6 days ago
The mail is slow ... and that's no accident
There's a concerted effort going on to tamper with the U.S. mail.
Delivery times of mail through the U.S. Postal Service have become glacial. And I'm beginning to think that the problem is the plan.
The postal service recently announced it was cutting 10,000 jobs while partnering with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to find 'further efficiencies' in delivering the mail.
One man's 'further efficiencies' is another man's sabotaging of what used to be a reliable government service.
Part of those so-called efficiencies has been to re-route the mail through 60 Regional Processing and Distribution Centers, often sending undelivered mail through understaffed stops on long journeys far from its eventual destination.
For the first time in my life, I don't trust the mail. And I've got good reason.
My bank, Wells Fargo, put out a notice to customers, urging them not to pay bills through the mail because the delivery time was five or more days late for letters.
Paying the bills through the U.S. Mail might result in late-payment fees on those bills due to long delivery delays, Wells Fargo advised.
I mailed a first-class envelope to my son in Philadelphia on Friday, May 9. The postal clerk at the counter of the Boca Raton branch where I hand delivered the mail told me the mail would arrive at my son's apartment on Wednesday, May 14.
More than two weeks after that due date, the envelope still hasn't arrived. It's apparently undergoing 'further efficiencies' somewhere in America.
And that wasn't an isolated incident. I mailed a birthday card in March that arrived in the middle of April – weeks after the birthday had passed.
It all seems very intentional.
President Donald Trump has threatened to disband the postal service's governing board, and consolidate his control over the mail service by putting it in the Department of Commerce.
For years, right-wing think tanks have been arguing that the U.S. Postal Service should be replaced by private companies.
The Heritage Foundation in its 'Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for 2017' called for 'eliminating restrictions on competition in the postal business, including the prohibition on private delivery of letter mail.'
Making crippling cuts to the U.S. Postal Service, which then results in long delays of mail service seems more like a concerted attempt to turn the public against this public service.
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The more well-founded dissatisfaction with mail delivery gets generated, the fewer the objections will be when the architects of this chaos move in for the kill.
You might want to write to your Congressman about this … on second thought, call.
Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, which is part of the USA Today Florida Network. He can be reached at fcerabino@
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: DOGEing the mail: Degrading "further efficiencies" in Postal Service
