Caution.

As the postal crisis unfolded recently, I kept reminding Democrats that they, too, have contributed to this problem via their bizarre eagerness to accept the gutting of public services.

Oh no, they replied.

Oh yes. Sorry to bug you,but it's true. This can be fixed. First, Democrats must stop agreeing with Republicans on voodoo economics. They might begin by listening to their own left wing.

It’s Not Just Trump: The Neoliberal Roots of the Postal Service Crisis, by Max B. Sawicky (In These Times)

We should defend the Post Office, both from Trump and the ideology of austerity that treats the agency “like a business.”

We’re cur­rent­ly get­ting a vivid, painful reminder of why we need a pub­lic sec­tor. The col­lapse of pub­lic ser­vices, in par­tic­u­lar the pro­vi­sion of pub­lic health, has tor­pe­doed the entire econ­o­my as a dead­ly pan­dem­ic rav­ages the coun­try. The end of the road in our cur­rent devo­lu­tion may be the assault on one of our old­est pub­lic insti­tu­tions — the ven­er­a­ble and very pop­u­lar U.S. Postal Service.

snip

From an eco­nom­ic stand­point, there is no rea­son a postal ser­vice must run a prof­it. As many com­men­ta­tors have point­ed out, this con­straint is applied selec­tive­ly, out of ide­o­log­i­cal prej­u­dices. Nobody requires the Depart­ment of Defense to turn a profit. (For this we should prob­a­bly be grateful.)

snip

The point here is that the spu­ri­ous notion that the U.S. Postal Ser­vice should be finan­cial­ly self-suf­fi­cient — which goes back decades — helped give rise to the abil­i­ty of Trump’s crony in charge of the Post Office, the con­flict-of-inter­est-rid­den Louis DeJoy, to cut ser­vices in the name of account­ing sol­ven­cy. For his part, Trump has acknowl­edged open­ly that his refusal to pro­vide nec­es­sary sup­ple­men­tary funds to ensure effec­tive deliv­ery of the mail is found­ed on his deter­mi­na­tion to frus­trate the vote-by-mail system.

In the wake of the uproar over mail sab­o­tage, pub­lic pres­sure has appar­ent­ly forced DeJoy to defer some ser­vice cuts until after the elec­tion. To make sure this pledge is hon­ored, we will have to keep a clear eye on the actu­al progress, on the ground, in prepar­ing for the elec­tion. For­tu­nate­ly, union­ized postal work­ers will be essen­tial allies in mon­i­tor­ing the integri­ty of Postal Ser­vice man­age­ment. Pend­ing the suc­cess­ful removal of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, a forth­right reju­ve­na­tion of the U.S. Postal Ser­vice can com­mence, in which we final­ly cast off the unfound­ed account­ing imper­a­tives that crip­ple its operations.

iPhone.

It's not entirely accurate to suggest that conservatism has no coherent response to COVID-19. "Death Cult" is coherent. Horrible, but coherent. 

Conservative Incoherence, by Sam Adler-Bell (Dissent)

The conservative response to COVID-19 has been defined by its heterogeneity: a blur of contradictory recriminations, confirmation biases, and conspiracy peddling.

... All told, there has been no coherent response to the COVID crisis from the right. But when it comes to conservative ideology, incoherence is a feature, not a bug. Where liberals fantasize that precedent and logic are binding forces in our political life—that there exists some epistemological authority that will arbitrate facts and fiction, punish those who’ve contradicted themselves, and reward those who have not—conservatives have long since abandoned such notions. Reactionary thought, as Corey Robin has argued, is dynamic and mutable by nature, responsive to minute changes in the political weather, sensitive to every threat to order and hierarchy, primed to spring into action to meet the discursive necessities of the moment.
Like many, I experienced acute frustration at Trump’s tweets in support of protests to “liberate” states from the onerous lockdowns he and his medical advisers have counseled. But it doesn’t matter. Contradiction is no obstacle. There is no New York Times bombshell or Mueller indictment or impeachment article coming to right the wrongs of Trump’s hypocrisy, no scorekeeper, no manager. There is only power, those who wield it, and those who are subject to it. This, at least, our gun-toting libertarian friends in Michigan understand. It will take wielding our own sort of power to escape this crisis with our communities intact and safe. What form that power could take, I don’t yet know ...

We know all too well that snarky ideologues have reputations, too.

According to whom, Ed?

Your fellow ideologues?

The same dude who predicted the rapture yesterday?

What does any of this have to do with jobs, anyway?

By the way, did you catch that great editorial the other day: News and Tribune editorial opinion: "Daniels’ Planned Parenthood call does us wrong."

Defunding Planned Parenthood: What it could mean for abortions and Medicaid patients, by Jerod Clapp (OSIN)

“I wouldn’t say that just because the New Albany location doesn’t provide abortions doesn’t mean it’s still not in the abortion business,” Clere said. “Even though there’s no question Planned Parenthood provides women’s health services, it’s primarily known as a provider of abortion.”

Grooms on the job: I hesitate to insult the clueless dupes, but ...

OSIN's David A. Mann covered this week's Jeffersonville city council meeting and came away with this gem:

Indiana Sen. Ron Grooms, a former councilman, updated the council on the recent session of the Indiana General Assembly. He noted recent redistricting of assembly and congressional districts, education reform, looser gun laws and the passage of a $28 billion state budget as some of the assembly’s accomplishments in 2011.

Nice work if you can get it, eh?

Grooms drove regularly to Indy, yawned through debates in the knowledge that he'd be ticking the box next to "What Mitch Daniels and the state GOP apparatus wants" roughly 97% of the time, exceeding even Ed Clere's propensity to fall into ideological line, cashed a few checks, and then returned home to report to his former colleagues that even though it was a dirty damned job, he was able to help everyone carry guns everywhere, deny health care to underprivileged women, and make sure the oligarchs survived the recession with purses intact.

Breathtaking, isn't it?