More than just a post office

One of the most interesting changes I experienced when I moved to Altamont more than 30 years ago was getting the mail. Up until that point, I had always had a mailbox on the house so the only time I ever went into a post office was to buy stamps or mail a package. Suddenly, I had to visit the post office every day to get mail, and it turned out to be a really great change.

In a place like Altamont, the post office is more than just a government office; it becomes a social hub, meeting place, and unofficial clubhouse. It also gives you a very different view of dealing with government employees.

Most of us go to the DMV, Social Security office, IRS, and can’t wait to get away. The people you run into are strictly doing a job and, while they may be professional (or not), the whole interaction is fast, not always fun, and makes little long-term impression on you.

But at the Altamont P.O., you get to know the people on the other side of the counter, and that’s a good thing. Over the years, I have seen a steady stream of really nice folks working in our post office.

They greet you with a smile, handle your transaction with professionalism and ask how the kids/spouse/cat/dog/parents are doing. They may commiserate about the weather, your favorite sports team, or a shared movie or TV show. And the folks behind you in line may get in on the conversation too. Overall, it’s a nice place to spend a few minutes of your day.

As time has marched on, things have changed in some ways. The overall volume of mail we get has gone down due to things like electronic bills and banking, the cost of mailing going up, fewer companies sending out catalogs, and of course, email in all its nefarious forms.

And yet, our courteous P.O. folks continue to deliver the best service they can despite all the changes. But that may not last. There are more than a few clouds on the horizon of the USPS. It seems late-stage capitalism and greed are gunning for the USPS.

According to the American Postal Worker Magazine:

Project 2025 seeks to undermine this expectation of efficiency and expertise in public services by dismantling the Federal Government and reinstating Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” Executive Order. This would allow the ruling administration to reclassify many civil servants as policymaking or policy-evaluating workers, thereby removing their civil service protections and making them at-will employees. President Trump could then install whomever he pleases based on favoritism and loyalty to his administration.

Furthermore, in the long run, this practice could effectively dismantle public trust and efficiency in government services, letting billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk make the case for a privatized, capitalistic government that profits off its citizens, instead of a government that exists to uplift workers and our communities.

I’ve never understood the philosophy of “running government like a business.” The basic truth is that government is not a business and is here to protect, aid, and assist the people who elect our government representatives.

The postal service does, in fact, support itself, for the most part, and certainly does not cost us anything near what the military, corporate welfare, or tax breaks for billionaires are soaking us for. But with oligarchs looking for more ways to bankrupt our country to steal even more than they’ve already stolen, the idea of starving functional government agencies and then “rescuing” them through privatization has become quite popular.

The current regime has been actively destroying things like the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, NOAA (the weather folks), the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC and FEMA.

In each and every case, they install incompetent department heads (RFK Jr. is a prime, worm-ridden example), decry the vast destruction of a once functional department, and then miraculously come up with a solution that involves hiring some billionaire’s company to take over the function of the former government agency and run it like a business.

However, let’s remember that in 2025 the current head of the regime is a 34-time convicted felon who has been barred from even running a charity in New York state, bankrupted casinos, was sued and lost over his fake university and has pretty much failed at every business he has ever run. In other words, not someone you want to run a business, or choose others to do so.

But, beyond that obvious issue, is the ongoing campaign by billionaires to take over and run things for profit that were never meant to be for profit. Take education as a prime example.

In Albany County we once had around a dozen charter schools whose prime job was to suck off as much money from the public-school budget and transfer it to corporate coffers. At least five have closed because they utterly failed their unfortunate students who were so badly “educated” they couldn’t pass a standardized test.

The truth is, school vouchers, charter schools, and brick-and-mortar “home schools” are all just dodges to steal money from public education and, at the same time, weaken the schools, which results in ignorant, uneducated people who are easier to control and lie to. Just look at places like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida where test scores rank near the bottom of the barrel.

Another area the billionaires are going crazy for is private prisons. Just take a guess at where the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on Alligator Alcatraz (Auschwitz) ended up. Yup, in the pockets of billionaires who donated to the regime. It was their payoff.

And even though that concentration camp was closed by a judicial order, many of the kidnap victims remain unaccounted for and the companies behind the crime are now off to other red states to build new concentration camps without even a whisper from the mainstream media.

If you remember, former president Biden made it a point to take private prison companies out of the federal prison system due to widespread abuses and many complaints of horrible conditions and needless deaths. The private-prison industry is basically a horror show with little to no oversight because most people feel that anyone in prison deserves to be there, even though The Innocence Project and similar programs continually free wrongly convicted prisoners across our vast, racist nation.

If you doubt any of this, please note the results of a recent Internet search:

CoreCivic and GEO Group are the largest private-prison companies that have been building and expanding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, with other companies like LaSalle Corrections and Management and Training Corporation also operating ICE-contracted facilities. These companies are reopening old prisons and adding new beds in various locations, including Delaney Hall in New Jersey, and have been awarded new or expanded contracts with ICE.

The bottom line is that this is what the regime and its oligarch backers have in store for the USPS. The current postmaster general is David C. Steiner, who was appointed in July of 2025. Previously he was chief executive officer of Waste Management and a member of the FedEx board of directors. Not exactly a guy with years of granular experience in the USPS, but certainly a rich guy with ideas about privatizing the organization.

He replaced a guy named Louis DeJoy who was put in place during the previous version of the regime and who had a billionaire background in the shipping industry and was accused of trying to destroy the USPS, though his tenure was mixed overall.

I hope our P.O. survives and the fine civil servants who staff it keep their jobs, but I’m worried and you should be too. The regime is hellbent on destroying our government to profit from it, not serve the public.

Under a private P.O., you can expect fewer hours, incompetent staff, higher prices, and erratic service, at best. That’s not about through rain and sleet; it’s about getting a billionaire another yacht on our dime. 

Editor’s note: Michael Seinberg says he has always enjoyed getting the mail and chatting with the people at the Altamont PO. The only thing he likes better is petting strange dogs.