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From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/economy/post-office-and-privatization

An investigative journalist conducts a year-long study of power, corruption, and public assets for sale.

ByPeter Byrne
October 30, 2013

Going Postal: Introduction

On July 27, 200 singing and chanting people demonstrated on the steps of the historic main post office in downtown Berkeley, Calif., to protest its upcoming closure and sale. A city council member took the microphone to angrily decry the closure. In fact, the Berkeley City Council had voted unanimously to oppose the sale. Why the day of rage?

When a post office closes, it is obviously that much harder to buy a stamp, pick up a package, send a registered letter, or purchase a money order. But inconvenience alone did not account for the existential angst being expressed by the mostly over-50 throng as it questioned the motives of the United States Postal Service for selling post offices all over the country to developers. “Which of our public assets will be privatized next?” speakers asked. “Streets? Schools? The Lincoln Bedroom?”

The Berkeley crowd is not acting alone: From the beaches of Santa Monica to the avenues of the Bronx to the orange farms of Nalcrest, Florida, people who like the U.S. mail are getting mad, “Hey, wait a minute, Mr. Postman! That is our community post office!”

To which the federal flak-catchers reply: “The Internet is killing us. The Postal Service is broke. We have to sell. Get used to it.”

But email is not the problem and the budget deficit is easy enough to fix, so there must be other reasons for the forced sales, say save-the-post-office activists. Political reasons, they assert, pointing out that the realtor with the exclusive contract to negotiate sales for the Postal Service’s $85 billion real estate portfolio is C.B. Richard Ellis (CBRE). And that the corporation is chaired by Richard C. Blum, who is the husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. The corporation’s connection to a politically powerful family with a history of accessing public pension funds to make private investments has caused more than a few activists to suspect wrongdoing—even though no evidence of any conflicts of interest tied to the CBRE contract has been revealed.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/economy/post-office-and-privatization