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Bernie Sanders Blasts House Republicans and Will Fight to Save Saturday Mail
Sen. Bernie Sanders announced today that he will oppose and fight against the USPS plan to end Saturday mail delivery. Sander said the cut in service will,”lead to a death spiral that will harm rural America while doing very little to improve the financial condition of the Postal Service.”
The USPS announced their new mail delivery schedule today, “Once implemented during August of 2013, mail delivery to street addresses will occur Monday through Friday. Packages will continue to be delivered six days per week. Mail addressed to PO Boxes will continue to be delivered on Saturdays. Post Offices currently open on Saturdays will remain open on Saturdays.”
Sen. Sanders replied that cutting services is not the way to save the USPS, “The postmaster general cannot save the Postal Service by ending one of its major competitive advantages. Cutting six-day delivery is not a viable plan for the future. It will lead to a death spiral that will harm rural America while doing very little to improve the financial condition of the Postal Service. Providing fewer services and less quality will cause more customers to seek other options. Rural Americans, businesses, senior citizens and veterans will be hurt by ending Saturday mail.”
Sanders also laid the blame for this cut in service at the feet of House Republicans, “”It is time for Republican leadership in the House to work with the Senate to reform the Postal Service in a way that will not harm rural America and allows the Postal Service to adjust to the digital age without ending Saturday mail delivery.”
The plot to kill the Postal Service was hatched by the then Republican controlled Congress in 2006. The Republicans passed a bill that required the USPS to fund 75 years’ worth of future retiree health benefits over a 10-year period. This mandate immediately pushed the Postal Service into debt, and it has led to the end of Saturday mail delivery.
House Republicans could easily fix the problem, but they won’t.
The end game for Republicans is the privatization of the USPS. The end of Saturday mail delivery is the first step in killing off the Postal Service. It would be easy to think that ending Saturday mail delivery is no big deal, but there are 230,000 jobs on the line. If the Republicans are successful, they will end up closing 3.700 post offices, and throwing almost a quarter million people out of work. The Postal Service has already cut its workforce by 28%, which translates to 193,000 jobs already lost.
Republicans pushed the USPS into debt as way to kill it. The death of Saturday delivery matters because it could be the first step in the end of the USPS, and the killing of 230,000 good paying jobs.
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19 Responses to Bernie Sanders Blasts House Republicans and Will Fight to Save Saturday Mail
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The Platzner Post
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 1:46 pm
The GOP motto: Privatize everything!!!
The Platzner Post Facebook, and Twitter
www.facebook.com/ThePlatz...
Deanne
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 2:25 pm
There is no need to privatize USPS but there is truly no need to protect Saturday service. It too will not harm rural America. It will not cause USPS to be privatized. This is when IMO Sanders has shown he’s out of touch with reality and with technology and is more like an extremist leftie just like the extreme right but refuses to confess to it. This just shows how overindulged Americans are.
What we don’t get on Friday can wait until Monday. Life will not stop. People won’t die. Get a grip. People don’t need Saturday delivery of garbage mail which is what I find more often than not on Saturdays. It’s putting on display that Americans refuse to change anything but whine about the cost of everything.
Sanders just sank to the bottom of the pile of old junk that needs a reality check. You can’t have everything as he habitually rants to save everything but $$$. With the years of email instead of envelopes — it’s time for Sanders to face facts and realize technology is hurting USPS more. I’d almost say that Sanders needs a primary as I’m getting so tired of his whining about absolutely everything but truly doing nothing as he reminds me of the boy who cried wolf. He’s come to where when you see him, he’s white noise — you don’t hear him as he clearly is not prepared to ‘fix’ anything. He’s no diff in so many ways like the right — he’s still living in the 50′s — don’t change a thing about anything.
djchefron(Moderator)
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 2:36 pm
Where are your strict constitutionalist when you need them?
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress “To establish Post Offices and post Roads”.
