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HAWORTH: Why The Democrats’ Claims About The USPS Are Political Nonsense

   DailyWire.com
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., questions Postmaster General Louis DeJoy during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on slowdowns at the Postal Service ahead of the November elections on Capitol Hill in Washington,DC on August 24, 2020. (Photo by Tom Williams / POOL / AFP)
Tom Williams/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

The political Left have always had an obsession for keeping failing industries alive. In some cases, industries are kept synthetically afloat due to pressure from overly powerful and aggressive unions. Margaret Thatcher faced such a battle in the United Kingdom during the infamous 1984 Miners strike that brought the country to a standstill, despite the fact that the coal industry was in obvious and irreversible decline.

In other cases, industries become objects of political and, bizarrely, moral significance. Fueled by a conspiratorial Democratic Party as we approach the presidential election in November, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has become the recipient of the Left’s latest bout of disingenuous adoration.

While the ineptitude of the USPS used to be a bipartisan issue, our current environment of hyper-partisanship mixed with political desperation means that criticism of the USPS is suddenly proof of treachery. Now, Barack Obama declares that “everyone depends on the USPS,” and it simply must be defended at all costs. The Democrats even leveraged the latest array of accusations regarding Trump’s alleged attempt to “cheat the electorate” to justify the allocation of an additional $25 billion to the USPS.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has openly rejected calls to reform the USPS, stating that “It’s not a business. It’s a service.” This attitude is not unique to Pelosi, with some arguing that “the Founders never intended the U.S. Postal Service to be managed like a business,” and others describing the USPS as “one of the oldest and most important public goods in American history.”

By defining the USPS as a “service,” its supporters are deliberately justifying the undeniable mathematical fact that it is a failing service. Year after year, the USPS “loses” billions of dollars. In other words, it is costing the American taxpayer billions of dollars every year to not only run the USPS, but to cover its losses.

The sole reason the Democrats prefer to use the language of the Postal Service as a “public good” is that it manipulates the mode of its judgment. If we judge the USPS as a business, it’s obvious that it’s a failing business. However, if we judge it as a vague “service,” then it becomes indistinguishable from any other Democratic “human right” which must therefore be guaranteed by the government. We move from speaking of “cost” to their preferred subject of “investment.”

It is somewhat ironic that the Left refer to the original intent of the Founders in defense of the USPS while also calling for the abolition of the 2nd Amendment or the perversion of the 14th Amendment to permit abortion. It is also untrue to claim that its privatization (or elimination) would be unconstitutional. The reality is that public institutions like the USPS are staunchly defended by the Democrats not because of their supposed undying respect for the U.S. Constitution, but because to do otherwise would be to admit their own consistent and shameless failure.

Not only has the USPS failed to adapt to our modern age, its ability to compete has actively been sabotaged by Congress, which has actively hindered the Postal Service’s ability to compete. Lawmakers blocked the end of Saturday letter delivery which could have saved $2 billion per year, and failed to enact the replacement of doorstep delivery with curbside delivery which would have saved $4.5 billion per year.

The issue at the heart of every government program, including the USPS, is that those running it  politicians are not held to account for their failures. Their only solution is to allocate more money to themselves to solve the problems they caused, creating an infinite loop of spending and waste from which there is no escape.

To paraphrase the Left when it comes to gun control, “mail” today is nothing like the “mail” of the 18th century. As Obama acknowledged, we have multiple private companies which provide dependable and profitable services far superior to that of the USPS. We also have widespread access to history’s fastest and most reliable form of global communication the internet. In many ways, we simply do not rely on the USPS like we did before FedEx or Gmail existed.

In the few ways that we still utilize the USPS, there is no reason (beyond a pig-headed refusal to accept reality) not to continue to provide such services through a self-sustaining and efficient private system which incentivizes success and punishes failure.

We cannot accept the status quo and continue to funnel money into the burning dumpster fire that is the USPS, hoping that politicians experience divine intervention and develop a sudden respect for the value of our money. We must understand that the services provided by the USPS are available elsewhere, and it is not the uniquely indispensable entity the Democrats claim it to be.

We have two choices. The U.S. Postal Service must change or die.

Related: 10 Things To Know About Trump, U.S. Postal Service Conspiracy Theories Pushed By Democrats, Media

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