The corporate Powers That Be keep thinking we’ll stay hitched to their plow no matter how severely they lash us economically and kick us politically. But, to borrow one of George W’s convoluted phrases, they’re badly “misunderestimating” America’s workaday people.
As the Occupy Wall Street movement demonstrated, and as shown by the ongoing actions of fast-food workers and others who’ve been shunted into poverty-wage jobs, we Americans are innately rebellious. In fact, from the revolutionary Declaration of 1776 forward, Rebellions R Us! Shays Rebellion in the 1780s, strikes by women mill workers in the early 1800s, the Populist movement of the 1880s, and on into today’s uprisings, we’ve never taken well to the moneyed powers grabbing more for themselves at our expense – and now they are grabbing more than ever.
Wall Street elites, corporate profiteers, and inheritors of multibillion-dollar fortunes are trying to divert our attention from their oligarchic greed by spending lots of money on PR campaigns, front groups, and politicians to tell us that “Big Government” is our problem. I was born at night, but not last night! The ones knocking down the middle class and holding down the poor today are those same elites, profiteers, and heirs. The corporate media won’t talk much about this reality, but a growing majority see it and are participationg in a spreading rebellion against it. Because, after all, they’re experiencing the abuse.
The great anthem by rocker Patti Smith pretty well sums up where we Americans are – and where I think we’re going: “People have the power – to dream, to rule, to wrestle the world from fools.” Ordinary folks are awakening to the realization that the fools have seized power, and the folks are now making moves (and movements) to seize the fools by their short hairs and reclaim our dreams.

Don’t shut the post office, expand their services

What’s the matter with the post office?
The US Postal Service, I mean – the corporate hierarchy that runs this enormously popular public institution. Yes, I know that USPS has lost revenue it traditionally got from first-class mail delivery, but I also know that letter carriers and postal workers have offered many excellent ideas for expanding the services that USPS can deliver, thus increasing both revenue and the importance of maintaining these community treasures.
Yet, the Postal Board of Governors, which includes corporate interests that would profit by killing the public service, seems intent on – guess what? – killing it. The board’s only “idea” is to cut services and shut down hundreds of local post offices. Incredibly, their list of closures include the historic post office in Philadelphia’s Old City, the very building where Ben Franklin presided as our country’s first Postmaster General, appointed by the Continental Congress in 1775.
All across the country, post offices that are invaluable artistic and historic assets are slated to be sold to developers. One is the marvelous 1935 Bronx post office, with classic architectural flourishes and 13 museum-worthy murals. “It’s not just a post office,” says one customer fighting the closure, “it’s part of my life.” No one feels that way about a Fed Ex warehouse. Yet, says a USPS spokeswoman dismissively, the four-story building is “severely underused.”
So, use it! Put a coffee shop in it, a public internet facility, a library and museum, a one-stop government services center – and, as USPS employees have suggested, a public bank offering basic services to the thousands of neighborhood people ignored by commercial banks. Come on, USPS, show a little creativity and gumption, and remember that “service” is a key part of your name!

“Protest Aside, Postal Service Is Taking Next Step to Sell Grand Property in the Bronx,” The New York Times, February 5, 2014.

“Elizabeth Warren Proposes Replacing Payday Lenders With the Post Office,” www.thinkprogress.org, February 3, 2013.