By Dave Johnson, fellow at Campaign for America’s Future. Originally appeared on CAF’s blog.
With corporate-conservative calls for full or partial privatization of the United States Postal Service (USPS) escalating, groups are sounding the alarm about new nominees to the USPS Board of Governors.
The Senate is scheduled soon to consider the nominations of Mickey D. Barnett, James C. Miller III and two other nominees. Miller is a notorious privatization advocate and Barnett is a payday lender lobbyist. The Leadership Conference, a civil & human rights coalition, has sent a public letter to Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Reid asking them to oppose the nominees. (Since all four nominees are to be voted on as a package, the Leadership Conference is asking that the entire slate be voted down. At Naked Capitalism, inEpic Fail for the Postal Service: The Wrong Model and the Wrong Board, the other two nominees are described as not particularly bad for the USPS, but are “… a reflection of a system that treats public service as a revolving door for political and economic elites. This leaves a permanent imprint of the one percent on government and may be one of the primary reasons for cynicism in the electorate.”)
Miller: Privatization Advocate
Nominee James C. Miller III has for years been a forceful advocate of privatizing the Postal Service. The Leadership Conference letter says of Miller:
As OMB Director in 1988, Miller stated, “There is no good reason why [the Postal Service] should remain part of the U.S. government and no good reason why it should enjoy a monopoly over the delivery of letter mail.” Speaking at his 2012 Senate confirmation hearing on his second nomination to the board, Mr. Miller stated that “I think it would be best for the world, for the economy, and for the American people if the Postal Service was de-monopolized and privatized.”
As far back as 1988, Miller wrote at the Cato Institute (formerly the Koch Foundation), in It’s Time To Free The Mails, Miller calls for outsourcing USPS jobs. In it, Miller complains about “friends of the Postal Service” and organized labor who don’t want the USPS to “contract more with retail stores” instead of using actual post offices, and promotes “contracting out rural mail delivery to private carriers” in order to create “savings.”
This kind of privatization might at first appear to “save” the USPS some money but we now know the costs. These savings are realized from laying off people with good wages and replacing them with low-to-minimum wage employees. The rest of us pick up the cost of this as bankruptcies and foreclosures devastate the communities where the laid-off workers live, and taxpayers provide assistance to them and their low-wage replacements.
Miller has advocated privatization of the USPS before and since. He should not continue on the USPS Board. It does not serve the public to privatize government services.
Barnett: Payday Lender Lobbyist vs. Post Office Banking
The USPS has been hobbled both financially and in its ability to provide needed services to the public. Many are suggesting that the USPS restore “post office banking.” Many countries have post office banking, and the U.S. used to. This would help the USPS as well as millions of Americans who do not have bank accounts by offering accounts that enable people to deposit and write checks, have a savings account and even receive small loans at reasonable interest rates. This would help millions of lower-income Americans avoid the excessive fees charged by predatory check cashing and lending “services.”
Nominee Mickey D. Barnett is a lobbyist for the notorious “payday loan” industry. This industry preys on “underbanked,” low-income people by charging interest rates that can reach over 500 percent, imposing onerous fees and using abusive debt collection practices.
Obviously a lobbyist for these industries is being nominated so that he will oppose having the USPS provide banking relief. At a time when people are proposing that the USPS reinstate public banking – a service that would help millions of Americans – Barnett is clearly the wrong choice for the USPS Board.
Call Your Senators
The Leadership Conference coalition letter asks the Senate,
At a time when the future of the USPS is unclear, largely because of Congress’s inability to pass a comprehensive reform bill, it is especially important that the Board of Governors be composed of individuals who have demonstrated a strong commitment to the public service role of this great institution, and who have shown an openness to exploring all reasonable, public service-oriented options which might contribute to the vitality and sustainability of the USPS. Unfortunately, on this basis, we must urge you to reject the current slate of nominees.
The letter was signed by representatives of civil rights, consumer and, labor groups. Signers were Wade Henderson, President & CEO, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Lee Saunders, President, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); Richard Trumka, President, American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); Mark Dimondstein, President, American Postal Workers’ Union (APWU); Lisa Donner, Executive Director, Americans for Financial Reform; Hilary Shelton, NAACP Washington Bureau Director & Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy; Janet Murgía, President & CEO, National Council of La Raza; Mary Kay Henry, President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU); Mike Calhoun, President, Center for Responsible Lending; Melanie Campbell, President & CEO, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation; and Marc Morial, President, National Urban League.
