Not once in Thom Hartmann’s debate with that Cato guy does Thom mention that privatizing the USPS WOULD REQUIRE A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
WTF?
Not once in Thom Hartmann’s debate with that Cato guy does Thom mention that privatizing the USPS WOULD REQUIRE A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
WTF?
A Constitutional amendment? Like the one that permits the President to send thousands of troops to die in wars halfway around the world without a declaration of war from Congress? Like the one that President Obama got to permit him to target American citizens for assassination on the suspicion that they might commit “terrorism” in the future? Since when does the Constitution matter? You could take it to court but they would probably decide that a corporate run postal service was entitled to do any damn thing it pleased and that no citizen could hold it accountable for any of its actions.
Perhaps I should explain the context of the discussion. Hartmann was debating the Cato small government dude, who was arguing for abolishing the Post Office, and who argued that UPS and FedEx could do a much better job, that the Post Office has been rendered obsolete by technology and its own inefficiency.
My point being that it would do well to point out that our Founding Fathers clearly had a vision of a country with a thriving Post Office knitted into its infrastructure, and that, because it is specifically mentioned in the Constitution—Article 1 Section 8, no less—it is a somewhat exceptional public institution.
If you look at it that way, Charles, yeah, I suppose it’s easy to get down in the dumps and militant and shit and declare that the Constitution doesn’t matter anyways and just wipe your ass with it. But I won’t go there. I think that in the long run, history and vital governing documents like the Constitution remain important and will be vital to the long-term success of progressivism. And we do win. We always do. It’s a slow, arduous, and bloody process, and our wins can be measured in angstroms over centuries. But we do win.
I am not content to measure wins in angstroms over centuries and neither should anyone else. Yes the Constitution should matter, but it has been ignored and trashed by both parties especially in the decades since WWII. While I vehemently oppose privatization of any government service, we cannot expect the unconstitutionality of such an action to play a part in the thinking of our political establishment.
Thom Hartman is one of the few national figures who seems to understand how far we have strayed from Constitutional government, but he still holds to the illusion that our only option is to support the Democrats in elections and then somehow convince them to do the right thing. That is the great lesson of the Obama election – that strategy does not work and will never work.