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This issue’s been driving me a little crazy since I read the piece by Peter Orszag that Kucinich mentions in the video last week. An aggregator newsletter came in this morning with a piece by Dennis Kucinich cranked up about the issue (thank goodness and thank Dennis) ; he linked to his August 1st appearance on Democracy Now!
And Congress adjourned yesterday with no action on the issue of funding the post office, nor any drought relief for farmers and ranchers…
You remember Peter Orszag, don’t you? He used to be the director of Obama’s Office of Business and Management? Everyone’s Favorite Sexy Nerd? Well, now he’s the vice-chair of global banking at: Tada!: Citigroup, and sits on the Council of Foreign Relations.
Orszag’s piece at Bloomberg opens with (my bolds throughout):
“Those who believe in the usefulness of government must be vigilant about making sure all its activities are vital ones, since the unnecessary ones undermine public confidence. With this in mind, Congress should now privatize the U.S. Postal Service.
Further evidence for why this should happen came last week, when the Postal Service announced that it would be unable to meet billions of dollars in payments that are coming due in August and September for future retiree health benefits. Privatization is not always the best way to improve efficiency, but the problems facing the Postal Service will be difficult to address if it remains within the government, and there is no longer any sound reason for it not to go private.”
He goes on to say that the postal service really has been very efficient in recent years, and he totally gets that Congress won’t allow any autonomy as far as cutting costs, raising revenues, nixing Saturday deliveries, yada, yada…
But after more ‘considerations’ of the pros and cons, he dismisses all the cons, and he concludes that the Post Office should be privatized for several reasons, including the fact that in the present contrarian Congressional atmosphere, Congress won’t let the PO be fixed! Since that is The Truth, only privatization will get this great business opportunity mail delivery out from under Congressional purview.
Thanks, Peter; smart move makin’ ya ‘vice chairman of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup Inc.
Andrew Reinbach writing at Huffpo thinks the privatization plans may be an enormous real estate deal in the making, even though three-fourths of its facilities are now rented, not owned. Still, the extant brick-and-mortar PO’s must be valuable. Reinbach mentions the debt the service can’t meet, then:
“Meanwhile, calls to privatize the USPS are being heard from mainstream outlets and on the Right. Bloomberg recently published a piece on the subject from Peter Orszag. Much on the Right issues from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)and a group called the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation (IRET), which is funded by the Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, and the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
It’s hard, in this pass, not to wonder if the Right Wing is forcing the issue by creating a crisis, then pressing for action. This, after all, has been its strategy for shrinking the Federal Government — systematically starve it for money by cutting taxes and larding it with debt, then call for drastic reforms to stave off disaster, a la the Ryan Plan.”
Amy Bingham writing for ABC News:
“USPS claims that if Congress does not act, the mail service will default not only on the $5.5 billion payment due today, but also on another $5.6 billion payment for future retiree’s benefit due September 30.
The Postal Service has pleaded with Congress for years to end the requirement that it pre-fund its retiree’s health benefits. But many lawmakers claim that because USPS has such a massive workforce – there are 614,000 Postal Service employees-if it does not pre-fund retirement benefits, it will not be able to pay them in the future.
And as long as these disagreements persist, it looks like naming post offices is the closest Congress will get to passing postal reform.”
Steve Hutkins, a literature professor who teaches “place studies” at the Gallatin School of New York University, operates a website devoted to Saving the Post Office. He tracks all things USPS, including photos (smile). He has loads of information on the genesis of the privatization plans, and covers many issues that are critical of outsourcing to UPS and Fedex, the Board of Governors of the USPS, and much, much more.
In ‘How to Privatize the Post Office: Piece by Piece, Step by Step, he includes four steps: ‘Marketization’ (turning into a business model), ‘Contracting Out’ (Reagan model), ‘Divestiture’ (plans to close 32,000 branches by 2018), and ‘What Comes Next?’…in which he says:
“The marketization, contracting out, and divestiture will continue, at ever-increasing speed. The Postal Service will cut the work force again and again (over a half million career employee positions have been cut since 2000), increase the percentage of part-time and flexible employees, end Saturday delivery (which will be picked up by some private company), expand the network of alternative retail outlets, and close half of the country’s 32,000 post offices. Then the Postal Service will be a “lean and mean” corporate entity, ready for the final stage of privatization.
What shape this will take is hard to predict. Perhaps, as suggested by the 1988 Presidential Commission on Privatization, the Postal Service will be turned into an employee-owned company through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). Perhaps it will be broken up into smaller units and sold off, piece by piece. Perhaps it will be taken over in its entirety by a FedEx, which can then skim the cream and sell off the less profitable parts. Or perhaps, as they’ve talked about doing in Great Britain, there will be an IPO and the Postal Service will sell itself in shares on the stock market.
Trust the corporate elite to figure all that out. Regular citizens will probably have as much to say about it as they do when a Postal Service manager comes to town and tells them their post office will be closing.”
The employee-owned business idea’s interesting, but given the vast scope of mail delivery, seems so unlikely as to almost unthinkable.
Please weigh in on this subject at will. I’m with Dennis: reform it, but keep it; get Congress to restructure it’s health pension payments. We still get a lot of snail mail here, and when you live out in the tulies, it’s important, even now that rural residents have to pick up mail in town. We can still mail packages, buy stamps, packaging materials, apply for passports, purchase money orders, and a raft of other necessary things. I can’t see letting ‘the free market economy’ take it over wholesale.
The American Postal Workers Union website is here.
112 Comments
Nice work.
This is a no brainer for me, DO NOT privatize a single thing about the U.S. Postal Service. Period. I would bet every cent I have that Nothing but bad things will result from
privatizingprofitizing the USPS. My source, every single time I’ve ever seen the results of privitization in any industry or service I can ever remember.Recommended.
Great Work Wendy. I have been trying to wake up people to this issue in my own rural area. They don’t understand what is at stake here. We are about to lose a major community resource.
Thanks, SG. It really has my knickers in a knot. Savethepostoffice does say a lot of things have been outsourced already, and it’s a bit unclear which ideas were sorta force by various Congressional Acts, which were the Governors ideas, which Donohoe wants to enact v. feels he must enact.
But damn; the Post Office is goofily like the Statue of Liberty to me.
Thanks for weighing in. ;o)
Are they unaware there’s jeopardy, Tom, or do they figure …well, what do they figure, lol?
I’d forgotten to stick in the postal workers union page; I’ll link to it here, then add it to the post later.
I hadn’t realized how Step by Step this process was over the years. I’m pleased that Dennis is sounding alarms, though. Lot of good stuff in that man.
Yeah, it is pretty easy to see what our “government” is going to look like… We need to have TSA agents fondling our babies’ private parts; we need to have State Ag Department people come in and shut down some granma’s goat farm, as the milk that she and two other people drink is not pasteurized; we need to have more and more police and less and less of things our grandparents saw as necessities, because those entities, like the US Post Office, WERE NECESSITIES!
Oh well. At least there is an election coming up, with two Big Empty Suits coming along to remind us we live inside a Free Society.
