The Washington Post first reported late Thursday, citing numerous anonymous sources, that President Donald Trump planned to disband the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors and place the agency under direct control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick. The Wall Street Journal also Friday reported on the plan to dissolve the commission, citing government officials.
The Postal Service did not respond to requests for comment. But a Whhite House official denied that Trump planned to sign such an order.
I’m suffering from a bad case of whiplash here.
Serious news sources report that the USPS board is is being disbanded, and that it is not; that the USPS will be privatized, and that it won’t; and that it is going to be run by zombies.
Personally, I favor the latter, as it involves the fewest constitutional problems.
Honestly, there is a lot of speculation, and who the heck knows what will happen until it happens, gets undone 3 times because it was a mistake, then gets down again.
BTW, ‘white’ was deliberately misspelled because the nannybot will not let me post the name of the residence at 1600 Pennsylvania.
Thanks to some admin for temporarily altering that.
I long for the days when the “news” waited until they “confirmed” something that actually had occurred before they reported. Speculation, conjecture, opinion, anonymous source hearsay was not to be treated as “fact”… oh the days…
Today “every” news source needs to be first, the most sensational, attention grabbing, etc… devoid of fact and dripping with personal/institutional opinion.
It is if they are “reporting” something.
I’m sure POTUS has had several meetings with several departments, people, advisors, whomever. If each of those individuals were to tell you what they were told or discussed, I bet each “story” would be different… just like the game of telephone. And each person is likely to find a different part “important” / “scary” / “exciting” / “newsworthy” and their personal opinion will skew what they discuss with the “news”.
So, when the smoke finally clears, what do sellers want to see? A PO run by the current board of governors? By the Commerce dept? By a private company?
In a larger sense, do we want to see all kinds of governent agencies run by semi-independant boards? Or directly by someone in the executive branch?
There are lots of federal agencies that are nominally part of the executive branch, but have their own directors. ( The USPS, the Federal Reserve, the CDC, the FBI, the NSA, the IRS, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency , etc)
Most of these agencies have directors who are not directly responsible to the executive branch. The theory behind this is that the decisions that they make require a high level of knowledge and expertise that the average politician does not have.
The biggest criticism of this is that this often results in unelected officials having dictatorial powers that can only be constrained a long and expensive process of judicial challenge.
The counter argument is that no federal agency can do an effective job if they have to change direction as the political winds change.
USPS needs to stay as is IMO, and honestly had a positive 4th quarter. It was never designed to be a money making enterprise, It was designed to SERVE all of the people of the United States, No private for profit will ever do that the same way the current USPS does.
USPS does not need to be political, and needs to remain neutral.
A counterpoint to your statement on these agencies.
Perhaps things will be clearer after Scotus has cases and rules on them.
USPS was a political construct devised by Larry O’Brien who was an unelected political functionary. And the first Postmaster General after USPS was created.
It is clear that it did not meet its stated goals at any time.
Whether they should be the goals today or whether it should have achievable goals is for whoever the court rules to be in control to decide.
What is unacceptable, no matter where your political position is should be “to dream the impossible dream”.
Can you imagine if the USPS went private, getting reimbursed for an Amazon buy shipping lost package would be like it is today with UPS…impossible! Would mail fraud even be a thing? What will happen with all existing pension agreements? What would the number of locations look like? Seems to me the USPS big problems lie in transit between distribution centers and the distribution and sorting center themselves.
Yes, and the transportation between distribution centers was handled by FEDEX and now is by UPS - outsourcing in action.
A rumored change is that the sorting centers will be outsourced.
A less probable rumor is that last mile will be outsource like FEDEX Ground or Amazon. This scares the excrement out of me. IMO is something someone will think they now how to do it.
