Bitter Grace

Because the United States Post Office will soon be shutting down for fiscal reasons, after a decades-long campaign of the GOP to eliminate it in favour of higher-cost commercial communication and delivery services. Elizabeth Warren is calling on Congress to step up into the lacuna left by the White House and protect the USPS/

1. It was created as and has always been vitally important infrastructure in a nation as far-flung and disparate as ours, offering a means of communication inexpensive inexpensive enough for nearly anyone, and reaching throughout a country not all of whose addresses UPS and FedEx and so on will deliver to. (If you think interstate highways are important infrastructure, and they are: the US Post Office is much more so."

2. Its importance is highlighted by the current pandemic and by the importance of supporting and continuing democracy by opening wide options for vote-by-mail in this fall's elections-- which is something that cannot occur without a Post Office.

3. This administration is building on the development of "Oops well we can't change it now" increasingly practiced for decades by the GOP-- enacting and fast-starting irreversible or hard-to-reverse policy they know is likely to be challenged and to fail on legal grounds.

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Now I'll call the White House.

ETA: The White House comment line is "temporarily out of service." *cough*

I have sent the following message to the President via https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/:

Act decisively now to keep the United States Postal Service operative.

It was created and remains vital infrastructure facilitating inexpensive and near-universal communication across our huge and disparate nation.

During the current pandemic its importance is increased by the need to facilitate safe and accessible vote-by-mail in the autumn elections. Our democracy depends on it. The only way to have a democracy is to have free and fair elections.

I call on the President and the White House to backstop the United States Postal Service fiscally. No commercial service is as inexpensive: none serves every US postal address.