Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Here are some questions for you:
– Do you know how the United States Postal Service (USPS) is funded?
– Do you know why the USPS is having such serious financial problems?
– Would the closing of more than 200 postal processing centers and more than 3,000 post offices across this country, eliminating Saturday mail delivery, and cutting more than 100,000 postal jobs be the best way to save the USPS?
– Would slowing down mail delivery help the USPS to take in more revenue?
– What would happen to rural communities if their post offices were closed?
– What do you know about the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006?
– Have you heard about H.R. 1351?
Yes, the USPS is experiencing serious financial problems. I’ve heard on the news and read in the papers that drastic measures must be undertaken in order to save this great American institution. I think that it’s important to understand the causes of those problems and to know what could happen to the US Postal Service unless Congress solves them without severely impacting the institution and the services it provides to Americans.
Josh Eidelson’s Salon article Congress’s war on the post office: The Postal Service faces a threat greater than email or economics: Politics (March 14, 2012) helps provide some information on the issue:
The U.S. Postal Service is at risk of defaulting on healthcare obligations or exceeding its debt limit by the end of the year. Last month, USPS management unveiled a “Path to Profitability” that would eliminate over a hundred thousand jobs, end Saturday service and loosen overnight delivery guarantees. The Postal Service also proposes to shutter thousands of post offices. “Under the existing laws, the overall financial situation for the Postal Service is poor,” says CFO Joe Corbett. Republicans have been more dire, and none more so than Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who warned of a “crisis that is bringing USPS to the brink of collapse.”
Listening to Issa, you’d never know that the post office’s immediate crisis is largely of Congress’s own making. Conservatives aren’t wrong to say that the shift toward electronic mail – what USPS calls “e-diversion” – poses a challenge for the Postal Service’s business model. (The recent drop-off in mail is also a consequence of the recession-induced drop in advertising.)
But even so, in the first quarter of this fiscal year, the post office would have made an operational profit, if not for a 75-year healthcare “pre-funding” mandate that applies to no other public or private institution in the United States.
Warren Gunnels, aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, calls that mandate “the poison pill that has hammered the Postal Service … over 80 percent of the Postal Service deficit since that was enacted was entirely due to the pre-funding requirement.”
This death hug was part of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which was passed on a voice vote by a lame duck Republican Congress in 2006…
As reported by CNN, the USPS has claimed that a number of its difficulties were caused BY the federal government “– through a law governing how the agency funds workers’ retirement health benefits.” It has also been reported that prior to 2007—when the mandated prefunding of healthcare benefits began—the Postal Service actually generated a small profit.
The act/law referred to above required that the USPS prefund retiree healthcare benefits for workers for the next 75 years…in just ten years (2007-2016). That means the USPS has to continue to cough up $5.5 billion annually to meet the funding mandate for another five years. No other government entity or agency has been required to do the same by Congress. Why has the Postal Service—an institution that provides valuable services to businesses and to millions of Americans—been singled out?
Allison Kilkenny thinks that the people who are working to destroy the USPS as we know it are motivated by a desire to bust the strongest union in the country and to help pave the road to privatization. She wrote the following in a Truth-out article titled Postal Workers: The Last Union:
The recent attacks against the United States Postal Service (USPS) are more than signs of desperate times – a natural sunset moment for a service rendered archaic by FedEx and UPS. Rather, the Postal Service has been under constant, vicious assault for years from the right, who views this as an epic battle with the goal of finally taking down the strongest union in the country, the second largest employer in the United States (second only to Wal-Mart,) and a means to roll the country ever closer toward the abyss of privatization. The Postal Service, which is older than the Constitution itself, stands at a precipice. If this great institution, which provides one of the oldest, most reliable services in the country, is permitted to fall and Congress kills its great union, then truly no collective bargaining rights, no worker contract, no union will be safe within the United States.