Oh I forgot it has nothing to do with guns so….
img833.imageshack.us/img8...
djchefron(Moderator)
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Damn A thumbs down for following the Constitution?Whats next re instating the 3/5ths clause
Shiva(Moderator)
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 2:59 pm
The only way to fix the Postal Service is to take out the rule that says they have to pay their retirement funds five years in advance the cost them billions of dollars. If that was gone the post office would be a highly profitable proposition. But the GOP isn’t going to let that happen is it.
I really don’t think it’s Bernie Sanders that’s living in the 50s. He has a better vision for America that 99% of the GOP
Deanne
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 3:04 pm
If the USPS quit buying all the real estate like the million $$ properties of those getting promoted, would also help as clearly we know nothing will be done about the retirement funds.
Why wouldn’t Bernie have introduced something even in the short time Dems held all 3 arms — but he didn’t. He’s come to be known as a mouthpiece but no action. He’s white noise no one listens to anymore.
Shiva(Moderator)
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 3:19 pm
Yes the post office did buy $1,000,000 home. And they bought it for a former postmaster so he could relocate. A very dumb move in my opinion.
How do you know if Bernie didn’t introduce something?
Bernie doesn’t get anything done because he is the only one that makes sense in the entire Congress.
Now, can you get back to why the GOP is requiring the postal system the pay billions of dollars in advance when no other business in the world has to?
Deanne
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 3:34 pm
The last paragraph in my comment at 3:04 above i.e. now, can you get back to …. — I have no idea how it has happened but it was not within the comment that I posted as I did not write that paragraph. Would be very interested to know how comments can be changed by way of additional copy.
Shiva(Moderator)
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 3:50 pm
Good grief, I did that,. I edited my own reply to you and hit the wrong edit
sorry
Deanne
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Thank you Shiva for explaining.
djchefron(Moderator)
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 6:17 pm
Its really 75 years.No other public or private agency has to do this.
How Congress is killing the Post Office
blogs.reuters.com/felix-s...
PSzymeczek
Feb. 7th, 2013 at 1:41 pm
It’s not five years in advance – it’s SEVENTY-FIVE years. If the USPS did not have to fund pensions for employees who have not even been born yet, it would be showing a huge profit.
Brian
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 8:03 pm
A 2006 law mandated the Postal Service to make yearly payments for 10 years of 5.5 BILLION each year.
Two Postmaster Generals, tasked with running the Post Office properly, stood by, knowing these payments would bankrupt the Postal Service.
They made some payment from cash for three or four years, proceeded to max out the USPS credit card which was limited to 15 billion in borrowing, and now stand before you telling you they don’t know what happened.
You can fool some of the people some of the time…
Jesus Christ
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 9:59 pm
Here we go…
Will they ever stop? Will they??
Corporate America is out of control. It will be my Saturday mail they will take today, and it will be the theft of my patent mailings sent to Washington, D.C. using FedEx, UPS, DHL, or any other PRIVATE and Accenture Controlled corporate delivery service, which us the goal here, people.
Let’s be real about this. They have full control of and visibility into our entire telecommunications infrastructue, right? They have visibility also into all that we author in this medium, right? Do, the final hitch is to now control the physical delivery of communications that they cannot see, and that will be the end of this war. Why? Because the USPS is about to get a huge donation from the RNC. Isn’t it?
What? Is that the voice of responsibility I hear? Ah, yes, “we Republicans were the ones who intentionally plotted and premeditated the destruction of the USPS so that Accenture could win control of the last bastion of honorable communications we have left as Americans! We admit it!! We did this!! We will do it again and again and again and again!!!!”
So, RNC Chairman, what is your culpability to this crisis? Shall I count the seconds from when this post doesn’t make it to its intended readership and how long it takes the Republicans to reverse this damage? Seconds? I figure, hmmm….16,000 seconds or less. That’s somewhere around 4 hours, give or take. It’s now 9:51pm EST on February 6th, 2013. It means you have until just about 2:00am EST to refund the USPS if you intend to escape prosecution and jail for that level of Treason.
