This is the Tom Hartman program.

Here in Portland, the local media is pretty flipped out.

There are photographs, flatbed trucks going around the city of

Portland ripping mailboxes out you know unbolting them from the pavement and tossing

them in the backs of the trucks it's nuts and got multiple reports from around the

country. This started in Iowa yesterday and now there's there's several others

that male sorting machines, two people running a sorting machine can sort X

volume of mail. That same volume of mail to be sorted by hand requires 30 people.

Let that sink in for a moment, that these male sorting machines are literally

being dismantled and removed from postal buildings.

And the reason why, according to this absolutely bizarre story, I tweeted this out yesterday,

it was in the Oregonian, our local newspaper here, they asked the Postal Service, why are you taking these things apart and they said in the spokesperson for the Postal Service said because

mail volume is down because of the coronavirus

Well doesn't that kind of imply that eventually mail volume is

going to go back up again? Number one. Number two, caller yesterday called and said

this and I was just like whoaa, yeah, of course, every year around Christmas time, some large fraction of American families mail out Christmas cards.

Now, you know, only about 120 million people vote every year and the best estimate is at least, well,

25% of those two years ago were voting by mail and four years ago, roughly a quarter.

And this time around it'll probably be roughly a half, maybe a little more.

But that's what, half of 120, you know, 60 million pieces of mail, 60

million families. Well I'm guessing more than 60 million families mail more than

one Christmas card at Christmas time.

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