Eyecu2, I usually find something to agree with in your posts, not in this one though.
While I think the economy is just MEh....I think that ppl like Manchin screwed up by not voting for more. I wanna know when the infrastructure money will start showing up in roads and new Bridges. Seems like it's way behind the votes.
Originally Posted by eyecu2
We spend far more per mile of road or subway or whatever than most European countries. I think part of the reason is that the federal government throws around too much money without accountability. In my community we used to have empty buses that ran around town. Why? Well, the federal government paid for the buses and part of their running costs. We didn't have to pay much locally, so why not?
There are exceptions, but in general it's best if infrastructure costs are borne by localities and states. The power of the purse should be closest to the people.
The infrastructure in Texas where I live is pretty good IMHO. All you have to do is drive to New Mexico and compare the condition of the roads when you cross the state line. Or step off a plane at New York JFK or LaGuardia or Miami and compare airports to Dallas or Houston.
...but at least we don't hear about...the education lady who was the millionaire inheritance of Amway doing crazy bullshit.
Originally Posted by eyecu2
I thought Betsy DeVos did the best she could. American secondary education is dominated by teacher's unions, and by administrators who don't let teachers teach. DeVos tried to bring competition via school choice and vouchers into the system, which were good moves IMHO. But the quality of education is determined mostly at the state and local level. There's only so much she could do.
Remember when the guy who was in charge of the US post office decided he was going to just destroy Mass mail sorters, oh and by the way just before an election? You can't make that shit up - talk about right in your face fucking cheating
Originally Posted by eyecu2
Is it possible Trump wanted to manipulate the postal system to hamper mail in voting because he thought it would improve his chances in 2020? Well, yes. Did he do that? Very unlikely. The U.S. Postal Service is like the U.S. Justice Department. While run inefficiently, remember the old saying, "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor Presidents trying to improve their election prospects stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Trump wasn't smart or powerful enough to manipulate the postal service in that way.
From the Washington Post,
According to a grievance filed by the American Postal Workers Union and obtained by The Washington Post, the Postal Service was poised to decommission 671 of the massive machines, about 10 percent of its inventory, and capable of sorting 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour. The Postal Service, by comparison, processes as much as 500 million items each day.
But Postal Service officials and industry insiders say the removals were part of a long-range plan, one that reflects Americans’ diminishing use for letters and growing reliance on package delivery.
The 671 machines slated for removal were scattered across 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The removals correlated closely with population: States with more people and, hence, a larger USPS footprint had more machines taken out. California had the greatest number, 76, followed by Florida (59), Texas (58) New York (52) and Ohio (34). Alaska is the only state with no machines on the list.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...ters-removals/
Let's do the math. If the retired machines operated 24 hours a day, they'd have a capacity of 21.4 million pieces/hour x 24 hours = 514 million pieces per day. They're 10% of the inventory of machines, so that means total capacity of the mail sorting system was 514 million / 0.1 = 5.14 billion pieces per day.
On a busy day, 500 million pieces are handled. So we were running the machines at only about 10% of capacity! If you argue they should only operate 8 hours a day, then it's 30% of capacity. It should make sense to retire those machines.
Also please note that only around 160 million votes were cast in 2020. And only part of that 160 million were mail in ballots. Furthermore, those ballots were mailed over a period of weeks, or probably more than a month in some states. Compared to the 500 million pieces processed on a typical busy day, that's a drop in the bucket.
Finally, it doesn't look like the machines were selectively removed in blue states. It appears the removals were scattered throughout the USA.