My speculation is that people are brainwashed into thinking that there is a limited amount of money for paying for government services. If one liberates from that scarcity falsehood, then creating full employment is completely possible. Free from scarcity bias, the USPS ‘default’ on a pension payment is an artificially induced non-crisis. It is a non-crisis induced for political purposes and to seize the assets of our government which are really our assets.
Just like the non-crisis of the ‘fiscal cliff’ which they secretly promise to ‘solve’ by gutting social programs after the election.
Sorry to go on and on…I forgot to put this link in to Kalecki’s essay on the political obstacles to government creation of full employment. Here it is.
Kalecki proves that the resources are there to create full employment, and the obstacles are solely the fault of banks, corporations, businesses and their unwillingness to let government compete for labor.
Kalecki’s awareness of the potential of government to use its resources to provide employment applies to all of the non-crises we have been subjected to, including the USPS ‘crisis’. There is no deficit crisis. We don’t have to sacrifice our social programs. We don’t have to sell off our government services such as the Postal Service to profiteers who will reduce salaries, reduce services and charge us more for services we already have and are happy with.
Soon, we hope, Amurricans will wake up, and realize Freedom’s really just another word…
And RESIST neoliberalim on the march…and NATO/AFRICOM on the march.
Thanks for the snark, elise. It works for me. ;o)
Thanks; I’d seen the article title, didn’t read it yesterday. Lets and the MMT folks have a full-employment model, too. It’s clear that it’s a plan, a ploy, a heist…what the assholes don’t seem to get is that it’s all gonna come crashing down, and maybe soon. One jiggle of the record player, and folks will be scramblin’ for the chairs when the mu.si.c.sto.o.o.p.s.
I was trying to ask *locally*, are the folks buyin’ the argument that the PO is insolvent, and must be privatized? Or are they just apathetic and hard to gin up to care about…anything?
I’d like everyone to understand a few particulars as they relate to retirement benefits, and their related funds/funding;
1.Most of the
crookslegislators who insist that the USPS pre-fund their employees retirement fund have no problem with other big enterprises under-funding their employees retirement funds. General Motors, or American Airlines, or GE for instance, which corporations eventually dump their employees on the mercy of the tax payers through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a US government agency.From the July 20 NYTimes;
2. OTOH, big leveraged buy-out/take-over specialists, like the private equity funds, Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital for instance, like to take over companies with big, well-funded pension plans, and then pocket those funds for themselves.
From the San Diego Free Press;
So ask yourself this, when the USPS is ‘privatised’ what do you expect will happen to all the money thay’ve been forced by congress to pre-pay into that retirement fund?
What will happen to the real estate that the USPS now owns?
Who is going to profit from doing the work that the USPS now does pretty well, only doing it badly, and at a higher cost, with a non-union work-force?
When you answer that last question, you’ll know who is conspiring with
those crooksour legislators to sink the USPS so they can loot it for profit.The USPS has been set up to fail, and in its failure make a bunch of crooks very rich.
So far, the folks I have spoken to think of the USPS as an insolvent business instead of as a service which we pay for just as we have to pay for community helpers such as police, firefighters, hospital staff, teachers, transportation workers and highway builders. For example, we lost a local inpatient, psychiatric unit because “they weren’t bringing in any money” and now psychotic people show up at the general hospital ER and then are in for a two hour ambulance ride to the nearest major city with a psychiatric unit.
As long as people are unwilling to stop all of these cuts and privatizations of government services, the suffering will continue. Some people will have to drive to get their mail if they reduce hubs and delivery services. That might be a bad thing if you do not have access to a car. Some folks get medications through the mail and some use the Post Office for Money Orders. I would think that as services are reduced the Post Office would actually start to lose more and more money.
This is also a direct attack on the black middle class.
I remember when there was no Saturday residential service.
I’d like to see the issue framed as a Constitutional issue (Article I, sec. 8).
If the federal Post Office is eliminated, dog leash laws should also be eliminated, thereby re-instating at least one part of the tradition.
I could support a privatized postal service if CREDO would operate the exclusive service.
Spot on.
Same goes for the assault on public education and the attack on the public sector in general. And that goes for all minorities in the work place to include white women.
Even in 2012 some of the ‘jawb creators’ in the private sector still have a problem hiring qualified minority applicants.
For some icing on the cake, what remains of affirmative action is not being enforced, and I’ve heard not a peep from the Dims or Pres Obama about it.
Rethugs are a criminal organization, they don’t really count in a logical discussion about politics IMO but the Dims, with ‘friends’ like these our enemies can take a vacation and we wouldn’t even notice.
The US Post Office has been airing commercial spots, telling people that they will never have to go to the Post Office again.
Privatization of the Post Office would be stealing citizens’ money, and unconstitutional.
Great catch, Evelyn; thank you.
Great additions, Watt4Bob; and I wondered what would happen to the pre-paid health insurance funds.
Seeing the short list of those likely hidden funders Andrew Reinbach found just about nailed the motives behind the road to make the PO a corpse worth picking for delicious, profitable parts.
All of which means that people are really conditioned by now to not only see the PO as a ‘business’, but likely hold resentments that ‘all those civil servants are living off the government teat’. Transposing, but I’ll be that’s part of it.
These campaigns that the media promote without questioning, are that toxic, aren’t they? ‘Austerity’ has come to seem to equal ‘virtuous’, and since Reagan, ‘Private duz it better!’.
Nice that you still have home delivery, AitchD. People in the tiny ranching communities north of her whose post offices have closed must have to depend on each other taking turns getting each others’ mail. Here it’s bad enough.
What’s CREDO, dear?
And did mention the issue as enshrined in our Constitution; just found the clause, but with this Supreme Court? Dunno.
I only found one ad, normanb; something like ‘postal mail doesn’t get hacked’, etc. Cretins around the web laughed at it, and it sounds as though the ad made a poor case. I’ll hit youtube…
This is the most recent one, and it’s fromm the APWU: “HR 2309 Is Not the Answer…etc”. I dunno; pretty dry stuff. They need some help to explain what it means to people of all sorts, too.
They want to “run it like a business” ?
ok. great idea.
How long till it needs a “bailout” from the big bad government?
Do people still actually think that large businesses are run efficiently?
how funny is that?
How many times do they have to get breaks, grants, loans, gifts, let off the hook for criminal activity, no bid, cost plus contracts, limitless patent protection, armies protecting their financial interests, paid for sending jobs away, blah blah blah.
farcial.
Recently USPS has run several TV ads for its Flat Rate service (an excellent service, btw).
CREDO is the mobile side of Working Assets.
This Q used to circulate, before there was a name for urban legends, rumored to have been a legit Q on Civil Service exams: Which vehicle has the right of way: a fire truck with siren, a police car with siren, or a mail truck with flashing headlights? The correct answer is supposedly the mail truck because it could be carrying a declaration of war.
L-fucking-OL on the Q’s answer!
When I googled, I’d reckoned you may have been referencing that CREDO; can’t see how they could run it. Explain?