As the USPS spirals toward default, the historically uncontroversial mail service system has suddenly become a hot-button issue. It’s an unlikely organization to inspire such hysteria. The Postal Service isn’t paid for by taxpayer dollars, but rather fully funded by the sale of stamps. It’s easy to forget what a marvel this is – that today, in 2011, one can still mail a letter clear across the country for less than 50 cents. And if the impressiveness of that feat still hasn’t sunk in, attempt this brain exercise: consider what else you can buy for $0.44.
It was only a few years ago that the USPS was considered not only stable, but thriving. The biggest volume in pieces of mail handled by the Postal Service in its 236-year history was in 2006. The second and third busiest years were in 2005 and 2007, respectively. But it was two events: one crafted during the Bush years and another supervised by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa that would cripple this once great institution.
Allison Kilkenny Talks with Sam Seder about the USPS on Countdown (9/9/2011)
Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, believes that the law would do more than “cripple” the USPS. He believes it was designed “by those people who hate government … to destroy the Postal Service. And that’s what they did.”
In addition to requiring the Postal Service to prefund retiree healthcare benefits, Josh Eidelson said that the law also limits the institution’s capacity to change and grow with the times: “The new law also restricted the Postal Service’s ability to raise postage rates, or to provide ‘nonpostal services’ that, in an e-diversion era, could be key to its future.”
Matt Taibbi wrote on his Rolling Stone blog that barring the USPS from offering “nonpostal services” means that it can’t “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.”
Like Kilkenny, Taibbi thinks that the purpose of the law—pushed by lobbyists—“was to break a public sector union and privatize the mail industry.” Taibbi added, “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…This is a classic example of private-sector lobbyists using the government to protect its profits and keep prices inflated.”
From a special report on the USPS post office closings published by Reuters earlier this year:
Some of America’s poorest communities – many of them with spotty broadband Internet coverage – stand to suffer most if the struggling agency moves ahead with plans to shutter thousands of post offices later this year, a Reuters analysis found. Nearly 80 percent of the 3,830 post offices under consideration are in sparsely populated rural areas where poverty rates are higher than the national average, demographic data analyzed by Reuters shows…
The Postal Service is not studying the economic impact on communities where post offices are slated to close, spokesman David Partenheimer said. But in the 3,004 rural communities across 48 states where post offices may close, many residents fear the impact will be pronounced.
About 2.9 million people live in the rural communities where the post office that may close is either the only one or one of two post offices serving their zip code area. For many rural residents, that would translate into longer drives to mail packages, pay bills or buy stamps.
According to Postal Reporter News, in February the USPS “informed tens of thousands of employees that it plans to close mail processing facilities. The decisions are not final. No closings will occur before May 15. Postmaster General Patrick Donahue agreed to that timetable under moratorium proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to give Congress time to act.” Sanders said the USPS’s plan is “deeply flawed” and that Congress must change it. He said that he expected “comprehensive postal reform legislation to be on the floor of the Senate within the next few weeks.” He added, “At a time when the Postal Service is competing against the instantaneous delivery of information from email and the Internet, slowing down mail delivery service will result in less business and less revenue, and will bring about a death spiral for this institution which is so vitally important for all Americans.”
Sanders continued, “A critical weakness of the current Postal Service plan is that it ignores the onerous financial burden being placed on the Postal Service by $5.5 billion a year in pre-payments for future retiree health benefits. According to the Postal Service inspector general, those payments are no longer necessary because of the $45 billion which that account already has accumulated. The Postal Service needs to be reformed not by massive cuts, but by a new entrepreneurial business model which expands the products and services the post office can sell in the 21st century digital age.”
In the following video, Senator Sanders speaks about ways in which the USPS could be modernized and provide additional services to customers that it doesn’t provide today:
There are other members of Congress like Sanders who are trying to find ways to help save the USPS. One of them is Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts. On April 4, 2011, he—on behalf of himself and Elijah Cummings of Maryland— introduced H.R.1351: United States Postal Service Pension Obligation Recalculation and Restoration Act of 2011. This bill would “amend the provisions of title 5, United States Code, relating to the methodology for calculating the amount of any Postal surplus or supplemental liability under the Civil Service Retirement System, and for other purposes.”
