist

US Postal Service has it's own separate law enforcement agency, the US Postal Inspection Service (https://www.uspis.gov/). Postal Inspector have police powers, are armed and carry 12 gauge shotguns in the trunk of their vehicles.

That's correct. It depends on the type of employee within the United States Postal Service (U.S.P.S.). Indeed, the law enforcement branch of the U.S.P.S. - the United States Postal Inspection Service (U.S.P.I.S.) - has about five-hundred uniformed Postal Police Officers who're licensed to carry firearms and are sworn to protect the postal workers. They also provide security at the larger postal facilities throughout the country, as well as escorting highly valuable mail dispatch assignments, and providing armed assistance alongside Postal Inspectors when those inspectors are executing search, seizure, and arrest warrants.

US Postal Police Officer.jpg

US Postal Inspector.jpg

But the actual mail carriers themselves (approximately 600,000 in the U.S.) are forbidden from carrying firearms. In fact there was a law enacted by Congress in 1972 following a spate of workplace gun violence whereby a disgruntled postal worker would enter their sorting facilities with an armed weapon and cause a massacre (leading to the phrase "going postal").

As far as delivering firearms to customers, the United States Postal Service does it, but under special guidelines as a Restricted Matter.

By the way, oversight of the U.S.P.S. is done by the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General (O.I.G.), who reports to Congress and to the postal service's nine Presidential-appointed Governors. The oversight role was created in 1996. The top rank in the U.S.P.S. is the U.S. Postmaster General. It was first held by Benjamin Franklin, while today the position is held by Megan Brennan.

[SpacePhoenix]

Sounds like they're kinda a cross between IB and CASHCO

[postareale]

You should check out the classic 1936 B & W Movie, Postal Inspector:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuNWBQDaKWw

Postal inspectors track down money stolen from a railroad car.

Also the 1990s era TV movie series "The Inspectors":

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144250/pl ... _=tt_ov_pl

U.S Postal Inspectors are called in when a suburban couple are killed by a mail bomb. Suspicion immediately falls on the couple's estranged and heavily in debt son, who also just happens to be a Navy munitions expert. But investigations reveal that he is on the run from a past event in his life that is associated with the bombings.

[PostmanBitesDog]

Trump's doing such a great job, everyone with the coronavirus should give him a hug.

[PostmanBitesDog]

The latest...

Washington Post (July 14, 2020) - Postal Service Memos Detail ‘Difficult’ Changes, Including Slower Mail Delivery

The new head of the U.S. Postal Service established major operational changes Monday that could slow down mail delivery, warning employees the agency would not survive unless it made “difficult” changes to cut costs. But critics say such a philosophical sea change would sacrifice operational efficiency and cede its competitive edge to UPS, FedEx and other private-sector rivals.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told employees to leave mail behind at distribution centers if it delayed letter carriers from their routes, according to internal USPS documents obtained by The Washington Post and verified by the American Postal Workers Union and three people with knowledge of their contents, but who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

“If the plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day,” according to a document titled, “New PMG’s [Postmaster General’s] expectations and plan.” Traditionally, postal workers are trained not to leave letters behind and to make multiple delivery trips to ensure timely distribution of letters and parcels.

The memo cited U.S. Steel, a onetime industry titan that was slow to adapt to market changes, to illustrate what is at stake. “In 1975 they were the largest company in the world,” the memo states. “They are gone.” (U.S. Steel is a $1.7 billion company with 27,500 employees.)

Analysts say the documents present a stark reimagining of the USPS that could chase away customers — especially if the White House gets the steep package rate increases it wants — and put the already beleaguered agency in deeper financial peril as private-sector competitors embark on hiring sprees to build out their own delivery networks.

Congress authorized the USPS to borrow an additional $10 billion from the Treasury Department for emergency operations in an early coronavirus relief bill. But postal leaders have yet to access the money over disagreements with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who attached terms on the loan that would turn over operations of much of the Postal Service to his department.

The Postal Service’s governing board appointed DeJoy, a major Trump donor and seasoned logistics executive, in the middle of that back-and-forth.

Steep drop-offs in first-class and marketing mail, the Postal Service’s most profitable items, have exacerbated the USPS’s cash crisis; postal leaders predicted at the start of the pandemic that their agency would be insolvent by October without congressional intervention. Single-piece, first-class mail volume fell 15 to 20 percent week to week in April and May, agency leaders told lawmakers last month. Marketing mail, the hardest-hit segment, tumbled 30 to 50 percent week to week during the same period.

