I keep hearing rumors about the Administration selling off the U.S. Post Of-fice as another cost-cutting measure. Maybe it is true; maybe not; maybe the idea is being floated to see what our reaction will be.
I think it is goofy for a lot of reasons. For one, my fa-ther preached the gospel of never selling capital assets or invading principle. Those two are meant to earn more money for the owner, and, in turn, can be passed down to the next generation.
He also believed you should never sell land. Make the land work and provide an income you, then pass it on to the kids. His exception to this practice was when he bought a farm or business specifically as a short-term investment.
We saw what happened in Chicago when the city sold off some of its capital assets to take care of a budget shortfall. It sold the rights to collect money from parking meters and some toll roads.
It took care of the city’s budget problems for a while, but then the government went through its windfall and was worse off than before.
All in all, selling off the USPS doesn’t make long-term financial sense. To be sure, it will pay off some long-term debts and raise money, but in no time it will be gone with little to show for it.
The other problem with selling the USPS to a private company is that the mail will no longer be under control of government, but instead a board of directors whose primary focus is to make money for investors and shareholders. When Chicago leased the toll roads, the in-vestors immediately jacked up prices.
It will be similar to what we see with many newspapers. West Michigan had several big- and mid-sized inde-pendently-owned daily pa-pers. One by one, many were bought by investors. So were national papers like the Chi-cago Tribune.
Almost instantly, the pa-pers’ quality noticeably dete-riorated. More and more articles were written by na-tional or regional news ser-vices such as MLive.
These syndicated articles replaced the platoons of re-porters and photographers who would chase down sto-ries, often of local interest. Staffs shrunk to a skeleton crew. That is not good for a community or region. I ad-mire and appreciate publish-er Mike Wilcox and his son Jordan for working to keep local weekly newspapers viable.
Should the USPS be sold, contracts with long-service employees will be renegotiat-ed, other will be bought out, and hard-earned benefits such as insurance and pen-sions will be whittled away.
All of that plus the initial outlay to buy the entire op-eration will be expensive. The owners will want to re-coup their losses and show a profit.
If this goes through, guess who’ll be stuck for the tab? My guess is it won’t be the billionaire oligarchs but you and me, same as always.
In the nicest of terms, the new company will explain its efficiency plans to reduce services, hours and branches. Then the new owner will raise the price of stamps.
One reason the USPS is in deep barnyard organic fi-nancial fertilizer is that we are sending less first class mail than we did before the Internet. As one employee explained it, “People aren’t sending as much mail, so we have to keep raising the cost of stamps.” Many of us will use the internet even more, and the price of stamps will keep rising.
More worrisome than that is right now, when we mail a letter, it is a violation of fed-eral law for anyone to tam-per with it, say open your envelope and go on a snoop-ing expedition. No one gets to do that, especially USPS employees, without a court order and warrant to look for specific contents.
There are exceptions, of course, most notably at jails and prisons. During wartime, censorship of soldier’s mail was implemented to protect vital information.
During World War I there was serious discussion in upper levels of government on how to handle the Zim-merman telegram from Germany to the President of Mexico. The British got hold of the document, hesitated to open it, then read the letter and decided to snitch to Pres-ident Wilson about the con-tents. Germany was plotting with the President of Mexico to invade the US in return for a hefty payoff.
However, if the USPS is sold, the new private owner can make its own rules and privacy might become even more an anachronism. In dictatorships, anyone writing or receiving mail that con-tains a message opposite to the government’s official line is in serious jeopardy.
My father taught some-thing else that ties in with the possibility of selling the USPS. He said it takes mon-ey to make money, and you must invest in yourself be-cause the older you get the harder you have to work to look good. Do not be so cheap that you neglect to spend money on yourself that will help you make more money.
That same principle applies to the federal government. I am all in favor of reducing stupid expenses and waste, but not important ones. It takes a lot of money to have a good government that does good by its people. Support for the elderly, those who are disabled, for schools and hospitals are not merely “en-titlements — it is how we care for our fellow citizens.
That includes the post of-fice. If we want a good coun-try, it will take some of our hard-earned cash to pay for it.
That’s the way this country has always operated. We didn’t look for the cheapest way to build up our nation. On the frontier, pioneer fami-lies taxed themselves to build one-room schools and hire the teachers. The same thing happened when a small community needed what became known as a “cottage hospital” or almost anything else. Our predecessors worked together and looked forward.
We could use more of their spirit today. Perhaps, before someone hammers a For Sale sign in front of the post office, our best and brightest minds should look at how it can be reformed and im-proved.
Reform, not revolution or smashing things with a hammer, is how we as indi-viduals and a country move forward.
