When George Miller, writing for the Ventura County Tea Party on May 22nd, complained about the blatant conflict of interest that appeared in the report that California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, was in charge of selling off, on an exclusive basis, some 50 post office buildings belonging to the US Postal Service, he didn’t know that Snopes had already
Tag Archives: Post Office
Snopes Misses Larger Story on Sales of Post Offices by California Sen. Feinstein’s Husband’s Company
- Friday, 31 May 2013 14:06
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Post Office Privatization Moves Closer
- Wednesday, 03 October 2012 06:37
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United States Postal Service, Ford Windstar Minivan. In Olympia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
With the announcement that the U.S. Postal Service will be unable to make a $5.6 billion payment to its employees’ health benefit plan due on September 30th, calls for privatization of the archaic service are mounting.
The service already failed to make last year’s payment of $5.5 billion which Congress had allowed to be delayed until August 1st. And it’s no wonder that the service can’t make those payments: it lost $5.2 billion in the third quarter this year, up from a loss of $2.1 billion a year ago. Estimates are that the service will lose at least $10 billion this year without counting the default of $11 billion in payments to its benefit plan.
USPS spokesman David Partenheimer thinks the service can still be salvaged through “comprehensive reform” of the laws that govern the service. He said:
They are urgently needed in order for the Postal Service to fully implement its five-year business plan and return to long-term financial stability.
Missing from his statement was any mention of profitability, just
The Post Office isn’t Supposed to Be a Monopoly
- Wednesday, 08 August 2012 13:11
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Townhall.com: The U.S. Postal Service and the Constitution
Article 1, Section 8 says that [The Congress shall have the power] to establish Post Offices and Post Roads. It does not say that the federal government shall have the exclusive power to deliver mail. Nor does it require that the mail be delivered by an agent of the federal government to every home in the country, six days a week.
From left to right, the post boxes belong to FedEx, UCB, UPS, and two from the USPS (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a thoughtful and useful article on the Post Office, about which I have written from time to time. Although I don’t think anything will change by any act of Congress, the Post Office itself is increasingly irrelevant and will someday disappear altogether or, even better, be bought out of bankruptcy by UPS or FedEx, privatized, and made profitable.
But it clarifies exactly what the Constitution says about the Post Office. And the history of mail delivery is interesting: private companies delivered the mail in the early years of the republic. James Campbell, in his 1996 book “The Last Monopoly” published by the Cato Institute, said:
Delivery of local, intracity letters was pioneered by private companies such as Boyd’s Dispatch in New York City and Blood’s Dispatch in Philadelphia. One authority counted 147 private local postal companies. The “locals” introduced adhesive postage stamps at least as early as 1841. The Post Office did not introduce stamps until 1847 and did not require their use until 1851. Efforts by the Post Office to suppress the locals failed when, in 1860, a federal court ruled that the postal monopoly pertained only to the transportation of letters over “post roads” between post offices and did not prohibit the delivery of letters within a single postal district.
Private delivery of the mail? Who woulda thunk it?
But the Government has ALWAYS Delivered the Mail!
- Monday, 06 August 2012 11:35
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Newsmax: Post Office Nears Historic Default on $5B Payment
With cash running perilously low, two legally required payments for future postal retirees’ health benefits—$5.5 billion due Wednesday, and another $5.6 billion due in September—will be left unpaid, the mail agency said Monday.
Postal officials said they also are studying whether they may need to delay other obligations. In the coming months, a $1.5 billion payment is due to the Labor Department for workers compensation, which for now it expects to make, as well as millions in interest payments to the Treasury.
USPS Truck at Night (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Years ago, when I was less informed on the matter, I laughed (along with Mad magazine where I first saw it stated) that of course the government should deliver the mail! It always has! Any suggestion to the contrary was just silly. And that was the end of it.
Until I started reading. That was the beginning of the end of that misperception. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss!
I understand what the Constitution says about the matter: “The Congress shall have Power to…establish Post Offices and post Roads;” but nowhere can I find anything there that says anything about providing workers with health care and retirement benefits or workers compensation or even interest the USPS must pay on previous monies borrowed to make these payments.
The reality is, and has been for years, that the USPS is broke, insolvent, near bankruptcy. I say, “let it go.” The internet and alternative means of communication have replaced the post office. If documents need to be served or delivered, private companies can do that far better than the outdated, outmoded and outrageously expensive postal service.
Just yesterday I was talking with my mailman, Gene. He’s been working for the post office for 35 years. He has had two knee surgeries, paid for by us because they were damaged while working for the post office. He is collecting disability along with his regular check. He said to me: “I can afford to retire. The wife says we can afford to retire. But the money is too good that I don’t want to retire.”
I didn’t ask him just how good that money is. But you can bet your sweet petunias that it’s much more than a new mailman would be paid to do the same work.
In a microcosm, that’s the problem with the post office. It’s a government agency—I don’t care what they call it—and consequently, predictably, certainly, it is inefficient, backward, and outdated.
It needs to go away and let the free market deliver the mail.