Flat rate; I dunno, if the contents are heavy enough. Me, I heart the media rate, as I send books out…a lot. ;o)
It would be funny if the conventional wisdom regarding that Bullshit Accepted Truism weren’t doin’ so much damage, mafr.
When will people get to the Tipping Point Pissed stage? We hope…soon.
Reminds me of the line from Steve Martin’s “What I Believe” routine:
“I would run the government like a business—burn it to the ground, and collect the insurance.”
Unfortunately, the Corporate Vermin lack humor, just as they lack morals and social responsibility. So they’re ignoring the satire and actually trying to implement Martin’s prescription.
Which reminds of the final bit of Martin’s statement:
“I believe that Ronald Reagan can make America again what it once was…an Arctic wasteland, covered by ice.”
CREDO/Working Assets is a medium, without content, like a light bulb. I think it uses the Sprint sat/relays. So, it wouldn’t deliver the mail, it would use the existing postal service. See? And it would honor the union fairly and justly, plus establish universal residential delivery, and add ‘nor default, deschmault’ to the ‘neither snow, nor rain …”.
a supremely bad idea, much as privatizing water/sewer services has proven to be in many communities. The cost to the public will rise astronomically when privatization takes place. A couple of the more obvious results: postal rates will go way up in rural area residents by virtue of higher transporting costs; postal rates will no longer be standardized for similar reasons; federal laws against mail tampering and theft will be chipped away and eventually disappear. That people will receive their mail is virtually guaranteed by the present system; under privatization, there will be no guarantee that you will receive it. Privatized mail companies will figure out some way (don’t ask me how, but they will figure it out) to charge the public for having junk mail delivered to them.
…Or they could still use *some* post offices for rural distribution points, rendering the ‘whether snow or sleet’ theme up to the ‘rugged individualist’ citizen. But yes; how many agreements have cell/internet providers broken? How many media market FCC rules have been broken, and ‘new rulez’ codified afterward?
Love your cynicism about finding ways to charge a ‘postal’ patron to ge charged for junk mail, lol.
Gawd I hate to be so thick, but no, I don’t see it. Sounds like virtual mail delivery, unless they inherit the entire infrastructure the PO uses.
My outrage is that the USPS (and only the USPS out of every single other corporations/USG agencies) is required to pre-fund their pensions for the next 75 years, meaning they are required to pre-fund the pensions of future employees who have not yet been born! Damn RW shithooks who think it ought to cost $20 to send a letter like it does w/FedEx or UPS. Another tie-in might be to banks or credit cards who want to force ‘we the people’ into automatic bill-pay schemes (one I refuse to use, don’t want no ‘automatic leaks’ in my checking accounts).
Future historians will want to figure out how we managed to turn our country upside down – I certainly can’t. Although I do remember the feeling when Reagan was elected that dark days were ahead. I’m surprised in a way that it’s taken so long for things to unravel. I grieve for my young niece and nephew, who are growing up a very strange world that I could have never imagined.
Welcome to the toll-booth economy.
…where every person, need, natural gift resource, moment of labor or creative contribution, or stolen natural freedom by fascist security police…has been quantified and commodified. Where lies are torqued into conventional truths, where distracted citizens don’t yet realize they’re serfs, where psychopaths can don amiable Reagan/Obama-esque smiles and get away with murder, assassinations and the theft of our Constitution…while voters imagine they are able to make a choice between teams.
Arrrggh…someone needs some sleep and restoration; sorry. Night, all. ;o)
Privatization could very well be unconstitional. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states:
The congress shall have the power …
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
Clearly the Framers recognized the importance of a common postal service (and roads) in connecting the society and providing an infrastructure for commerce. Let’s go back to the Constitution’s Preamble for a moment:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
You know, as I write this rant, I stopped and contemplated the meaning of this statement. What a remarkable sentence. The implications of those few carefully chosen words are astounding. Take a moment and parse each and every word. It saddens me no end to witness the destruction of the American dream and assault on our civil liberties ocurring today. The Founders would be mortified. A post office system falls under the general Welfare category I believe.
OK enough reflection, back to rant.
While no constitional scholar, I firmly believe any attempt to privatize the post office should meet with a lawsuit challenging the constitionality of that effort. BTW, who stands to lose the most if its privatized? Why many of the base of the Republican party. Do those idiots think some private company is going to provide the same or better service at a lower cost in rural and low income areas?
I’m constantly amazed at how stupid our society has become, but then maybe that’s part of the plan of the power elite. Destroy institutions that foster intellectualism and critical thinking. Take over the media and restrict information flow (look at the news – disgraceful, I don’t even watch any more. Edward R Morrow is spinning in his grave). All this makes it easier to create a serfdom when there’s no informed, questioning, and activist society you know.
As a rule, I try not to comment on comments not directed to me, but I will. I wonder who you might think would bring a lawsuit? ACLU? CCR? And in the end, it’s my opinion that the Law, or especially Constitutional Law…is what a judge, a panel of judges, or a majority of SCOTUS justices say it is. (We did talk about that clause of Article I(section 8) upstream; lotta words up there) ;o)
There’s evidence that the privatization is already underway according to the Save the PO site in the post. Once the House passes anything related to funding/loaning to the pension health payments, Issa et.al. say it will make the PO do its bidding on cuts, closures, etc.
To say the truth, I’ve already forgotten the terms of the Senate version (SB 1789) I’ve read about, but it’s Collins and Lieberman.
They’re given 15 years instead of 10 to spread out the 75 years of pre-payment (my stars), voluntary separation incentices, etc., but it’s a long list of demands. 401 or something.
Thanks for posting this, Wendy. I heard the Democracy Now! segment on the radio, and it was the first time I had heard of the 2006 law mandating the Postal Service to fully fund its pension fund for the next 75 years in just 11 years or else. Clearly, the Bush Administration and the Newt’s Congress were setting up the Postal Service to fail.
Anybody know what, if anything, Obama has even tried to do about what someone up there accurately described as an attack on the black middle class? Since Orszag was in his administration, probably not diddly-squat. And I hear racist Republicans say that Obama only does things for black people. Ha! What morons.
I will tell you one scary story. I mentioned this to a couple of coworkers at my small county government office. One was properly mortified. The other said that Postal Service tellers are paid more than our executive director, and maybe they wouldn’t be in trouble if they weren’t paid so much. Well, one, the first part isn’t true, and two, neither is the second part.
I asked her why she supported this race to the bottom crap? Why is it that a postal worker, who is out in all kinds of weather and actually works a pretty damned physically demanding job, shouldn’t be paid a living wage. And for that matter, had it ever occurred to her that maybe the postal workers aren’t paid too much, but that she is paid too little?
Blank stare. I thought to myself, “Dumbass.”
‘Dumbass’; lol! Yeah, it is scary how quickly the meme spread since Reagonomics that federal civil servants and teachers, etc. are ridin’ the government tit, worthless free-loaders. But think how much union hatred is out and about, not that I’m not siding with the break-away unions, about which I can find zippo googling.
Dunno about present Obama; candidate Obama was against privatizing the PO. Some Dems were screaming at the House leadership for not passing their bill before they took off, but given that their bill on first-scan doesn’t look all that great…it may be more electoral theatrics, call me a cynic.
