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I really want to care that the USPS is in trouble, but the apathy just keeps setting in.
Don't Let Business Lobbyists Kill the Post Office
The Times has an editorial today about the future of the U.S. Postal Service:
Postal officials say they must close about 3,700 underused post offices (there are 32,000 nationally) while offering alternative services through local businesses. They also want to consolidate hundreds of regional processing centers and eliminate Saturday mail deliveries.
An aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was warning me about this last week. There are organic reasons for all of this: The U.S. Postal Service is staring down the same barrel trained at our magazine and newspaper businesses, i.e. its revenue model is being wiped out by the internet.
But politics also plays a huge part in this. In 2006, in what looks like an attempt to bust the Postal Workers' Union, George Bush signed into law the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. This law required the Postal Service to pre-fund 100 percent of its entire future obligations for 75 years of health benefits to its employees and not only do it, but do it within ten years. No other organization, public or private, has to pre-fund 100 percent of its future health benefits.
"No one prefunds at more than 30 percent," Anthony Vegliante, the U.S. Postal Service's executive vice president, told reporters last year.
The new law forced the postal service to come up with about $5.5 billion a year for the ten years following the bill's passage. In 2006, before those payments kicked in, the USPS generated a small profit. Not surprisingly, the USPS is now basically broke.
The 2006 law also bars the Postal Service from offering "nonpostal services," which means the USPS can't, say, open up a bank, or an internet cafe, or come up with any new entrepreneurial ideas to generate new income, as postal services do in other countries.
The transparent purpose of this law, which was pushed heavily by industry lobbyists, was to break a public sector union and privatize the mail industry. Before the 2006 act, the postal service did one thing, did it well, and, minus the need to generate profits and bonuses for executives, did it cheaply. It paid for itself and was not a burden to taxpayers.
Post offices also have a huge non-financial impact: In a lot of small towns, the post office is the town, and shutting them down will basically remove the only casual meeting place for people in mountain areas and remote farming villages and so on. Of course, there's always one Wal-Mart for every dozen or so post offices, so people I guess can drive the extra twenty miles and meet there ...
This is a classic example of private-sector lobbyists using the government to protect its profits and keep prices inflated. Sen. Sanders is pushing a bill that would delay the end of Saturday delivery for two years, and prevent a number of post-office closings, but the writing is on the wall, unless there's a public outcry. So definitely write your congressman and ask him to roll back Bush's idiotic law, and at least give the Post Office a chance to sink or swim on its own.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz1syU43eNJ
========
As with killing public schools (so property tax dollars get vouchered to for-profit charter schools), this USPS manufactured crisis is all about the 1% stealing Human-Americans' wealth.
ACA
Medicare
Medicaid
SS
public schools
public utilities
etc, etc
All are targeted for UCA killing and/or takeover.
I really want to care that the USPS is in trouble, but the apathy just keeps setting in.
Just wait til you see the prices of the for-profit replacement.
Considering how much stamp money I've saved over the last 10 years thanks to the internets, I'm still finding it hard to dig up some concern.
lol. Taibbi calling it Bush's idiotic law.
lol Waxman (D) co-sponsor
lol Davis (D) co-sponsor
lol Passed Senate without amendment by Unanimous Consent.
lol Repug murder
USPS brings my junk mail
FedEx/UPS brings my goodies
enough said
You left out the leading paragraph, boutons. Wonder why?
The Times has an editorial today about the future of the U.S. Postal Service:
Postal officials say they must close about 3,700 underused post offices (there are 32,000 nationally) while offering alternative services through local businesses. They also want to consolidate hundreds of regional processing centers and eliminate Saturday mail deliveries.
An aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was warning me about this last week. There are organic reasons for all of this: The U.S. Postal Service is staring down the same barrel trained at our magazine and newspaper businesses, i.e. its revenue model is being wiped out by the internet.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz1syYAnsNG
I think the USPS has to downsize and pick it's spots, but I would really hate to see them go away. I still use them the most and I certainly ain't looking forward to paying $2/$3 dollars to send a letter.
yo mail fools
The Post Office Is Not an Other. The Post Office Is Us.
As has become clear over the past five years, conservative politicians have decided that we don't need a post office any more. Under cover of technology, and using the rise of e-mail as an alibi, the Congress quite deliberately has engaged in a campaign to make the United States Postal System an unsustainable concern. They've done it quite well, actually.
In 2006, when nobody was paying attention, a lame duck session of Congress, in which there was still a Republican majority, passed a neat little poison-pill called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required the USPS to pre-fund 75 years worth of health-care benefits over the next 10 years. (No other government en y ever has been required to do anything like this.) Among other things, this prevented the USPS from raising rates, or doing anything else that would lift the weight of the fiscal millstone that had been hung upon it. That this was a deliberate act of sabotage was revealed by the fact that a report indicated that, absent this pre-payment requirement, the USPS would be running a profit of $2.5 billion. With the requirement, the service is $24 billion in the hole.
