#Winifred Cushing

[genevieveetguy]

. - What did you run away for? It was only a joke! - Why didn't you tell me?

Little Fugitive, Ray Ashley, Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin (1953)

[theoscarsproject]

Little Fugitive (1953). A young boy fears that he shot his older brother, who is only faking. He then runs away to Coney Island, a crowded beach area, and gets money by returning soda bottles for their deposits.

This is a sweet, slice-of-life film about two brothers. While it lacks any real plot, and much in the way of character development, it still pulls you in to the life of two small boys beautifully, and Joey’s adventures on Coney Island are beautifully shot and utterly charming. It’s a good little film. 7/10.

[garudabluffs]

The founders established the post office before they had even signed the Declaration of Independence, and for a very long time, it was the U.S. government’s largest and most important endeavor—indeed, it was the government for most citizens. This was no conventional mail network but the central nervous system of the new body politic, designed to bind thirteen quarrelsome colonies into the United States by delivering news about public affairs to every citizen—a radical idea that appalled Europe’s great powers. America’s uniquely democratic post powerfully shaped its lively, argumentative culture of uncensored ideas and opinions and made it the world’s information and communications superpower with astonishing speed. Winifred Gallagher presents the history of the post office as America’s own story, told from a fresh perspective over more than two centuries. + Before deciding its future, Americans should understand what this grand yet overlooked institution has accomplished since 1775 and consider what it should and could contribute in the twenty-first century.

[[Those interested in the Post Office's history should also read Marshall Cushing's "The Story of Our Post Office: The Greatest Government Department in All Its Phases," which was published in 1893. Gallagher mentions Cushing several times in her book. Over a thousand pages in length, Cushing's history provides an incredible amount detail concerning policy, mechanics, assets, and people associated with the Post Office's first century.]]

A Brief History Of Political Interference In The U.S. Postal Service                                                                     August 16, 2020

“But political interference in the U.S. Postal Service isn't new, according to Winifred Gallagher, the author of How the Post Office Created America. She talked with NPR's Weekend Edition about how political debate about the USPS is almost as old as the institution itself.”

On when politicians started to use the USPS for their own ends

Actually, they didn't interfere with postal operations very much until Andrew Jackson became president. He created what is called the spoils system. So he also made the postmaster general a very powerful Cabinet officer and installed his political cronies in that position. And for nearly a century and a half, this spoils system allowed whichever party won the White House to reward its supporters with tens of thousands of jobs.

On how we got to this moment

I would date the current crisis to the 1980s, when a very timid USPS management and Congress fatefully decided not to shift from letter mail to email. They could have given Americans digital addresses the same way they gave us our physical street addresses. And in fact, of course, as everyone knows, by 2001, email had drastically reduced the volume of first class letter mail, and then that crisis was worsened further by the really disastrous Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, which restricted the Postal Service's ability to offer new services or adjust its pricing to its cost and, worse, required it to prefund its retiree health care benefits decades into the future, which created billions of dollars of debt. And that is what has prevented the post office from turning a profit for the past six years.

5-Minute Listen READ MORE

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/16/902977021/the-history-of-political-interference-in-the-usps

[psbres-blog]

Download Little Fugitive Movie Online