Austerity fetishists at Washington Post say Dejoy should be allowed to destroy the US Postal Service
newsdepo.com
Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor at The Washington Post since 2000, has and an undistinguished career from the beginning. From being an Iraq War cheerleader to a deficit peacock and a climate change denier enabler, his influence on the paper's editorialAusterity fetishists at Washington Post say Dejoy should be allowed to destroy the US Postal Service
Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor at The Washington Post since 2000, has and an undistinguished career from the beginning. From being an Iraq War cheerleader to a deficit peacock and a climate change denier enabler, his influence on the paper's editorial board has been consistently problematic. Not letting down the troglodyte side, his op-ed page is at it again with this doozie: «Congress should stop attacking DeJoy and consider his plan to fix the Postal Service.» Let's start with the basics of the wrongness of that headline. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's plan is not to «fix» the Postal Service. It's to make the Postal Service provide more expensive and worse service to the customer. That's a given. He wants postage to cost more and delivery to be significantly slower. His motives in doing so are not as transparent, but are right there on the surface. This is going to drive customers away. It's going to cost the USPS money to lose those customers. Many who do business via the USPS will switch to private carriers, some of which DeJoy has had (and still has) a personal financial stake in. Corruption and corporatism aside, Hiatt's editorial board is ignoring the very real harm DeJoy's cutbacks could bring to millions of people who rely on the post office, particularly communities of color, low-income communities, and postal service workers. The ed board dismisses the issue of harm: «the Postal Service hasn't regularly been meeting its targets since long before Mr. DeJoy’s time anyway; business mailers probably should pay more than the effectively subsidized rates they currently enjoy.» So it seems the argument is «It's bad already, so what the hell, let's make it worse.» Read more