On the ‘R-morons’ topics, it’s truly astounding that the black political class is so hell-bent on hiding what Obama *hasn’t done* for blacks and brown people; reds: he just fucks over with impunity.
Kgb reckons stuff like this in so many sectors will seriously start pissing people off; I hope so, but maybe not this particular one. Ugh.
Come play at kblogz or post sometime. It’s quiet there right now, but gets noisy sometimes. ;o) Reminds me: I forgot to say ‘cross-posted at…)
My best to T and the kids…and you,
wd
This is just sad.
And this:
But then on the other hand there was this:
Let’s see. On the same day, Thursday:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/senate-drones-ships/
I am having trouble reconciling this stuff. Rather than any thought of the greater good right now, it almost looks as if it’s a war against its own people in this country.
Maybe I am missing something here, but in my mind a drone that costs something like 4.5 to 11 million dollars, will accomplish what? Obviously harm to somebody. Why can we not take the money allotted for one or two of these things and use it for some good?
These are things I am having trouble understanding.
Ha! I was just reading at Danger Room, and considering a post on my glee that the Navy funding for…wait for it…Green Fuels is a GO!
Yeppers, many planes, etc. the military doesn’t want get funded still since the old way to buy off Congress was to have some part of each big ticket hardware built in all 50 states, or as close as they could come.
You’d like (hate, mebbe) Jarecki’s film ‘Why we fight’ (all based on Ike’s ‘Beware the military-industrial-complex’ *(now adding News-o-tainment and War Porn teevee show glorification.
It’s really past understanding, C-S; at least to anyone not built like they are. Ah, conversations happen here about people without consciences, or those able to lock them away by profit-atmospherics in the room stuff (business schools, hedge traders, regulatory arbitrage specialists…but hell, it sure slows down the work of fighting back.
‘Know your enemy’ might not be that necessary to the struggle now; we’re fightin’ for our lives, and the lives of our kids and grandkids.
Man, did you see they Xed that sonic boom drone? For now? Wired seems to think the cuts in the military budget are for real; I don’t. Smoke and mirrors.
Thanks for reading.
This sort of thing happens all the time, a DOD contractor with factories in the legislators district leans on them to save
their cashflowtheir constituents jobs, and DOD is put in the position of accepting goods and or services they do not need, or want.Then add the really big items, like the The infamous Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, a fantastically expensive and controversial tiltrotor aircraft that is known for killing its passengers and the people who fly them, and which has been impossible to kill, even for then secretary of defense Dick Cheney, because according to Time Magazine;
The Osprey has been in development for 25 years, has cost $20 Billion so far, and is expected to cost another $35 Billion.
No body wants the thing except those in the pockets of Boeing, but they have enough clout to keep the thing going even in the face of resistance from the secretary of defense.
But but but I was being conditional only, only If-Then.
It will (because it must?) become a Constitutional issue if (haha) it reaches a stage beyond thumping for attention and distraction. By the time it reaches a stage at the courts or, alternatively, wades through the amendment process, the financial and fiduciary issues will have had plenty of time to be refashioned and reformed.
I’m ignorant and wayunderinformed, but not an ostrich. The postal service, like the military, Congress and its agencies, the Executive and Judicial branches, aren’t designed or expected to operate in the black. Except for the postal service, those other governmental services return zero revenue for their infinite outlays.
So I cry ‘Fowl!’ about this red herring.
That said, I can walk to my closest post office some three miles away. The nearest public mailboxes are a mile away, though I live in a densely populated area. Closer is a UPS Store, which will accept my mailing item and expedite it on behalf of USPS, as though I were using a USPS Office. If you’re familiar with that service model , then it’s what I imagine hypothetically with CREDO, but I don’t favor postal disestablishment and hated its disestablishment under Nixon.
Thanks for the post Wendy, and by all means, let’s keep our eyes on that pension fund.
Both UPS and FedEx, both have enormous clout in congress, and are probably behind some of this.
I’m hoping that the efforts to kill the USPS will be the last straw for enough voters, to finally trigger some real resistance, like voting out the congress people who’ve been pushing this agenda.
This issue should be front and center with the Occupy movement.
Aaaand…then at ‘Diplomatic’ cocktail parties they’re sold to our Partners in Peace as…carrots. The Wikileaks emails among diplomats were a revelation to me, I confess.
privatizing the post office will kill Ebay imo
Well, I will have a look at the things you reference here. Thank you.rec’d a while ago BTW.
Good Lord. Thank you for the information.
That’s the sort of outsourcing to private concerns Steve Hutkins wrote about. (I’ve never been to a UPS store, a Mailbox store…didn’t know any of that.)
Loved cry “Fowl!” with Red Herring. We’ll see how it goes, and from your mouth to the Goddess’s ears. But to gather steam for a Constitutional challenge, I dunno. So many issues they’re on already; it must be hell to be on those boards to decide which cases to take; oy.
If you have time and desire, read the text of SB 1789 (heh; French Revolution) I linked to at #34. Too much for me to read for this. But we’ll keep watching and listening, eh?
Of course the resources are there to have full employment here in teh USA. Our elected officials pretend it would be so hard and so difficult to get manufacturing going again. My word, the cost of building factories, etc.
But in reality, a lot of the jobs that have been outsourced are things like medical transcribing and medical billing. This household has had Sallie Mae, the student loan office, call us with the phone worker being off in Bangladesh, or somewhere. Why aren’t Americans calling other Americans about their student debt payments? How can any American pay any bills, if all the jobs to be had are on other continents? And isn’t it robbing our tax base, to have all the jobs somewhere else?
If people are not working, they are not paying taxes.
In response to SB 1789 – holy shite – and the silence deepens within the media.
Amazing.
Although the beginnings of the Postal destruction legislation occurred in 2006, a good deal of it occurred after the Democratic-majority Congress was installed in January of 2007. Sadly, we can not simply blame the Republicans. The Dems are always more than willing to help the other side of the aisle, as long as doing so doesn’t affect their own little pet projects.
I’ve read over the Official Summary of S(torm) [the] B(astille) 1789. I gather from it that the legislation advances the business principle of Effectiveness and Efficiency, long understood as code for eliminating labor cost. But as far as so-called ‘privatizing’ goes, I don’t read that out of it as such. I see a reining in of whatever ‘independence’ or virtual autonomy the USPS had become accustomed to; I see a fierce intention by law to ensure that the USPS operate and function more like a profitable business than as a typical government agency; and finally I read a long-range ‘plan’ to keep the USPS in the federal government while contracting out any and many of its services to non-government (private or public) facilitators.
Save your precious and wonderful breath, Sweetie: I agree in advance it’s a distinction without a difference re ‘privatizing’. Except ‘privatizing’ often implies ownership as well as sub-contracting and outsourcing.
Now I will take off my glasses (trifocals because the eyesight-correction industry presumes Everyone watches a lot of teevee) and say I think I see SB 1789 containing some camel nostril hairs, to open the inevitable fee-charging for certain classes of e-messaging (the Roberts Tax!)