From the NALC FACT SHEET (National Association of Letter Carriers):
Lynch’s bill once again takes a big step toward making sure the Postal Service is treated in a fair and equitable manner, allowing it to overcome the very difficult financial challenges it currently faces. In addition to addressing the CSRS overcharge, H.R. 1351 also deals with the more recent finding regarding another overcharge to the USPS related to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). Even so, H.R. 1351 only addresses the CSRS and FERS overcharges and does not repeal the onerous, legally mandated, annual pre-funding payments into the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund (PSRHBF)…
H.R. 1351 does not address the legally mandated pre-funding payments into the PSRHBF beyond the FY2011 payment, which costs the USPS $5.5 billion annually. Rather, it simply fixes the massive over-funding to the postal CSRS and FERS accounts. Additional legislation would be necessary to repeal the future scheduled pre-funding payments to the PSRHBF.
Mark Anderson wrote the following in The Daily Cougar last September: “Currently, a 44 cent stamp will get a letter from Houston to New York in two to three days. According to the FedEx website, two-day delivery of a similar letter to the same destination will cost between $20-30 dollars.”
Shock Doctrine at U.S. Postal Service: Is A Manufactured Crisis Behind Push to Privatize? (Democracy Now)
How the Right Wing Destroyed the U.S. Postal Service (Majority Report with Sam Seder)
I wonder if most Americans would prefer to send mail via the USPS—or by FedEx. I wonder if most Americans would like to see our Postal Service privatized. I wonder how many Americans would like to see post offices in their cities and towns shuttered. I wonder how many Americans would like our elected representatives to find solutions to the problems facing the USPS that won’t include drastically reducing the number of postal carriers, post offices, and processing centers in this country–and slowing down the delivery of our mail.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Postal Workers: The Last Union (Truth-out)
Postal Service pleads for help as losses continue (CNN)
Is benefits law dragging down the Postal Service? (CNN)
Don’t Let Business Lobbyists Kill the Post Office (TAIBBLOG)
Privatization of US Postal Service could be costly (The Daily Cougar)
Republicans pushing to privatize USPS (Coloradoan)
Post Office is vital, hamstrung by Congress (Daily Review Atlas)
ALEC/Koch Cabal Pursuing Privatization of the US Postal Service for UPS and FedEx… (Voters legislative Transparency Project)
Special Report: Towns go dark with post office closings (Reuters)
Post office closings may increase rural isolation, economic disparity (Washington Post)
Senate Passes Postal Reform (Senator Bernie Sanders, Vermont)
Is Your Post Office Closing? USPS Is Studying Shuttering 3,700 Locations (NPR)
USPS Closings Could be Averted With Senate Bill (Christian Post)
H.R. 6407 (109th): Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act
Rain, Snow, Sleet and Congress (New York Times)
Shock Doctrine at U.S. Postal Service: Is a Manufactured Crisis Behind Push Toward Privatization? (Democracy Now)
USPS Postal Service Countdown Clock (Senator Tom Carper, Delaware)
NALC FACT SHEET (National Association of Letter Carriers)
Sen. Sanders Calls Postal Service Plan ‘Deeply Flawed’ (Postal Report News)
Co-sponsors of HR 1351 (PopVox)
So is your post office on the chopping block? The Postal Service released this state-by-state list of retail locations that could be affected.
Idealist: I used the malcom X quote only once and then a paraphrase of it again only because it’s such a damned good quote.
Lets put this LBJ matter to rest once & for all.
There’s little dispute he fits all the criteria of an international war criminal guilty of genocide. The question is was he responsible for the civil rights act?
The answer is NO insofaras, like most victories won by the masses, it’s not the generosity of liberal politicians that make them do progressive acts but rather the pressure from the masses in the streets, in this case the millions who descended on the South and organized Freedom Rides and mass marches fighting off not only attacks from ignorant crackers but police dogs, water cannons & billy clubs.
The point is without that mass action and the enormous political pressure it created LBJ wouldn’t have lifted a finger for civil rights.
