{"id":12699,"date":"2015-10-15T07:18:01","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T12:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=12699"},"modified":"2015-10-15T07:18:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T12:18:01","slug":"bernie-sanders-addresses-apwu-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2015\/10\/15\/bernie-sanders-addresses-apwu-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernie Sanders Addresses APWU Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"
Bernie Sanders Addresses APWU Conference<\/strong><\/div>\n
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\u2018It Was Electric\u2019<\/h2>\n<\/hgroup>\n
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APWU News – 10\/14\/2015<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>–\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders thrilled APWU members attending the union\u2019s All-Craft Conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 14.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was electric,\u201d said APWU President Mark Dimondstein of the response to Sanders\u2019 speech.<\/p>\n

Sanders told the audience of approximately 2,000 APWU members, \u201cThe beauty of the Postal Service is that it provides universal service six days a week to every corner of America, no matter how small or how remote. It supports millions of jobs in virtually every sector of our economy.\u00a0 It provides decent-paying union jobs to some 500,000 Americans, and it is the largest employer of veterans. \"1aa-APWU-small\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhether you are a low-income elderly woman living at the end of a dirt road in Nevada or Vermont or a wealthy CEO living on Park Avenue, you get your mail six days a week. And the American people pay for this service at a cost far less than anywhere else in the industrialized world.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet, the Postal Service is under constant and vicious attack,\u201d he said. \u201cAs a matter of fact, the same billionaires who want to privatize Social Security, Medicare, and public education, also want to privatize the Postal Service.<\/p>\n

Why Is That?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is that?\u201d Sanders asked. \u201cThe answer is simple.\u00a0 The wealthy and the powerful see an opportunity for Wall Street and corporate America to make billions in profits out of these services, and couldn’t care less how privatization or a degradation of services affects ordinary Americans.\u00a0 That is unacceptable and we cannot let them get away with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vermont senator called for an expansion of postal services, including by providing basic financial services as an alternative to the predatory lending industry. \u201cAt a time when more than 68 million lower-income Americans have no bank accounts or are forced to rely on rip-off check-cashing storefronts and payday lenders, allowing the Postal Service to offer these kinds of financial services would be of huge social benefit,\u201d Sanders said. It also would increase USPS revenue by almost $9 billion per year, he pointed out.<\/p>\n

The Postal Service also should be permitted to set up Internet cafes, notarize documents, issue licenses and perform other duties, he said.<\/p>\n

Sanders decried recent cuts in service, saying, \u201cI have heard from people all over this country who have reported serious delays in receiving their mail.\u00a0 In some cases, it is taking 9 or even 11 days for veterans and senior citizens to receive the life-saving prescription drugs they need through the mail.\u00a0 This delay means that some of the most vulnerable people in this country are going without the medication they need or are forced to travel long distances because they cannot rely on the timely delivery of mail.\u00a0 That is unacceptable and will change under my Administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Good News<\/strong><\/p>\n

He pointed out that the cuts were unnecessary. \u201cNow, the good news is that despite what you have been hearing in the media, and despite what the Postmaster General has been saying the Postal Service is not going broke!<\/p>\n

\u201cThe major reason that the Postal Service is in bad financial shape today is because of a mandate signed into law by President George W. Bush in December of 2006, during a lame duck session of Congress, that forces the Postal Service to pre-fund 75 years of future retiree health benefits over a 10 year period.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis onerous and unprecedented burden that costs $5.5 billion a year is responsible for all of the financial losses posted by the Postal Service since October 2012. From October of 2012 until today, the Postal Service has made an operating profit of more than $2 billion, excluding the pre-funding mandate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In Congress, Sanders spearheaded a \u201csense of the Senate\u201d resolution, which passed 85-11 to restore service standards, which postal management degraded in January. He also was instrumental in blocking a slate of nominees for the Postal Service Board of Governors that included privatization advocate James Miller and the payday loan lobbyist Mickey Barnett.<\/p>\n

How We Judge<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sanders\u2019 speech also hit on the major theme of his campaign: The 99% are suffering and the billionaire class is thriving.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were thrilled, excited,\u201d by Sanders\u2019 appearance, Dimondstein reported. Many of the union\u2019s most active members were in attendance, and they are generally knowledgeable about the senator\u2019s record, he said.<\/p>\n

In introducing the senator, Dimondstein noted that the APWU is a large organization made up of people with many varied political beliefs. \u201cI fully respect that fact and maintain that we should judge elected officials and candidates not by the designation after their name, not by what they say, not by what we hope or wish they are, but by what they do.<\/p>\n

\u201cApplying that criteria, there is one candidate for president of the United States that stands head and shoulders above the others as a true friend and champion of postal employees and all U.S. workers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s little wonder in this period of massive income inequality and declining opportunities for workers and the 99% that Sanders campaign has generated so much excitement,\u201d Dimondstein said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everyone is like-minded,\u201d he added, \u201cbut on the whole, the response was absolutely electric.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cRight now, of all the candidates from both of the major political parties, Bernie Sanders is most aligned with our values, our principles, and\u00a0the stances that our members have adopted at our national conventions over the years on a broad array of union and working-class issues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernie Sanders Addresses APWU Conference \u2018It Was Electric\u2019 APWU News – 10\/14\/2015\u00a0–\u00a0Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders thrilled APWU members attending the union\u2019s All-Craft Conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 14. \u201cIt was electric,\u201d said APWU President Mark Dimondstein of the response to Sanders\u2019 speech. Sanders told the audience of approximately 2,000 APWU members, \u201cThe beauty of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","category-apwu-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12700,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12699\/revisions\/12700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}