I feel like I just composed an Amazon Customer Review ;o)
So many issues…so few Occupys. No really, I hear that, and Occupying Post Offices with anti-privatization signs would be Boy, Howdy Fun!
Mr.wd stopped by our PO just a bit ago and talked to one of the long-time clerks there. She was thrilled to have the info he gave her, tickled someone cared enough to blog about it.
Hope some folks dig this out of the google cache; one of the main reasons to blog, imo.
Bless yer pea-pickin’ heart for reading it, darlin’ dear. Mine eyes started to scramble (hit my freaking head on the fridge, saw stars, which didn’t help my beleaguered brain one bit, either, lol.)
I won’t waste my breath; yep, it’s ‘Inch by Inch’ for now…until the One Swell Foop seems soooo very obvious as the only choice left (I forget the prevailing anagram) to the Privatization Austerity Mongol Hordes.
And: it was an excellent Amazon review. I’ll order two right now. ;o)
(Thanks for doing our homework for me/us.) Seriously. A prize in order? I got…birrrrrd cards. (most of these and others)
Shoot, walkinboots; I searched for a couple days off and on to find the bill. I found many PO bills at OpenCongress that were trying to rename Post Office branches for the bill authors’ favorite Poohbah contributor. Jeez.
Hmmm: hadn’t thought of EBay, sadlyyes. I assume you mean most of their deliveries are by mail? No FedEx/UPS choices? Wonder if EBay might be objecting to any of this then.
Kuchinich (or somebody – but Kuchinich would have the stones to do this) should propose legislation that mandates any parcel delivery company that uses federal highways should pre-fund their pensions for the next 75 years. Then let them squawk – it would highlight the issue and help educate the public about this little shell game.
Aw, shucks, Miss wendyedavis, AitchD ain’t worthy. I know worthy when I see it, and th’argument’s closed.
But those are luscious photos! And you-know-who can’t refuse this time if you happen to want to randomly send one, oh, say, whenever y’all feel like it. Curious: Would your direct-printed copy have superior resolution to a scanned-emailed copy (I’d want to share or take on all the output cost)? Oh, sure, AitchD could take a screen shot at the site and print it himself, with pretty good res; but I wouldn’t. So, howcome you don’t have a watermark for copy protection on each of those uploads?
Unfortunately, citizens sometimes have poor customer service experiences at their local USPO. It’s not always the case, but I’ve been frustrated quite often by counter personnel who definitely walk slooooooowly & then are pretty rude when you finally reach the counter for “service.”
I’ve also had mail carriers who should’ve been fired for their outright ineptitude (ongoingly delivering mail to the wrong addresses, throwing my mail on the ground “because I cannot bend down to put in your mail box”) etc. It happens.
The reverse, of course, is also true. In newer developments, the mail boxes are set up for better delivery by the mail carrier, which helps.
It’s hard, though, to manage such a large workforce to ensure that all staff provide good customer service. Just pointing out, though, why some citizens had a “bad feeling” towards the USPO. Bad customer service makes citizens feel: why should I pay these people their salary when they do such a crappy job. And believe me, talking to their supervisors – IF you can locate them – results in no improvements.
Just saying that the USPO has sometimes shot itself in the foot.
OTOH, though, I think it’s a shit-rotten idea to “privatize” the USPO. You know it’s just so some greedy 1%er can rip us all off, most probably by somehow getting their grubby greedy paws on all that sweet ca$hola in the pension fund.
As one commenter said, up above, it continues to be a source of amazement to me that, after the 2008 crash & ongoing bullshit by the private sector, citizens STILL by the Fake Noise/Rush Limbaugh hype that somehow the private sector is just *so much better* than anything that the gubmint could do (except, of course, the DoD, which a gaping max into which the vast majority of our tax dollah$ must be shoveled).
So sickening to witness a large enough segment of our nation incessantly whining about very good services provided by the government: libraries, public schools, the USPO, police, fire, etc.
Why citizens want to toss all of these “babies” out with the bath water is one of life’s cruel and enduring mysteries.
Sadly I think the USPO is fucked, and we might as well wave buh-bye to it bc I think the greedy shitheaded 1% are gonna rip it off, all while the Tea Party claps, cheers & dances with joy that THEIR tax dollah$$$ are being ripped off… but for heaven’s sake: some unionized post office worker will get FIRED, and woot! ain’t that just great??? Unbelievable.
Thanks for the post. Won’t hold my breath. The 1% has been “after” the USPO for a long time now. They are tenacious and GREEDY.
First the Post Office, then the public schools, and probably police and fire services later. At some point we’ll have direct corporate rule as is depicted in recent Margaret Atwood novels.
This is just another step in the interminable march of the exploiting of disaster to implement privatization. For the past 30+ years USA,Inc., since adopting Milton Friedman’s economic doctrine of Chicago School disaster capitalism, both parties have worked diligently to empower the oligarchs and disenfranchise the 99%. This is the same policy that the Corporatocracy utilized to enslave the nations of Latin America and now we are subjected to its implementation at home. The only major difference between what the US implemented in foreign nations, globally, and what happened here is that in Amerika it resulted from a soft coup rather than a violent one.
Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama; the Enemies of American democracy, and the agents of plutocratic, sociopathic, extremism.
The American postal service is written into our Constitution, but if there’s no identifiable ultra-right-wing fat-cat making a profit from some activity, then the Constitution doesn’t count to our politicians, including (perhaps especially) 0bama and his henchmen. Constitution = toilet paper to the Cheney/Bush Gang, and now to the 0bama/McConnell/Boehner Gang. Fat pigs getting fatter. Ordinary folks getting robbed.
That’s what America’s all about: greed, thievery, espionage, torture, murder, war, mass-extinction, etc….
I would imagine if the post office were privatized, it would be much like cable TV: monthly subscriptions (raised every few years regardless of need), several tiers/ranks of customers, constant maintenance charges, little to no free amenities, central locations you must drive to to get important equipment. Yet, somehow bills would always find their way to your mailbox. The only difference is mail is an absolutely, inescapably necessary service. When people rant about privatizing the USPS, I remind how awesome is their Cable TV / internet service. I used to work for an small(er) telephone company that bought up scads of ailing phone networks in the rural South. This company’s services were shit and they did nothing but the bare minimum to maintain the infrastructure.
The Dems are always more than willing to help the other side of the aisle, as long as doing so doesn’t affect their own little pet projects.
Heading the party’s list of “little pet projects”: concentrating power within the party in as few hands as possible, removed as far as possible from actual voters.
“It’s hard, in this pass, not to wonder if the Right Wing is forcing the issue by creating a crisis, then pressing for action.”
Why not? It worked for 9/11 and the Patriot Act.
Book Salon up with John Feffer’s Crusade 2.0: The West’s Resurgent War on Islam hosted by Zaid Jilani
Oh you can rely on it. Show me one instance of a former government run service that was “improved” by privatization – I mean: really improved.
I can’t think of anything, but I might be missing something.