And if you want to arrest me, come and get me. I will happily rot in prison and die there if it meant you would be there with me!
Thanks,
Amrit Kohli aka Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ
Feb. 7th, 2013 at 12:47 am
Hello,
I am writing again to clarify one simple thing about a statement I made earlier. While it is now impossible for me to go back and correct the statement itself as it was written here and will inevitably be quoted out of context of this supplemental statement, let me be clear about one thing…
I said in my statement above the following:
“And if you want to arrest me, come and get me. I will happily rot in prison and die there if it meant you would be there with me!”
I want to be 3000% clear on this point: I am not going to do anything, nor have I done anything, that anyone should have any cause or reason to believe is deserving of an arrest and imprisonment for the rest of my life. When I said that I would happily rot in prison and die there, it is very, very important that you also include the last part of that sentence which qualifies what I am saying by clearly supplementing this condition: “…if it meant you would be there with me!”
For those of you who don’t know how to include a conditional statement in your interpretation of a didactic statement, it can certainly be harmful to the very core of the idea I am trying to express.
Let me educate you.
When I say “I would happily rot in prison and die there,” first of all, it should be well understood that I am not someone who deserves to be arrested, imprisoned, and left to rot and die there. If you know me, you know this to be 3000% true. If you don’t know me, then your assumptions based on who I claim to be, or whatever image may be attached to me, that I am making a threatening overture when I am, in fact, not doing any such thing. I am not saying I would do anything to deserve such punishment. I am saying that I would simply walk into prison and rot and die there ONLY IF the highest ranking public officials who committed Treason between 2000 – 2008 were tried and imprisoned FIRST. So, only THEN would I go rot and die in prison with them.
Does that make sense? Any…
Moongal6
Feb. 6th, 2013 at 9:59 pm
Again, the stupid ass cons want to make this a twofer.
They want to try and bust the largest union in America AND they want to privatize the whole shebang.
Larzle Moigan
Feb. 7th, 2013 at 2:25 am
It will add to Netflix coffers. Mail DVD movies on Monday, get them on Weds (watch movies) Mail them on Thursday receive them on Saturday–watch movies on weekend. I like the Post Office which was Benjamin Franklin’s dream child–keep the post office alive. Give us our America and deliver us from Plutocracy.
Doris ~
Feb. 7th, 2013 at 7:08 pm
I have stressed to the people over & over again that the TGOP must be stopped,they are aliens who are trying to destroy this country and we must vote them out or this country will be doomed. I am sick & tired of the big old rich white boys who all have their heads in the sand. Please vote in 2014….for the good of the country because their goal is to escalate the New World Order and they care nothing about the 98 percent.
Deana
Feb. 8th, 2013 at 8:24 pm
“Red” rural areas will likely be the most effected by the GOP forced downsizing of the United States Postal Service with some 3700 Post Offices closed and the loss of 230,000 good paying union jobs. Many rural areas are not now and will never be served by private shipping companies. Once again the most uninformed voters in the country continue to vote against their own best interest. Most of those voters probably don’t even know that not one cent of taxpayer money goes to fund the Post Office, that the PO is the second largest employer in the country and that they are required to prepay their health and pension funds ahead for 75 years to cover employees who have not even been born yet.
This may be the most egregious attempt yet of the GOP to privatize all government services, not to mention striking a huge blow against the postal employee’s union. The GOP just can’t stand to see any government service or program that is efficient and working. All they can see are the huge amounts of money they can get their grubby paws on by doing away with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the biggest prize of all, the USPS. If they succeed in dismantling the Post Office, where will the 5.5 billion dollars a year the USPS has paid into their pension funds since 2006 go? Who will profit from the sale of the USPS assets; real estate, trucks, sorting equipment etc.? Their Wall Street Banksters pals? Follow the money. Think about it!