Skyrocketing package volume, up 60 to 80 percent in May as the coronavirus pandemic made consumers more reliant on delivery services, has propped up the Postal Service’s finances and staved off immediate financial calamity. But the packages also have intensified the USPS’s competition with Amazon, FedEx and UPS, industry leaders looking to capitalize on enduring changes in consumer habits brought on by shelter-in-place orders. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

The Trump administration has consolidated control over the Postal Service, traditionally an apolitical institution, during the pandemic by making a financial lifeline for the nation’s mail service contingent upon the White House political agenda. President Trump in April called the agency “a joke” and demanded it quadruple package rates before he’d authorize any emergency aid or loans.

The Postal Service’s future needs to be as a low-cost package carrier, industry analysts contend, as parcels make up a growing portion of the agency’s volume and profits, and paper mail volumes continue to decline as coupons and bills increasingly move online. Postal leaders project the agency could run out of money between March and October 2021.

“If this is true, it would be a real concern to customers if service were slowed, especially in light of the fact that the Postal Service may get more rate authority, meaning higher rates, later this year or early next year,” said Art Sackler, manager of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, an industry group whose members include Amazon, eBay, Hallmark and other commercial mailers.

“This is framing the U.S. Postal Service, a 245-year-old government agency, and comparing it to its competitors that could conceivably go bankrupt,” said Philip Rubio, a professor of history at North Carolina A&T State University and a former postal worker. “Comparing it to U.S. Steel says exactly that ‘We are a business, not service.’ That’s troubling.”

The changes also worry vote-by-mail advocates, who insist that any policy that slows delivery could imperil access to mailed and absentee ballots. It reinforces the need, they say, for Congress to provide the agency emergency coronavirus funding.

“Attacks on USPS not only threaten our economy and the jobs of 600,000 workers. With our states now reliant on mail voting to continue elections during the pandemic, the destabilizing of the post office is a direct attack on American democracy itself,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.). “It has been 59 days since the House passed $25 billion to keep USPS alive. The Senate must pass it now. Democracy hangs in the balance.”

The Postal Service said in a statement that it was “developing a business plan to ensure that we will be financially stable and able to continue to provide reliable, affordable, safe and secure delivery of mail, packages and other communications to all Americans as a vital part of the nation’s critical infrastructure.”

It said the plan was not finalized, but would include “new and creative ways for us to fulfill our mission, and we will focus immediately on efficiency and items that we can control, including adherence to the effective operating plans that we have developed.”

But the documents circulated Monday on shop floors around the country called for specific changes in the way postal workers will do their jobs.

“Every single employee will receive this information, no matter what job they perform, so remember that YOU are an integral part of the success we will have — again, by working together,” the second document states.

“The shifts are simple, but they will be challenging, as we seek to change our culture and move away from past practices previously used,” it adds.

The first memo says the agency will prohibit overtime and strictly curtail the use of other measures local postmasters use to ameliorate staffing shortages.

Even a common method for mail delivery — “park points,” in which letter carriers park their mail trucks at the end of a street, deliver mail items by foot for several blocks, then return to the trucks and drive on — is under scrutiny. The document bans carriers from taking more than four “park points” on their routes and claims “park points are abused, not cost effective and taken advantage of.”

“Overtime is being used because people need their packages in this pandemic,” said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents 200,000 USPS employees. “They need their mail in this pandemic. They need their medicines in this pandemic. They need their census forms. They need ballot information.”

The second memo says the Postal Service will first look to cut its transportation costs, and estimates that late and extra trips cost the agency $200 million annually in “added expenses,” or about the same amount the agency lost in May. The memo warns postal workers that it may be “difficult” to “see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor,” but that the agency “will address root causes of these delays and adjust the very next day.”

Postal union leaders condemned the measures and said customer service is being sacrificed for only meager cost savings.

“I would tell our members that this is not something that as postal workers we should accept,” Dimondstein said. “It’s not something that the union you belong to is going to accept.”

Business Insider: The Rise And Fall of USPS (uploaded May 26, 2020)

[k979aaa]

We are just doing fine over here but it don't help the USA with yogi bear as president and woody as vice president sorry too all you guys and girls over there!