Writing at Naked Capitalism in “Fight Over Postal Service Board Heats Up as Labor/Consumer Advocates/Minority Coalition Opposes Payday Lender Lobbyist, Privatization Backers,” Yves Smith asks:
I urge you to call or write your Senators to support The Leadership Conference’s opposition to the Postal Service’s board nominees. It’s best to add a reason, for instance, that you want to see a stronger postal service providing more services to the public, particularly in rural areas, where they are anchors for small communities; that you are in favor of a Post Office bank, particularly since big banks are creating more and more “unbanked” consumers; that low-cost delivery services are important for citizens and commerce, and privatization is guaranteed to put an end to that.
This should be a big public issue. Please take a minute and contact your state’s senators and ask them to oppose the nominees for the USPS Board.
Postal service is our main mail delivery in our small rural town of White Salmon WA. Even UPS and FedEx drop packages off there. So much for private industry taking care of their customers, pay a premium and have ht etax payer ( USPS) deliver it for you! As a nation we owe it to the American people to provide an alternative to the crazy Casino Capitalists that are only concerned with profits and not service. Why are we tearing down the institutions that have made us a great nation and allowed us to grow together as a nation? Hands off my Postal Service, I depend on it, I love it dearly and you will have a big fight on your hands if you try to take it away from the American People!
Privatization by for profit companies has not worked well for prisons. When we are talking about the public good, profit motive is not beneficial. The US Postal Service works well as it is, from this user’s perspective. Please don’t try to fix what is not broken.
Let’s keep the Post Office as a governmental agency like the founders directed and keep private enterprise bureaucrats’ out of the Postal Service decision making process.
I’ll take government run agencies over capitalist monopolies any day; at least government run organizations are accountable to the people and have incentive to work for the people, whereas private industry only works to increase profits for shareholders, at any cost.
Please oppose the nominees for the USPS Board.
Thank you, Marie Nelson
We support the USPS 100% and oppose any privatization efforts. The USPS needs to remain nonprofit and be allowed to expand its services. The mandate to prefund its pension fund needs to be repealed.
Enough has been done to ruin an American institution . LEAVE them alone, it is the only part of government that REALLY works . They are self sufficient . They have NOT asked for money & have paid all their bills . You guys could learn from them . Don’t let this happen to the longest standing American institution.
PLEASE oppose the nominees for the USPS Board. You have to do something right .
Privatization of the US Postal Service will simply put part of the revenue from mailing services fees into the pockets of investors, who will, in turn, demand that the costs of operation be reduced in order to meet expectations of the market. You can see where this is going: the US Postal Service will become less and less about service, and more and more about profit.
Don’t turn the USPS into just another market-driven corporation. Do not let privatization backers serve on the USPS Board.
All privatize means is somebody’s “buddy or buddies” getting paid on the backs of the American people! The bought-and-paid-for people who would even consider such an act are keeping their blood money coming. This keeps them and theirs from being affected! What a ridiculous, non-patriotic punishment for the American people!
Please…
We need the Post Office for the union jobs, the Saturday delivery, the millions of people who need a service in their small towns and most of all Its potential for doing the good it was designed for by the founders of our Nation.
Whoever made them fund retirement for 70 years and those ignorant enough (or paid off by UPS, Fed Ex, DHL, et al) Have done America a disservice as serious as throwing our Social Security deposits into the general fund for our “Reps” to use/abuse at will. If they were allowed to run as they once were, we could have small banks inn all those little underserved communities instead of $5 for an envelope to be delivered across town in 7 days like UPS and other private price gougers have planned.
When is our country going to wake up to the fact that SOME businesses can’t be privatized until Toxic Corporatism is controlled, And that isn’t going to happen at least until our reps sense of priorities is fixed.
We need to fill empty positions for judges FAR worse than a rehash on another privatization controversy that could only benefit the wealthy… And we need to take back our Constitutional Democracy!
Please…
We need the Post Office for the union jobs, the Saturday delivery, the millions of people who need a service in their small towns and most of all Its potential for doing the good it was designed for by the founders of our Nation.
Whoever made them fund retirement for 70 years and those ignorant enough (or paid off by UPS, Fed Ex, DHL, et al) Have done America a disservice as serious as throwing our Social Security deposits into the general fund for our “Reps” to use/abuse at will. If they were allowed to run as they once were, we could have small banks inn all those little underserved communities instead of $5 for an envelope to be delivered across town in 7 days like UPS and other private price gougers have planned.
When is our country going to wake up to the fact that SOME businesses can’t be privatized until Toxic Corporatism is controlled, And that isn’t going to happen at least until our reps sense of priorities is fixed.
