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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.
For some reason, Congress will not allow the USPS to use GAAP for their pension and healthcare obligations which make the USPS look like it is in the red. It is actually a well-run amortization that by normal metrics is revenue neutral.
Yes, it has been established the USPS's biggest problem is their need to pre-fund all their pensions for the next 75 years. There's also an established Republican desire to privatize USPS, probably so some private equity firm can suck that pension fund dry and discard the useless husk. If you want to preserve the USPS, get ready to fight to defend it.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
This has very little to do with the USPS anyway. Trump bloody hates Bezos because he owns the Washington Post, which regularly publishes stuff unflattering to Trump and his circle of friends
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Trump bloody hates Bezos because he owns the Washington Post, which regularly publishes factual information.
Fixed that for you.
They (Amazon) do pay. Trump is (or was) apparently under the impression that selecting "Free Shipping" for your purchases from Amazon meant that the Post Office didn't get any money for delivering that package.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Is the USPS a private for-profit company? No.
The real reason Republicans want to kill this quasi-public, self-funding agency is
because they can't make money (off the little guy) by buying stock in it and sucking
profits out through a golden straw. How dare the common man have a reliable
way to deliver mail that doesn't pay for their yachts?
Someone had to do it.
I'm sure he has access to more information about USPS than the rest of us. I'm also sure he's not looking at that information because it would require reading, which he is apparently unwilling to do. He is most likely basing his complaints about USPS on his personal grudge against Jeff Bezos and some misinformation he heard on Fox News, since personal grudges and TV propaganda are the same tools he uses to make all his other decisions.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
If you want to pre-sort the mail you send, deliver it to the postal sorting center rather than having it picked up at your house, and give up the requirement to have it delivered as soon as possible, then maybe you too can get better rates.
I'm sure he has access to more information about USPS than the rest of us. I'm also sure he's not looking at that information because it would require reading, which he is apparently unwilling to do. He is most likely basing his complaints about USPS on his personal grudge against Jeff Bezos and some misinformation he heard on Fox News, since personal grudges and TV propaganda are the same tools he uses to make all his other decisions.
But rather than ever admit he's wrong he will make up false facts and spend the remaining two and a half years of his presidency bashing Amazon.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Bullshit. I'm a democrat and I've never met a democrat that is "for abortion". It is a ridiculous statement. Abortion is a terrible choice for a women to have to make, but we believe that it is her choice. I find it absurd that republicans want to force people to have babies and don't want to provide health care, food, education or an living wage for the parents. Republicans would much rather give tax breaks to the super rich than to provide a meal to a child they forced to be born. Complete hypocrisy.
He might accidentally find an actual problem, and in his awkward, inept way come up with a plan for a solution that (over a couple of years) solves the problem.
Yeah, he'll hire John Ratzenberger who played the postman on Cheers to turn it around. Or some Fox News commentator to do it.
Trump's business knowledge is greatly overstated.
Yep, here's an explanation from the USPS themselves and a nice analogy to illustrate just how unfair the current attack on the USPS is: https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/b...
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
While it's logically true that he should have access:
1. He's on record as refusing to read anything complex, stating publicly he avoids anything that's more than a page long and doesn't have a small number of bullet points.
2. If he had information that Amazon was fleecing the Post Office, he wouldn't be calling for a friggin' audit, would he? He'd just order that information released.
So no, I don't think it's remotely possible he has any evidence at all that Amazon are fleecing the USPS. Quite the reverse, I suspect he's being told by everyone concerned that he's wrong, and he's insisting on an audit because he still thinks he's right and he thinks somehow getting another voice in will help him.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I rather suspect that he has access to really good base information on the subject,
He has access to great information and even expert advice on many topics. Based on his behaviour, this doesn't actually seem to affect many of his decisions.
Also, he has at least some familiarity and ability with finance, unlike many other politicians.
Which is completely irrelevant since the only politician involved is Trump, who has a personal grudge against Amazon.
In any event, lets assume he's bumbling into a subject which we've identified as a problem for many years.
Traditional postal revenue has declined for years. Package delivery is probably one of the major things propping it up. If prices need to be adjusted, then adjust prices. People who work at USPS would probably be the best qualified to have an opinion about that. Meanwhile anyone with common sense can see Trump's voiced opinion is far more about his grudge against Amazon's CEO than a concern to fix the USPS. He's singling out Amazon because he wants to hurt their stock.
And third trimester "abortions" are almost universally because we still call pulling an already dead baby out of it's mother an "abortion". Your hair is a collection of cells, but cutting it isn't murder.
The reason Trump doesn't want his income tax statements public is that he lives off borrowed money and doesn't pay taxes because he technically doesn't earn any money.
Nobody that would be considered rich "earns" any money in the sense of "exchanges labor" for it anyway. Earning is the sort of thing people do when they just need to survive. Being rich implies that your money makes money and you have so much of it that you could live your entire life without either running out or needing to do any of that filthy labor stuff.
Rich people, throughout history, have often operated under the framework that non-rich people exist only to do their bidding, don't have any intrinsic value, and life would be rather better if they didn't exist at all. History books have some exciting stories when this ends badly.
Because sometimes a baby can develop without a brain and still have a beating heart. This baby is, for all acounts, dead. As dead as you would be if I removed the majority of your brain. Here's a better idea, if you are trying to pass a late term abortion ban, then start adding medical exemptions to the bills. Let a Dr with actual training decide what is and is not a living child.
And a fetus doesn't become a fetus until after 8 weeks, btw. But like I say, you either science, or you don't.
Republicans claim that government is inefficient, corrupt and wasteful... then get elected and prove their point. Looking for examples in the US is pointless since all government departments are generally run by people hamstrung by the whims of a system which despises their existence and a public who regularly spit on them in service of worshipping the corporation gods. Other countries manage to run such services fine when both government and the people believe in them.
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
The USPS. It's profitable and provides a service that is both far cheaper and can service far more customers than any private competition.
The US Postal Service is mandated by the US Constitution. They provide a valuable and efficient service to *all* Americans in the US. Not just the profitable locations.
Great point, really. Otherwise we end up with the 'gentrification' of the mail service. Imagine this: neighborhoods full of poor minorities suddenly don't get mail service anymore because it's 'unprofitable', being forced to drive to some far-away facility to pick up what was mail service to their door (assuming they can even get there at all). Or worse, they have to pay some sort of 'delivery surcharge' because they're not on 'normal routes', putting more financial stress on people already living paycheck to paycheck. Is this really the America we want to create?