Whenever there’s a monopoloy or close to it: look out. People complain about the rising price of stamps? Well, they ain’t seen nothing yet, if the USPO is privatized. Not to mention that FedEx and UPS will raise their rates accordingly.
Citizens are dumb if they think privatizing the USPO will be an “improvement.” Sure, a big financial windfall for the 1%ers who get to rip off US citizens. A huge FAIL for citizens wanting reasonable mail delivery.
Fed Ex and UPS are always much higher
and squeezing every last penny out of every last person…spot on
I love it, RF. Funny though, Fedex has apparently been at one and the same time advertising against the fact that UPS workers can unionize, and are under NLRB rules, so the ad mentions higher ‘labor’ costs again (avoiding the pre-payment Congressional mandate)…AND they’re trying to achieve the same status, not be under the same rules.
The ad will slay you in that it tries to slay so many different Dragons at once.
So many folks here have stayed so pissed at Dennis, but we’ve heard from him on this as well as LIBOR. I say bully on him.
I actually do have an established work history as both a letter carrier and a postal clerk (mainly back in the eighties, so it’s been a while), so thank you for this report, wendy.
Also, thank you Kevin for the report re: Portland (somebody pass this on, please).
Also, OT – I hope that folks here will observe/perhaps post on the upcoming Hiroshima anniversary (re: visit to Japan by Truman’s grandson) as well as the space vessel Curiousity‘s landing on Mars, which I’ll probably have to view after the fact. Thanks again, all.
Welcome, tickingaway. I haven’t read Kevin’s Portland piece yet; thanks for the heads-up. I’ll reprise my Oppy post. Jayzus; two more days. (Today’s my son’s 29th birthday)
Who’s left in the Left Wing now, Shutterbuggery? In deed, not campaign verbiage, I mean.
“That’s what America’s all about: greed, thievery, espionage, torture, murder, war, mass-extinction, etc…”
At least the Ruling Class, but thank goodness all our citizens aren’t they. And waking more of them up to what’s afoot is the job ahead of us.
Exactly, holeybuybull. Which is a good part of the reason I post so often on Indigenous issues, actions, Declarations of Human and Earth Rights: so folks can grasp to what degree we are becoming they in such short order. And the Indigenous fully grasp what Neoliberal Capitalism is all about, and also the dangers of GM food, the hypocrisy of ‘Green Economics’, and more.
Oh, piffle, AitchD, ya silly man. If ya zap me an email with choices, I can dig em out and send tiffs. Here are a few four-legged critters (haven’t uploaded many), too.
Er…not watermarked cuz I seem genetically unable to make money any longer, and WTH. I can’t even remember who’s allowed to see them online. At my Posterous, I tell folks they can download a few, but I don’t even know how the resolution looks. Please remember: I’m still a hippie, and think sharing keeps ya fed; an article of faith so far unchallenged in the main. ;o)
Actually, no matter what it says anywhere, what was done to pile up cash in a manner that exhausts the efforts of the service company still suggests that the goal is privatization and capture of that fund, as in the comment at 10. As Bob says, that was indeed the early takeover scheme that was pioneered by such as Milken: capture the pension fund.
Oh, and thanks indeed to wendydavis for keeping an eye on this story. It’s very important, but with so many such going on these days could easily get lost.
It does seem akin to a hostile takeover in which the new Overlords cannibalize the company, then let it die a slow death.
And where, goddammit, are all those missing Social Security funds? Read a great post of Ms. Hamsher’s from the past the other day researching for a post on the 97 (I think) Dems who voted against the House ‘Audit the Fed’ bill. She mentioned we owe Monica Lewinsky for Clinton’s not giving away the bank re: Social Security cuts even that far back. Luckily for the Oligarchs, he signed the CFMA and Gram-Leach-Bliley, though. Prick.
And welcome, prostratedragon. Yes; our heads keep swiveling from one hideous theft of our money and civil liberties to the next.
If the USPS is privatized, I imagine that the cost a first class mailing will be upwards of $2.00 to $5.00. Who will suffer? The poor who are used to mailing in their utility bills and rent checks. Those who have access to computers like myself will continue to pay bills online as usual. I’m wondering if bill pay online will cost more because these companies will see the opportunity to charge for the convenience. After all, they’ll say: aren’t you saving all that money in postage? I don’t see an end to the damage done by phasing out the USPS.
I heard this piece when it was aired a few days back. Thanks for throwing it up on the electric interweb machine. Pierce also takes a very dim view of this deliberate plundering of public assets.
Here and here.
These kleptocrat pricks, and their right-wing, extremist, teabagger minions are really starting to piss me off.
Also suffering will be the people who work for UPS and Fedex. With the competition pretty much wiped out, guess how those entities will treat their employees? “You don’t like it, then hit the bricks; there are plenty of others who are will to come in and take a beating…”
That was my guess, as to the primary goal , why all of this was done . Soak us for $5.5B/mo , then transfer it to the best-connected “job creators”.
If I’m not entirely mistaken, paying bills online also is like using a swipe card: the company starts using/profiting on the money immediately. Dennis mentioned that banks wouldn’t have to send statements and photostats of cancelled checks (I hated that development: I liked the checks themselves for tax time). Dunno he’s right, but..
But yeah; it all will suck for rural folks, gasoline usage, postal workers, unions (another big gain for the Elites).
It’s also a place where people gather and talk to each other, at least in rural areas. I want my post office! And the USPS need to humanize their teevee ads, imho.
Shhhhh! ;)
They’ve probably already thought of that and more . Don’t forget all the late fees generated by the “improved” private service .
The first piece of Pierce’s you linked to puts mine to shame, but I’m glad he was as incensed over Orszag’s bullshit as I was. I spent way too much time searching for the House bill’s #, and if anyone gave enough of a crap to be writing about it. Sorry I didn’t see his piece; it would have been comforting (cold comfort, I guess).
Thanks, Shoto.
we live inside a
FreeFor Profit Society.There is damn little free.
Aloha, wendy, it’s always a delite to see your excellent work front-paged…! ;-)
Ain’t you just a sweetie, dear Tuttle. And aloha to you in the islands. Nice being vindicated (no matter how slowly, relentlessly, tardily) on Syria, yes? Ya fookin’ propagandist, you. ;o)
Privatization in conjunction with indentured servitude are key outcomes of structural adjustment ,and this IMT enforced agenda is the neoliberal propellent that the Washington Consensus harvested to wage global class warfare against the swinish multitudes .It has worked as planned ,with the swines first believed to reside in destitute nations ,then Latin America .then the Asian contagion ,then our factory workers and small family farms ,now middle-income strata are being fleeced of their jobs/professions with attendant pension funds devalued assets and healthcare security while public services ,such as our postal network ,will be the extortive tax-gouging prey of for-profit monopolies emblematic of privatization ….Those tea-bagging bubbas win as hyper-inflation makes gold skyrocket,,government collapse and white gun toters the new affluent middle as deadbeats and foreigners clear out or die .
Ha, recently, I heard someone say the the Republicans are aiming to reset the clock back to the 1950′s. Frankly this is the kind of observation produced by a narrow focus on gay rights and culture wars.