We need to fill empty positions for judges FAR worse than a rehash on another privatization controversy that could only benefit the wealthy… And we need to take back our Constitutional Democracy!
Do not nominate Mickey D. Barnett, James C. Miller III as he is a notorious privatization advocate and Barnett is a payday lender lobbyist.
It never turns out well when public services are privatized. I would much rather have the government, which is not seeking to PROFIT, provide a service than some corporation that is, let’s face it, solely profit-driven. This is a common government-hating conservative ploy. Ronald Reagan called it “starve the beast”. Cut funding for a government program, resulting in that program’s inability to effectively provide service, then point fingers and rant about the inability of the government to do anything as well as private industry and insist that the program be privatized, to the detriment of the people being served. NO. NO. NO.
Let’s not hire the fox to guard the henhouse.
I like the USPS the way it is and please don’t change it. Thank you.
Stop the union busting. Our beloved USPS has provided exemplary service for so many years. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement act of 2006 is the basis of the financial problems casting aspersions upon the men and women who have always gone above and beyond. The USPS records a profit until the prefunding billion dollar payments are due. So unfair to blame the USPS for the financial problems. I have been to several meetings in my community and without fail, the higher ups, who I would have supposed would try to treat the customers and employees with respect and dignity, do just the opposite and are so obviously in “cahoots” with those trying to undermine and destroy the USPS. It makes my blood boil at the unfairness – the one service all Americans have been able to rely on is targeted for destruction (privatization). I don’t buy for a minute the argument that people are relying more on technological communication and don’t send as much mail. Our businesses need flyers/mailers to go out in a timely manner that is affordable and even that falls on deaf ears. I am beginning to have experiences myself where the USPS is not as reliable as it has always been which is heartbreaking because it looks as if a big inroad in its destruction has been accomplished. Please try to turn this around..
We need the US Postal Service. Please do all you canto preserve it the way it is.
why change it now………………………………support it and fix it……………………stop trying to put private industry into the federal government
Like making prisons private instead of state run — more corruption than before.
Putting someone like this in such a position will not help th long term health of th usps. It is s huge conflict of interest. Please help our republic by strengthening this important public institution.
UNITED POSTAL SERVICE IS A PUBLIC SERVICE FOR ALL AMERICANS. DO NOT PRIVATIZE THIS PUBLIC SERVICE. DO NOT MONOPOLIZE THE UPS!
Do not privatize our postal system. Do not split it in any way for me or fashion.
I think the post office gives me great service just the way it is, except that Congress should provide more generous funding for it. Privatizing would most likely only mess it up. Just leave it alone.
I STRONGLY DEMAND THAT YOU OPPOSE THE NOMINEES FOR THE USPS BOARD. i want to see a STRONGER POSTAL SERVICE PROVIDING MORE SERVICES TO THE PUBLIC, PARTICULARLY IN RURAL AREAS , where they are anchors for small communities. I AM ALSO IN FAVOR OF A Post Office BANK, particularly since big banks are creating more and more “unbanked” consumers; that low-cost delivery services ARE IMPORTANT for citizens and commerce, and PRIVATIZAITON IS GUARANTEED TO PUT AN END TO THAT.
Please keep the greedy hands off of our Public Postal Service.
Please
Please oppose placing a pay day lender lobbyist Nd a privatizer on the Postal Service Board!
Please oppose the placement of any Pay Day Lender or Privatizer on the USPS Board of Governors! Please support our Post Offices!
NO privatizer for the USPS Board of Governors !!!! Post office employees work hard and lift and carry large amounts of mail each and every day. They need to be protected and their jobs should be protected with a Union. Workers need negotiation power and privatization is never the answer for a job such as this. Privatization benefits employers, never the workers. Working for the postal service had great pay, benefits and worker satisfaction years ago. Over the years, this has changed. Treat the workers well and do not do this to them. It’s unethical and very unfair to hard working people who have very physical and demanding jobs. Thank you for reading my opinion.
We need to stay true to the Constitution and keep a strong public postal service. The inclusion on the board of members with former ties to Pay Day Lender or other private for profit entities is not what the American people want or need. They want a board composed of true public servants with the interests of the public first and foremost.
It is reprehensible that the USPS has to submit a 10 year budget, handcuffing it for 10 years. Do corporations which get US govt. bailouts have to do the same? I don’t thing so!
Under no circumstances should the USPS be privatized. Those private interests which want to do that are SOCIAL PARASITES! In my humble opinion the USPS should remain a public resource PERPETUALLY.