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When Nader asked Donahue how he'll increase revenues, no response followed. "Postal Regulatory Commission Chairperson Ruth Goldway proposed about two dozen ways."
Other good ideas circulate. Instead of managing counterproductively, competing effectively with Fed Ex, UPS, and other express delivery operators should be prioritized. Congress also shares blame by restricting USPS services.
But that's no excuse for "long lines, long phone delays, other mismatches between staff and levels of fluctuating business," and other troubling issues, including excessive time spent on cutting, abandoning, closing, delaying and outsourcing services to Wal-Mart and K-Mart locations.
Edited by New York University Professor Steve Hutkins, Save the Post Office.com (SPO) supports saving and improving a vital service. The site has information on closures, consolidations, properties sold, constructive preservation efforts, and what ordinary people can do to help. It also has thoughtful analysis and opinions.
In a December 7 New York Times op ed, Hutkins said closing post offices and cutting staff won't "hasten the Postal Service's downward spiral."
Toughening user conditions will force them elsewhere for better alternatives. Moreover, declining revenues assure more cuts until the system's entirely degraded and replaced by private operators at much greater expense for small users.
"The so-called 'crisis' we're witnessing is a manufactured emergency, a strategy of 'shock and awe' designed to finish the job started in 1970, when the Department of the Post Office was turned into a government agency (made to) act 'like a business.' "
Today, privatization is planned. European countries did it. Anti-government/anti-union/corporatist/hard-right business and government ideologues want it.
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