If I’m not mistaken, the 1950′s saw the biggest public works project in world history. Wouldn’t mind a bit of that right now.
The way things are going, all the gains won in the 60′s civil rights struggle are going to be obliterated by economic privation aka our new “normal” aka feudalism.
When the 2006 bill was passed, the National Association of Letter Carriers announced that they had beaten back all the bad recommendations of Bush’s 2003 blue-ribbon commission and won pretty much every important battle in negotiations with Congress. They also trumpeted the fact that they had “protected the interests of our current and future retirees, whose health benefits will be fully funded.” Only six years later, they claim they’ve overfunded their pension plan (a la Bain) and have subjected to unfair requirements to fund their retirees future health benefits.
http://www.nalc.org/postal/reform/paea_2006.html
Are these guys for workers or against them?
The idea of never letting a crisis go to waste,because the best plan-b laying around will have an opportunity to capture the day .was first advanced by the brilliant Marxist ,Rosa Luxomberg .Whether Olinsky ,Rosa or Veblin ,they steal left thinking and beat us up with it ,knowing we cannot develop a plan-b .
Yes ton@89 ,the Fifties was a great time for white straight men ,and that’s the model ,although their values are primitive .What the left forgets is a huge plurality of women subscribe to misogynic subjugation .
This one is a no-brainer.
The United States Post Office until the Nixon administration was a government department, not a government-sponsored enterprise. The Nixon administration set up the private-public structure for the Post Office to break the back of the newly formed postal employees union, which had struck in 1970.
Make it a government department again. Like DoD or EPA or DHHS.
x2
Hey Tar ,the brainer ,as always ,is who makes the rulers and their two parties return our PO to a government department .I think in lieu of organized resistance there is a better chance of your noted acronyms being privatized .
Great reminder of our own history that we so easily forget, THD; or at least I’d forgotten, but then…my brain is made of gingerbread now. ;o)
To all of the rest of you ‘Princes of America, you Queens of this temporarily benighted land’ (fractured John Irving): I’ve hit the proverbial wall, and need to shut down for the night.
Rest, restore, find something to laugh about…some days it’s all we have left as respite from our growing rage and incredulity at watching our nation and its Commons under such soul-stealing fire.
Love all those you can, and speak to as many as you can about this danger and others, and you’ll be doing a good day’s work.
love,
wd
Late to the show as usual, and maybe this has already been said, but..
Don’t you find it ironic in an age where the government has allowed big business to defund their own pension programs and steal all that money, and then require the USPS to over-fund theirs? Whatever happened to the Federal Pension Guarantee Trust?
How is the guvmint going to steal that $40 billion already in the USPS pension fund if it’s privatized? Or will that fillip go to big business too?
I don’t see how Assad turning his nation into a war zone proves much beyond the deadly ruthlessness with which Russia will facilitate the destruction anyone who opposes their geopolitical objectives. The approach looks as bad or worse than things liberals tend to harshly criticize America for doing.
I do have to say if we’re comparing outcomes, it is now abundantly clear that the following the Lybia model of stopping a tyrant from using warplanes and tanks against their urban civilians resulted in demonstratively (significantly) less casualties and destruction for the human beings in Libya than the humans in Syria have suffered by this point. As such, one thing events in Syria seem to vindicate is the decision to intervene in the Libya case.
^ Wow. ^ AIPAC and the Cheney foundations are burning their undercover humanitarian bombers on this race for Iran.
Privatization is treason.
The vindication I mentioned to CTuttle was that the western media are beginning to grasp that there aren’t two convenient sides battling in Syria, and that the jihadists aren’t just about bringing secular democracy to the nation. eCHANomincs’ diary yesterday had plenty of links to that effect, and she and several others explained how complex the many different classes, religious factions, etc. are, not to mention who’s arming whom.
But since you seem to think that any sources other than those who report something other than ‘Assad forces’ v. ‘rebel forces’ as dictator propaganda, it’s hard to think you’d see that what’s going on is both a civil war in which ‘the rebels’, who arguably were first peaceful protestors, have been joined by all sorts of of jihadists, and are being armed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia at the very least. There are reports that some of those rebels are killing Christians; what a mess.
What are you advocating? That US/NATO bomb strategically? Provide the rebels with heavy weapons as per Anne Marie Slaughter and John McCain? You blame Russia, but it was clear two years ago the US wanted the Russian Naval base at Tartus gone. US/NATO policy seems intent on ginning up a new cold war, and so the proxy war including Israel’s need to neutralize another supporter of Hezbollah seems clear, too.
So yeah, it’s a civil war and a proxy war, and with foreign intervention a lot of experts think it will get worse.
I’ll skip Libya; you and I just don’t agree on that, nor likely its future. But even the Global Centre on R2P isn’t calling for intervention. James Traub (who’s on their board) reasons:
“There can be no moral obligation to act when action might magnify the evil one seeks to end. And yet to accept that states have moral obligations beyond their borders is to accept the need to act effectively, rather than, for example, to say that the responsibility lies with the neighbors. If something won’t work, you try something else.”
I liked the Leslie Gelb piece.
[edited to add]: It keeps nagging at me that you seem to think any of us who want the fuller story told, including all the participants, and more of the histories, geo-politics and comparisons to our non-intervention in other despotic regimes killing their Arab Spring dissenters…are acting as apologists for despots and tyrants. Heh. I can think of many authors who’ve begun their pieces with disclaimers like: ‘Before I start, let me stipulate that (Gadaffi, Assad, Achmedinajad) is a brutal dictator committing atrocities…’
If something is specifically is in the Constitution as a government mandate, how much further from “original intent” can one get? This shows how “conservatives” aren’t really “conservative” but radicals.
-stewartm
Absolutely. And, as I said above, as per the “original intent” of the Founders. :-P
-stewartm
Privatization is code for monopoly controlled and subsidized distribution of goods and services. Free or competitive markets are a myth in the US. That’s just the way the 1% planned it.
Good question. That reads like some of the deals the ILWU made in WA that to an outsider’s eye…didn’t look so grand. (But then Obomba had threatened to bring in the Coast Guard if the strikers ‘interfered with’ ships entering the port.
But here’s what the president of NALC is saying about Congress’s inaction on the default. He says it’s $45 billion set aside.
Yes, NALC definitely has changed its tune. In 2006, NALC claimed that it was imposing a condition on a reluctant Congress in order to protect the important rights of workers to retiree health benefits. In 2012, NALC claims that Congress is imposing exactly the same requirement on the union, but now it’s awfully unfair. So when the Postal Service can’t fund its own workers’ promised benefits, it’s not that the Postal Service is defaulting, it’s Congress that’s defaulting.
This is one reason why it’s always better to take your compensation in cash and invest it yourself for your own retirement. Your employer will always be tempted to play games with it, and your union may even go along. It’s a lot harder for either your government or your boss or your union to confiscate something that’s in your own name.
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2012/eirv39n20-20120518/39-44_3920.pdf
“The coalition members “placed the overall good of the postal community and the country above self-serving, parochial considerations,” Young said.