In addition, consider how often the USPS is used as a punchline for the failure of government services. This became particularly acute during the debate over the Affordable Care Act, when "Do you want to hand health care over to the people who run the post office?" became the go-to comedy bit for opponents of the reforms. Of course, all the service problems you see in the USPS are a result of cutbacks forced by the poison-pill the service was fed six years ago
The entire modern conservative movement consists of an ongoing attempt to sever the relationship of a self-governing people to their government, to break down the concept of a political commonwealth. Many of the conservative attempts to wedge people apart through the use of an Other to be feared and despised whether that was black people, or empowered women, or immigrants, or gay people have been framed to attack the government's attempts to ameliorate discrimination against the groups in question. In modern conservative thought, then, and in the mindset it seeks to ingrain on the people of the country, the government is the ultimate Other.
In doing so, the corporate masters of the conservative movement are good with all of this because they seek a wary, frightened and insecure people. Those people are too cowed to make waves, too spooked to assert their rights as citizens, too confused to demand accountability.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politic...-lives-8757430
A fundamental tenent of conservative/Repug/VRWC philosophy is that all govt is bad, and must be killed.
So conservative/Repug/VRWC willfully, maliciously hamstrings, limits, and mismanages the USPS, complemented with the hate media non-stop trashing USPS.
Their msg is St Ronnie's: govt IS the problem, and USPS fails strictly because it IS govt.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 05-13-2012 at 12:15 PM.
Repugs continue their attack on USPS:
There’s Hidden Union Busting in Congressman Issa’s Postal Reform Bill
Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) recently introduced postal reform bill closely follows the strategy of Republican governors who are using budget problems to attack collective bargaining rights and weaken political opponents. This strategy ignores alternative methods of closing budget shortfalls and instead insists that public employee pay is the cause of budget gaps and that collective bargaining must go.
Rep. Issa’s targeting of postal employees shows that the war on workers’ rights is not just in state capitols but is also at the post office. Any bill that Congress passes to address budget issues at the USPS needs to strip out these nasty and unnecessary attacks on workers. The Postal Service needs real reform and not political maneuvering from the right-wing playbook.
http://www.americanprogressaction.or...n_busting.html
It's funny though, how the GOP did a 180 on the rural post office closings. No GOP voters out there...
Anything being overnighted by any mail company or en y goes to fedex.
I haven't sent a letter/payment or anything via USPS in a long time. I do all my bill paying online or by phone. I do get my bills from the mail, but don't really need them, I get mainly junk mail.
It really doesn't have much to do with letter prices anymore. Junk mail has been paying their way for a long time. It is the mandates by congress. The Postal Service has been able to stay in the black when the internet took the place of bill payments, letters, etc. It was when congress mandated this refunding of the retirement accounts that they started having a hard time.
Congress also limits USPS expansion into new services, which would leverage the investments taxpayers have made in building the USPS infrastructure.
The POSTAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND ENHANCEMENT ACT had a republic sponsor, but 2/3rds the cosponsors were democrats. Passed by unanimous voice vote in the house and senate. Within the bill is this:
The saw the Postal Service as a cash cow to help find more money to spend.(3)(A) The United States Postal Service shall pay into such
Fund
(i) $5,400,000,000, not later than September 30, 2007;
(ii) $5,600,000,000, not later than September 30, 2008;
(iii) $5,400,000,000, not later than September 30, 2009;
(iv) $5,500,000,000, not later than September 30, 2010;
(v) $5,500,000,000, not later than September 30, 2011;
(vi) $5,600,000,000, not later than September 30, 2012;
(vii) $5,600,000,000, not later than September 30, 2013;
(viii) $5,700,000,000, not later than September 30, 2014;
(ix) $5,700,000,000, not later than September 30, 2015;
and
(x) $5,800,000,000, not later than September 30, 2016.
How do you figure? Tax dollars do not support the Postal Service.
tax dollars built 1000s of post offices and 1000s of vehicules, sorting centers, airplanes, etc before USPS was bogusly "privatized".
LOL...
If you say so... Maybe before the changes in the 70's when it was pretty much privatized, but there is nothing today that old that is used except some buildings.
Besides...
The Post Office is a specific obligation outlined in the congress, so your complaints have zero merit.
USPS has bldings and the land. and I bet a lot of other stuff that goes back pre-privatization.
Probably so Shazbot, but it will be a small share of their assets. I'll bet only for the old post offices. Nearly all, if not all the processing plants are newer than the timeframe the government financially required the Postal Service to be independent of tax dollars. The Postal Service has also built newer and larger buildings and consolidated smaller Post Offices for a couple decades at least now, before any of financial crisis started. Now if you are worried about who owes who what, the older CSR retirement system account is overpaid already by about $80 billion by some estimates. This is money that is not sitting anywhere, but was already spent by congress. Some people think congress wants to destroy the Postal Service after the prefunding of the FERS retirement system, so they can have more free money... stolen rather than borrowed... that they will never have to pay back.
My new name for you is Shazbot. You are just a republican hating bot. You prove that every time when you "repug this... repug that..." Maybe if you realized the demonrats are no better, people may respect what you have to say. Your bias is blinding you.
Wild Cobra preaching on biased posting
lol
We all have bias, but ShazBot goes out of his way to always blame the "repugs." This issue has equal blame, yet he only blames the republicans. The truth is, both sides did this.
ShazBot...
Why didn't your democrats fix this problem when they controlled both houses and the presidency after the 2008 elections?
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