Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress “To establish Post Offices and post Roads.” Benjamin Franklin was famously the first Postmaster General appointed by the Continental Congress. Louis DeJoy is the 75th. He seems determined to be the last head of what is now the U.S. Postal Service, an independent agency.
DeJoy’s ten-year plan for USPS is expected to be “the largest rollback of consumer mail services in a generation.” The Washington Post reports (emphasis mine):
DeJoy is expected to emphasize the need for austerity to ensure more consistent delivery and rein in billions of dollars in financial losses, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. The agency is weighed down by $188.4 billion in liabilities, and DeJoy told a House panel last month that he expects the USPS to lose $160 billion over the next 10 years.
The Post has more about DeJoy’s plans, about how the agency’s service has suffered under his tenure, about how President Biden cannot fire him directly but can appoint new board members who might, etc. Readers already know how badly delivery of ballots and other mail has suffered since DeJoy took charge.
But more infuriating is the creeping capitalism behind making the USPS an independent agency expected to operate on a break-even basis to provide a public service spelled out in Article 1.
“Did you know we don’t use your tax dollars for our operations?” reads their Postal Facts page. Imagine the U.S. Mint (Clause 5) or the federal courts (Clause 9) or the U.S. Navy (Clause 13) boasting about that. Imagine them being expected to run like businesses and taken to task over their “billions of dollars in financial losses,” as though the power of Congress “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” was for some other purpose.
But under creeping capitalism, that is how DeJoy and many of us are conditioned to think. Neoliberalism is far too aseptic a term.
It remains infuriating how the press defaults to characterizing relief checks intended to rescue people as stimulus checks for rescuing the economy. Nowhere in the 628 pages of the ‘‘American Rescue Plan Act of 2021” does “stimulus” appear. Nor in the ‘‘Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act’’ or the ‘‘CARES Act’’ passed in March 2020.
On Dec. 16, Democratic New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a Twitter poll asking followers whether the $600 in the second COVID check was enough. Newsweek recast the question as her asking “whether they considered a $600 stimulus check to be enough.” It’s reflexive.
The checks are now “stimmies” because subconsiously people consider the economy more important than the humans it is supposed to serve. Even to humans who spill their sweat and blood in its service. Which term you default to signals which you value more.
That ought to give us pause.