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Trump Orders Audit of Postal Service After Suggesting Amazon Is To Blame For Their Troubles (politico.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Postal Service to undergo an audit Thursday evening, a move that comes after president's repeated claims that Amazon is fleecing the USPS through alleged unfair business practices. "The USPS is on an unsustainable financial path and must be restructured to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout," reads the executive order Trump issued shortly before 9 p.m. While not explicitly mentioned in the order, the president has hammered e-commerce giant Amazon in recent weeks and alleged that the company and its CEO Jeff Bezos are driving the USPS into the ground. "I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy," Trump wrote on Twitter on April 3. "Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer." According to the executive order, a task force comprise of top officials, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who would chair the group, will lead the investigation into the USPS' finances and will be required to issue recommendations and a final report no later than early August.

3 of 493 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Pension by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Trump bloody hates Bezos because he owns the Washington Post, which regularly publishes factual information.

    Fixed that for you.

  2. Re: Pension by kenh · · Score: 5, Informative

    When people can retire and set their kids or grandkids to be beneficiaries, then you have a real problem as they will be paid in full for far longer than 75 years.

    You literally made that up, USPS retirees can't designate their kids or grandkids as beneficiaries for their retirement payments.

    --
    Ken
  3. Re:Useless without Congress by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 5, Informative

    Even if the USPS was in the red, it's still an incredibly valuable and critical piece of public infrastructure and should be well funded. Yes, even at a net loss. If we can light $600+ billion on fire every year to fund the most powerful military in the world, we can throw a few pennies at the postal service.

    Here's the thing, and I say this as a libertarian. Well, let me show you something:

    http://constitutionus.com/

    Scroll down to Article I, Section 8, paragraph 7. It's short, I'll put it here:

    (The Congress shall have Power) To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

    It's actually in the Constitution! This is a fully legal part of the federal government. This isn't the Department of Education.

    The founders recognized that this was a really important function of the government, so important that they put it in a list of only 18 areas over which the federal government has legal authority.

    I'm glad the USPS funds itself, but I don't care, actually. It's a very important thing to have around and we need to protect it, even if that means throwing a little money at it now and then.

    That said, it also needs to fulfill its pension obligations.