…makes you wonder which the latter considerations are, eh? And the author claims that APWU didn’t oppose it, but says they now do. Weird piece, weird messages.
LOL! The last thing the PTB want now is “a literate, educated, thinking, and responsible citizenry.”
You need to put down the megaphone and stop advocating the meddling by the US Corporatocracy in the affairs of sovereign nations. The US motivation is to promote hegemony, steal resources, and cater to the desires of the NATO nations, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Every time USA,Inc. involves itself in the affairs of other nations, it only succeeds in making matters worse for the populace and creating more animosity towards the US.
OK. Since this post is a day old, I don’t feel *too* bad going waaaaayyy off topic (YOU started it!!!!:-p).
Nobody with any credibility ever asserted this in the first place; not really even in the western media (which includes Al Jazeera now, right? ;-). That is the strawman anti-revolutionary commentators consistently hold up to argue against. I personally don’t believe that opposing tyranny must include a goal of implementing western-style secular democracy as the determination if a people deserve to be slaughtered by an autocrat or deserve to have their aspirations realized. And I think there are a lot of people generally supportive of the Arab freedom movements who feel the same.
It is certainly not correct to dismiss the uprising using a simple prejudicial term such as jihadist. Doing that perpetuates the same “two side” over-simplifications you decry and simply serves to put the revolutionaries into a box that makes it easy to hate them instead of a box that is easy to support. It would be significantly less tempting to characterize your view as supporting the frame of autocrats if your rhetoric did not mirror so exactly what is being actively promoted by Assad’s regime.
Well, it’s kind of difficult to assert reality for combatants in Syria doesn’t ultimately break down along those exact lines, but no. I view the statements issued by the Syrian government through their official news agency as unvarnished war propaganda that is easily debunked time and time again. Quoting this to advance a premise (especially without caveat) is absolutely absurd. Further, I view the work of very specific individuals (Pepe Escobar, Angry Arab, a couple others) as almost exclusively consisting of intentionally misleading propaganda heavily peppered with unsubstantiated assertions presented as “everybody knows” fact (also often easily debunked) in a classic agitprop style. Simply put, the rebels don’t appear to get caught lying nearly as much as the anti-rebels do. Throughout, the revolutionaries have established more credibility with me than certain usual suspects (none at FDL, BTW) who use this (and every) conflict as a framework on which to hang a knee-jerk laundry list of long-held grudges and grievance. But it is important to note that the Rebels established this by having reality frequently bear out their statements as apparently correct … not by saying things I agreed with already.
Leaving a nation to chaos for a year and a half and watching AQ move in to the vacuum does not vindicate a commentator who claimed AQ (or jihadist motivations) were involved with/behind the combat when it began over a year ago or at the roots of the uprising. That is the exact argument Bush/Obama has used in every situation where they created an AQ-inviting disaster somewhere and justified prosecuting the action by claiming a need to combat the ripe grounds for terrorists which their own disaster created. It is simply Russia/Assad doing it this time instead of America/____.
It sounds like you are trying to advance the theory that the people Syria would be living in peace and happiness under the benevolent eye of the noble Bashar al-Assad were it not for America … who stirred up trouble so they could take a naval base from Russia and please the Zionists. To me, such an assertion seems to just be full-on daffy. The fact that Western interests may benefit from one outcome over another does not prove that Western interests are “behind” a people rising up against decades of institutionalized abuse and suppression.
In retrospect, yeah, we probably should have followed the Libya model and challenged Russia directly. The process in Libya absolutely resulted in having provided one of the best possible results for actual Libyan humans when looking at the legitimately *possible* outcomes to that situation. The exclusive reason conventional wisdom calls Libya a mistake appears to be because it didn’t provide measurable political benefits for Obama or poll well. But I never imagined in a million years Russia would do *this* to the people of Syria – I figured they’d ultimately swap out puppet governments and grant a few democratic/social concessions – so I didn’t support challenging Russia directly with an intervention until after it seems rather too late. But even now I think it would be totally appropriate to challenge and destroy the fighter jets being used against cities, at least that would force Russia to address Assad’s use of Russian warplanes against civilian centers.
In the absence of credible organized civilian protection, funneling of heavy weapons to populations under assault became inevitable – as did the increasing participation/influence of regional players in the conflict. By refusing to countenance the former, one pretty much implicitly must accept the latter outcome. The only variable was Russia, who has apparently taken the position that anyone not submitting to Assad should be slaughtered. Russia’s position and actions amplify the regional realities and hasten the inevitable.
There is scant evidence we are in control of the situation. By all appearance we’re reacting and trying to manage/control events as best we can as they unfold. In the current reality, how would we possibly prevent weapons from flowing to rebel fighters if we even wanted to?
Sorry it took me so long; I’d quit looking back here… As far as: you started it…weeeeeelllll; I dunno. ;oP
Re: jihadists as prejudicial: yes; it was, but I didn’t know I needed to separate out the disparate elements, which eCHAN’s post showed me were many, complex even to fighting among disparate groups by some accounts. I did mean in this case that the western powers who seem once again to be following essentially the neo-con American/western hegemony have since the start been looking to use the popular uprising to promote their interests. If you believe that *we* are acting in this with any degree of altruism (and you do appear to), we really are on different pages. Our Partners in Peace, the Saudis have been trying to overthrow Assad for a long time, and Israel concurs, so apparently does the US. And I imagine that Mosad, CIA, Blackwater ‘advisors’ are doing the same shit they’ve always done, recruiting anyone willing to the cause.
Russia: Lavrov is an asshole, so is Putin, but I think much of the history of this was ginned up as NATO began encircling both Iran and Russia with weapons of mass destruction, often disguised as ‘missile shields’. Sure it would piss them off, as it’s pissing off China that Obomba announced, and has been, swinging the military to the Pacific in a show of strength, no matter how misguided. But no, I never meant without us, everything would be peachy-keen there; that move was just one more in the muscling-up process, imo. *As* was the fact that the Saudis and Qataris have been sending equipment, arms, etc. into Syria through the backdoor.
There have been so many times that it looked like this administration seriously avoided any meaningful diplomatic solutions in the ME, and there is such a long US history of ‘we broke it, never fixed it’ that yeppers; I’m reflexively cynical. The post-Gadaffi quid pro quos in Libya aren’t available with Syria as far as I know, except for control Mediterranean port (but I don’t know much about that, obviously). But that may be beside the point, as getting any friends of Iran outta the picture may be incentive enough.
I agree that the US isn’t in control, nor do I think it should be. We may disagree on this, too, but SoS Clinton and our generals interfering in Egypt early on in the revolution (as in: the military being more stable, here, how about Suleiman for head dictator instead crap) are partially responsible for how it’s going there now.
Anyhoo, hard to get my head in the game on this; I’ve been in Oppenheimer’s for too long the past couple days. Dunno how this piece made it into the NYT, but…
Oh, and AJ: weird. They still have some authors I like, or did awhile ago. But on the whole, I agree with aprescoup, that they made some turn over Libyan coverage. Foreign Policy mag had a coups there too, apparently, and the folks like Ricks way overshadow the S. Walts, et.al.