Karl F.
Interesting you use the same Malcolm X quote twice.
One could have hoped for more.
Sincerely and friendly, I wonder if you have any other evidence that the Civil Rights Voting Act was indeed a stab in the back of the black man. I, unlike SwM have no knowledge of it.
I support you, within my knowledge, on your assessment of Vietnam, not based on my marching or those in Sweden, but on Ellsberg’s book “Secrets”. He had been a veteran Marine officer, had been in the paddies and camps in Vietnam, and saw if all
from the beginning in the Pentagon. He received instead of his chief the first Tonkin Bay messages. So his words weigh a lot with me.
But please tell me why you condemn LBJ voting rights act.
OTOTOT
For myself, based on the “who benefits” criterion, he was one of those who planned the JFK assassination. We’ll see what Baker’s Bush book reveals. Bushy Sr was a mysterious man on that day. That book chapter alone should give all Americans and all humans for that matter, the creeps and the heebie-jeebies.
Whose Side Are They On?
The GOP’s Continuing War on Government Workers
(This article by first appeared in the May/June 2012 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)
http://www.apwu.org/issues-publicworkers/magart-may2012.htm
Excerpt:
New, Very Bad Deals
Postal workers learned exactly what House GOP leaders had in mind for us last June, when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, unveiled his postal “reform” bill, H.R. 2309, which would:
* Force the USPS to cut $3 billion from its retail and processing network over the next two years;
* Nullify our negotiated protection against layoffs;
* Give a “solvency authority” the power to reject negotiated contracts it considers too costly;
* Increase employees’ costs for healthcare and life insurance, and
* Eliminate the right to bargain over these crucial benefits.
USPS to Cut Hours, Not Close Post Offices
May 9, 2012
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/usps-to-cut-hours-not-close-post-offices/
Excerpt:
After 10 months of angst and outrage that spanned from rural Montana to Capitol Hill, the U.S. Postal Service announced Wednesday that the 3,700 post offices targeted in May for closing will remain open.
Instead, USPS plans to reduce the hours of operation at 13,000 rural post offices from a full eight-hour day to between two and six open hours per day, a move that the struggling mail service claims will save about $500 million per year.
“This is a win-win,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said at a news conference Wednesday. “The bottom line is that any rural community that wants to retain their post office will be doing that.”
Under the new plan, about 9,000 current full-time postal employees will be reduced to part time and lose their benefits after the offices they work at are put got to two to four open hours per day.
Another 4,000 full-time employees will see their hours reduced to part-time, but will retain their benefits. These workers will be at post offices whose hours are reduced to six hours per day.
“If we can shrink the labor cost we can keep the building open, that’s not hard to do, and ensure that customers have access,” Donahoe said.
Even though many post offices will have vastly reduced operating hours, people will still be able to access their P.O. boxes all day.
“We think this is the responsible thing to do,” Donahoe said. “Any company that listens to their customers would come up with a good solution like this.”
But House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who has co-sponsored a postal reform bill in the House, said today’s plan only addresses a small fraction of the Postal Service’s massive budget shortfall. Rural post offices that will be impacted by the plan account for less than one-eighth of the $5 billion USPS spends each year on operating post offices, Issa said in a statement.
“To achieve real savings creating long-term solvency, the Postal Service needs to focus on consolidation in more populated areas where the greatest opportunities for cost reduction exist,” Issa said.
The Truth About the U.S. Postal Service
By Jim Hightower
http://www.creators.com/opinion/jim-hightower/the-truth-about-the-u-s-postal-service.html
Excerpt:
What does 50 cents buy these days? Not a cuppa joe, a pack of gum or a newspaper. But you can get a steal of deal for a 50-cent piece: a first-class stamp. Plus a nickel in change.
