This photograph of the North Philadelphia Branch Post Office comes from Living New Deal research associate Evan Kalish. Kalish has dedicated a tremendous amount of time to documenting postal landscapes across the country.
From the New York Times comes this report on austerity at the US Postal Service:
“Even the federal government turns to private shippers rather than the Postal Service when it wants to send packages. A report from the agency’s inspector general said that since 2001, private companies like FedEx and United Parcel Service had consistently captured 98 percent of the revenue from long-term shipping contracts with the government because the financially troubled Postal Service did not have a sales staff or a strategy to focus on the federal sector until 2009.” Read the full article here….
May we modestly propose that a renewed investment in public services, rather than a continued practice of turning to the private sector to meet our needs, might prove a better path? It’s time for a new New Deal…
In addition to the slight of hand of the Blums, regards priceless artworks, may I also point out that the destroyers of our Congress also have an additional dire motive in the attempts to destroy our Constitutionally mandated Postal System. There is the unionized workers who will lose their jobs, another blow to unions. This is political in the extreme.
Another aspect is the lobbying of such as FedEx and UPS, who would obviously benefit by our post offices’ demise.