The postal service is one of the only ways for democracy to happen this year. Amazon and USPS has been strategically linked by groups that dislike both organizations.<p>First people are told that vote by mail leads to fraud and secondly that Amazon is deeply political and against the current power in Washington. Throw in ownership of the Washington Post, and you a suddenly have a good recipe for a fake news conspiracy to rile up the base with in an election year.<p>Benjamin Franklin knew the power of the post office in the 1700s.
They were smart enough back then to know that people spread out to different geographic areas needed a legitimate way to vote and communicate.<p>He also knew that this system should retain some form of government control because the amount of information moving around inside the post office could be used by private parties to influence government affairs.<p>Other than the political angle, the attacks you see against the USPS are simply about money. Over the years, in the rush to privatize, the USPS was set on the path to be a private company.<p>Their idea was you remove funding from USPS, make insane capital requirements for future commitments that no other company has to do, then wait until they have massive capital expenditures.<p>The old mail trucks we are are familiar with have supposedly been catching on fire because they are way past their service dates. As far as I know, the USPS does not have a plan for replacements for these outdated vehicles, and even if they did, where is the money going to come from?<p>Last point in my rant is that you could ask probably half the country or more if Amazon helped bankrupt USPS. I bet many would say yes because that is what they have heard or read in articles. Amazons contract likely provided needed capital to keep USPS going since 2013.<p>Instead, the people who have been actively trying to bankrupt the USPS for more than 30 years are now trying to blame the main private sector company that supports it.<p>It's all lies, as usual. The post office has some of the best main street real estate all across the country.
Any political crony knows that if they can get their hands on that after being privatized, the control over information in the mail system, and the value of the land all across the country, would turn that crony into quite an oligarch.<p>TLDR; Support your local post office if you care about democracy