Senate Votes to Pump More Money into the Post Office
- Friday, 11 May 2012 16:30
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When the Senate voted overwhelmingly, 62-37, to continue funding the virtually insolvent U.S. Postal Service in April, it made clear its determination not to let reality enter into its deliberations.
Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) put it perfectly:
The Postal Service is an iconic American institution that still delivers 500 million pieces of mail a day and sustains 8 million jobs. This legislation will change the USPS so it can stay alive throughout the 21st century.
There are so many errors of fact in that statement reflecting such a lack of understanding of the reality in today’s Postal Service that Lieberman should be ashamed of himself. The Postal Service used to deliver vastly more mail than it does today and is expected to deliver much less in the future. The Internet and email and social networking has decimated and largely eliminated vast swaths of what once was the service’s function: delivering the mail. Lieberman failed to mention that by “sustaining” (the liberal’s favorite term du jour) 8 million jobs it is reducing the private workforce by at least that many as funds are extracted from the private sector to keep the postal service alive. As for changing the USPS so it can stay alive “throughout the 21st century,” the insertion of some $11 billion allowed by the Senate might keep it going for three years before it runs out of money again.
By refusing to allow the Postmaster General, Patrick Donahoe, to make the cuts necessary to keep the service afloat, the Senate is making sure that
Congress Asks IRS to Investigate AARP
- Tuesday, 03 January 2012 11:56
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Rep. David Reichert (R-Wash.) along with two other House members has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) for acting more like a profit-making insurance company rather than a tax-exempt advocate for senior citizens. The AARP’s close control and micro-marketing management of companies it allows to use its brand amounts to profit-making activity that should be taxable, assert the lawmakers and others. But for years the AARP has largely successfully defended its non-profit status all the while growing into the seventh largest insurance company in the country.
Reichert, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, told Fox News: “They’re really trying to manage these companies to increase their revenues.” And they have succeeded greatly. During the recession, when many of its members were struggling financially, AARP’s revenues just from its affiliation with United HealthCare alone jumped from $284 million in 2007 to $427 million in 2009 and $670 million in 2010. But because of their tax-exempt status, little of this is subject to income tax.
A tax lawyer favorable to the AARP, Bill Josephson, played innocent before looking into the situation, claiming that the organization was just receiving royalties or passive income, a common tax loophole for non-profits to use to shelter income from the IRS. He said, “[This] is the classic royalty situation where the Sierra Club [for example] in effect simply makes its mailing lists available to other charities in return for royalty [payments]. I don’t have a problem with that, nor does anybody else.”
But Reichert, in his letter to the IRS, notes a big difference between the Sierra Club and the AARP. The AARP has virtual
The US Post Office: Price it to Sell!
- Tuesday, 11 October 2011 05:51
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Image via Wikipedia
Now that Congress has extended the due date for the Postal Service’s $5.5 billion pension plan payment to November 18th, various proposals to modernize and “rightsize” the service have appeared. The most comprehensive is the Issa-Ross Postal Reform Act, which endeavors to allow the service the freedom to do what needs to be done to keep it operating as a quasi-government agency.
If approved by Congress, the Act would:
The Postmaster General’s Challenges
- Friday, 02 September 2011 05:28
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Image by Rdoke via Flickr
In his report to a Senate subcommittee Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe spelled out clearly why the U.S. Postal Service can’t make any money: too many cooks in the kitchen. Hamstrung and limited by rules and “stakeholders” with differing and often competing agendas, what’s remarkable is that the postal service isn’t deeper in the hole.
Heaven knows, he’s trying. Through agreements finally reached with the letter carrier unions, he has been able, over the past two years, to eliminate 12,000 carrier routes and to consolidate others, saving
Cutting Government: Where to Start
- Thursday, 27 January 2011 07:13
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Image via Wikipedia
Once Obamacare is repealed by the House, the attention of the 112th Congress will turn to the question of where government spending can be cut for the largest immediate impact. Several observers have weighed in with their thoughts, including Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, who have an article in today’s online Wall Street Journal. After reviewing the fiscal hot water the republic is already in, and discussing attempts to re-set government spending back to “base lines” such as 2009, 2008, or 2007, the authors get down to business.
The 112th Congress: Real Substance, or Just Smoke?
- Wednesday, 05 January 2011 09:24
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Image by TalkMediaNews via Flickr
When the House of Representatives announced new rules for the Congress that convenes on Wednesday, the mainstream media immediately called them “strict” and even “unprecedented.” The first new rule to take effect will be the reading of the Constitution of the United States and its 27 amendments on the floor of the chamber.
Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner told ABC News: “The American people want a smaller, more accountable government—and that starts with respecting the Constitution. That’s why we will read it on the floor next week. It sends the clear message that starting on January 5th, the House of Representatives will be the American people’s outpost in Washington, D.C.”
U.S. Postal Service: Time to Free the Mail
- Wednesday, 03 March 2010 19:18
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Image by Getty Images via @daylife
When U.S. Postmaster General John Potter recommended eliminating Saturday delivery service in order to save money, he was merely responding to the postal service’s continuing inability to make money, or even cover its costs, delivering the mail. In a microcosm, the postal service’s difficulty is reflective of the government’s attempt to operate anywhere outside the constraints of the Constitution.
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