To the Editor:

There are several ways the election for United States president can be stolen this November. One is Trump’s deploying private mercenaries to “supervise” or to “replace” regular U.S. postal employees as they move the ballots through the postal system. Another is to just make sure some large bags of ballots are “lost” in the system. Democratic ballots, of course.

We have seen the intrusion of unmarked police types, possibly illegally deployed, moving with braggadocio and a sense of ownership in the public squares of Portland, Oregon. I have not kept track of the latest rehearsals to intimidate and terrify the locals in other U.S. cities. Authoritarian rule appears on the horizon unless most Americans wake up and call it and name it in its many manifestations.

The takeover of the U.S. Post Office by private interests is the latest Trump ploy in his domino game of ownership of and rewriting the definition of American constitutional rights and public and private space.

Years ago, during the Cold War, the reason for the U.S. incursions into Asia was to prevent the spread of communism, at almost any cost. We saw how well this played out in Vietnam.

I would bet that Trump’s latest copycat domino gamble with privatizing the U.S. Postal Service is that he can get his own private overseer in place before the election. This person will be a toady, of course, much like his attorney general, William Barr, who has now become Trump’s personal attorney, no longer representing the people’s rights or welfare.

The hard part for Trump’s supporters to swallow if the post office is privatized is that they will lose. It is known that any private company that would take over the post office would install a major requirement:  If that company had to deliver mail to rural communities, those people would have to pay top dollar for their mail delivery because mail delivery to those more remote areas costs more per mile.

After the private company had paid a price on the auction block (or maybe not — just sold to a favorite pre-arranged bidder) that company would expect to recoup its investment after purchase — and from those least likely to afford to do so.

Fifty-five cents for a first class letter now? That would become a nostalgic memory for most of rural America. We need to feed the always hungry bottom line for the new stockholders of the newly privatized U.S. Post Office, you see. Really, a possible horror movie in the making.

Only pressure from the public will keep the U.S. Post Office a service transparent and accountable to the American people. Bedeviled by overwhelming costs in this age of COVID when first-class mail has plummeted because businesses have either shuttered or closed, the post office continues to have to comply with a 2006 law that requires it to pre-fund retiree health benefits for 75 years.

Some observers believe the organization’s financial straits stem largely from this absurd and onerous dictate, a seeming guarantee for future failure.

No private company, of course, would ever agree to such an arrangement.

It seems there are few options for Altamont residents or anyone in any sized municipality in the United States to exercise to halt this fast-moving demolition train of Trump’s intentions.

Personally, I have always found my local post office employees to be helpful, courteous, knowledgeable, and thoughtful. They seem to have been trained well.

If anyone anywhere expects that kind of service from a private modern day company, be my guest. Go to any of the national retail stores. Or pharmacies. How about department stores or massive chain hardware stores?

What you find many times is this: inadequately trained staff, poor pay and benefits, skeletal health insurance or none, and certainly no retirement benefits.

Americans need to wake up and speak up. They need to disinherit their oft-too-offered response to a request to be responsible: “Oh, I don’t do political.” Really?

Let’s see what you do when your mail is delayed two weeks, time and time again when your private company considers it more profitable to keep its bottom line where it wants it than where and when you want your mail delivered.

Betty Head

Altamont