Not in 30 years. That was the last itme I had issues with the U.S. mail.
I accidentally inserted my VISA bill with my address showing in the return envelope window and mailed it — to myself — at a post office a quarter mile from my house. Two weeks later it showed up in my mailbox along with the late notice from VISA. A second time during the Reagan administration, my state tax refund check journeyed first to Sullivan, Maine before reaching me throroughly crumped.
A lot of Americans lately are experiencing DeJoy of that kind of postal disservice:
Mark Currie of Virginia had three checks snagged in postal delays in three months. In New Jersey, Lois Fitton says she was forced to pay interest on a credit card balance because the bill never arrived. Jim Rice says two insurance companies canceled policies for his property management business in Oklahoma after the payments got lost in the mail.
As the service crisis at the U.S. Postal Service drags into its eighth month, complaints are reaching a fever pitch. Consumers are inundating members of Congress with stories of late bills — and the late fees they’ve absorbed as a result. Small-business owners are waiting weeks, even months, for checks to arrive, creating cash-flow crunches and debates on whether to switch to costlier private shippers. Large-scale mailers, such as banks and utilities, are urging clients to switch to paperless communication, a shift that would furtherundercut the agency’s biggest revenue stream.
It is almost as if Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is trying to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service. Members of Congress have noticed.
“The industry’s faith and confidence in the USPS to perform is critical; without that confidence, alternatives for mailers throughout our coalition will become more attractive out of necessity,” Joel Quadracci, chief executive of Quad, one of the nation’s largest direct mailing firms, testified Wednesday during a House hearing on mail issues. “And, unfortunately, the industry’s confidence in USPS has been shaken.”
Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) went further, telling Postmaster General Louis DeJoy at the same hearing that he has “lost all confidence in the postal system.” He described making an “embarrassing” call to J.C. Penney to avoid a late fee because the bill arrived nearly a month after its due date. “My goal is to be able to get to the point where I put my mailbox in the garbage can.”
In my case, I’ve gone 30 years without any issues. Until last week.
A small package on its way here has gone missing in the system. The tracking notice at the top was the last update from one week ago. The shipper in Kansas mailed the package on February 14, two weeks ago. I filed a customer service request. The first in my life.
Lucky for me my package does not contain medications:
When Kristofer Goldsmith orders refills for his prescriptions from the Veterans Affairs hospital in the Bronx, it usually arrives on his doorstep in Pleasantville, N.Y., in two days. But his December order took a month and a half to arrive, and he went weeks without the medications. His primary care provider couldn’t even find a bar code to track the original order, which he said arrived the same day as the replacement.
“I’m relatively lucky that I can live with symptoms flaring up,” he said. “But there have been other points in my life when living without my medications could impact me catastrophically.”
It feels as if many government services that once provided a sense that we are all in this together and in some minimal sense created and treated equally are breaking down. Or else being deliberately broken by elites opposed to any “leveling” actions of government. Whether actions to target unions or postal workers, or opposition to raising the miminum wage, this feels like backlash.
When progressives began moving into leadership positions in our local Democratic committee in the early aughts, there was a period of pushback from “legacy Democrats” threatened by losing the control they had held firmly and closely for a long time.
What we see nationally today is Republican attempts to rig election outcomes while they point fingers and claim the “rigging” originates elsewere. Or to undermine other government mechanisms that level the playing field for all Americans and not just the few.
The thriving middle class celebrated as an American success story half a century ago has been under attack ever since non-whites began to enjoy (or demand) equal access to it. The political power that comes with de-marginalization among those groups will always find opponents threatened by seeing their monoploy on power undermined by equality.
Who knew the USPS with its “monopoly on mail” would become a target for those who only like monopolies they control?