Probably a good reason why the Postal Service has started hauling away mailboxes from Brighton to Gloucester

People who run confidence games have a word for you - perhaps it is even your name!

Let's call you "Mark" from Dorchester.

If this mailbox pickup in this photo is part of the upgrade to the tamper-resistant boxes that's good. Not everything an agency does is all-good or all-bad. We see lots of good work continuing at the front-lines in many/most federal agencies despite the current leadership. But meanwhile, yes, the USPS and mail-in voting is under open attack by the president.

The postal service has been picking up the old collection boxes and replacing them with tabor resistant boxes for some time now.

In some places, yes.

In some other places in the country, they have been removing the old boxes and not installing new ones.

Not as easy in cluster mailboxes as with apartment buildings.

Even in single-family homes with actual individual mailboxes, it's sometimes a blank look from carrier and they leave any stamped envelope where you put it.

I'm sure they'll get around to it by, well, let's say, mid-November?

How long before the replacement ones are installed?

My mail carrier doesn't pick up mail from my home mailbox, I still have to go around the corner and drop the outgoing mail into the curbside box.

Even if he did, I have only received mail 3 days in the last week and a half. That's 3 out of 10 delivery days. Before Trump's latest assault on our democracy, not a day would go by without mail of some kind.

You personally may not have mailed or received a letter, package, check, holiday card, or anything else in years. That doesn't mean nobody else has.

Lower volume might mean it takes fewer people and machines to sort and deliver the remaining mail--it doesn't mean we don't need to get through quickly and reliably.

The last things I mailed included a card to my aunt, who I can't visit because she lives in another state and is in her eighties and an absentee ballot. The mail I received recently included that absentee ballot (before I filled it out), a postcard from a friend in Washington, my electric bill, and cucumber seedlings for my garden.

Some of that could be done as email. Some literally can't, like the plants, or really shouldn't---paper ballots are a lot more secure than anything that can be done by email.

Expecting everyone to get and pay their bills online means expecting everyone to have reliable internet access. Reliable enough that they can use it without having to call their grandchildren to explain it. Reliable enough that they don't have to go park outside the library to use Wi-Fi.

So, what's your plan for getting a smartphone or laptop, and free Wi-Fi, to every household in the United States? I think you'll find that the postal service is a bargain by comparison.

A lot of people have insurance plans that require them to do mail order for their prescriptions or else make getting it at a pharmacy a lot more expensive. Many of those medications are crucial for their health and cause problems if doses are missed. People also sometimes receive prescriptions through the mail.

Many people on pensions or Social Security still receive those checks in the mail. Many of them can't afford to get the money a week late.

Both Dig Boston (newly redesigned!) and The Epoch Times are available in boxes in my neighborhood.

Did someone not get his medications this month?

A lot of people are not getting their medications.

Veterans get their meds through the mail, and right now a lot of them aren't getting them.

Why do you hate veterans, Fishcop?

That is what the GOP is doing.

But unlike cops, the post office hasn't killed anyone nor is it overtly racist.

The Postal Service is IN THE CONSTITUTION.

As for "defund", well, it WAS running a PROFIT until the GOP shackled it with a completely ridiculous pension demand.

But reading and research are not something you are capable of doing. We know that.

Can you at least tell us who taught you civics? I would like to slap them if they passed you.

Are you telling me that a member of the Trump Administration is lying about this? I am shocked. Let's check. Were his lips moving?

But USPS officials and industry insiders say the removals were part of a long-range plan, one that reflects Americans’ diminishing use for letters and growing reliance on package delivery.

A. I am not inclined to put a lot of faith in what current USPS officials are saying.
B. "Industry insiders" would be private competitors of the USPS, wouldn't they? Like the guy from Postcom quoted near the end, who says

As a general rule, our members believe that the Postal Service should be doing everything it can to encourage entry of commercial mail as deep into its network as it can, and to bypass postal operations to the maximum extent possible

Which sounds like having corporations profit from the mail as much as possible.