Each day, six days a week, letter carriers traverse 4 million miles toting an average of 563 million pieces of mail, reaching the very doorsteps of our individual homes and workplaces in every single community in America. From the gated enclaves and penthouses of the uber-wealthy to the inner-city ghettos and rural colonias of America’s poorest families, the U.S. Postal Service literally delivers. All for 45 cents. The USPS is an unmatched bargain, a civic treasure, a genuine public good that links all people and communities into one nation.
So, naturally, it must be destroyed.
For the past several months, the laissez-fairyland blogosphere, assorted corporate front groups, a howling pack of congressional right-wingers and a bunch of lazy mass media sources have been pounding out a steadily rising drumbeat to warn that our postal service faces impending doom. It’s “broke,” they exclaim; USPS “nears collapse”; it’s “a full-blown financial crisis!”
These gloomsayers claim the national mail agency is bogged down with too many overpaid workers and costly brick-and-mortar facilities, so it can’t keep up with the instant messaging of Internet services and such nimble corporate competitors as FedEx. Thus, say these contrivers of their own conventional wisdom, the Postal Service is unprofitable and is costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year in losses. Wrong.
Since 1971, the postal service has not taken a dime from taxpayers. All of its operations — including the remarkable convenience of 32,000 local post offices — are paid for by peddling stamps and other products.
The privatizers squawk that USPS has gone some $13 billion in the hole during the past four years — a private corporation would go broke with that record! (Actually, private corporations tend to go to Washington rather than go broke, getting taxpayer bailouts to cover their losses.) The Postal Service is NOT broke. Indeed, in those four years of loudly deplored “losses,” the service actually produced a $700 million operational profit (despite the worst economy since the Great Depression).
What’s going on here? Right-wing sabotage of USPS financing, that’s what.
n 2006, the Bush White House and Congress whacked the post office with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act — an incredible piece of ugliness requiring the agency to PRE-PAY the health care benefits not only of current employees, but also of all employees who’ll retire during the next 75 years. Yes, that includes employees who’re not yet born!
No other agency and no corporation has to do this. Worse, this ridiculous law demands that USPS fully fund this seven-decade burden by 2016. Imagine the shrieks of outrage if Congress tried to slap FedEx or other private firms with such an onerous requirement.
This politically motivated mandate is costing the Postal Service $5.5 billion a year — money taken right out of postage revenue that could be going to services. That’s the real source of the “financial crisis” squeezing America’s post offices.
In addition, due to a 40-year-old accounting error, the federal Office of Personnel Management has overcharged the post office by as much as $80 billion for payments into the Civil Service Retirement System. This means that USPS has had billions of its sales dollars erroneously diverted into the treasury. Restore the agency’s access to its own postage money, and the impending “collapse” goes away.
Yes SMOM, some people believe that when a white Texan southern baptist mass murderer pulls the knife half way out of the American Black’s back it is progress.
3 Big Lies At the Heart of Republican Attacks On the Post Office:
House Republicans are aiming to dismantle the postal service, but their plans hinge on a few tall tales they’ve sold the American public.
By Josh Eidelson
September 22, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152451/3_big_lies_at_the_heart_of_republican_attacks_on_the_post_office/?page=entire
Excerpt:
In nine months in office, the new Republican House majority has amply proven the emptiness of its early promises: to create jobs, run government more like a business and respect small-town America. But there’s no better object lesson in Republicans’ real priorities than their bid to end the Postal Service as we know it.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) transports hundreds of billions of pieces of mail a year to addresses everywhere in the United States. It does so with no government subsidies – if you don’t use the postal service, you don’t pay for it. Now, like the US economy, the USPS faces a crisis brought on by Republican policies, which Republicans insist only more right-wing policies can solve. USPS has informed Congress that it can’t pay $5.5 billion due to a federal retiree health fund September 30, raising prospects of default. Republicans, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, are demanding layoffs and service cuts. Here’s how the Republican plan – burning the Postal Service to save it – contradicts the stories Republicans tell us about themselves.
1. Republicans are Demanding More Unemployment
Every month brings a new round of Republican press releases announcing that the latest anemic job growth shows the failure of Obama’s extreme liberalism – even as the numbers are worsened by the ongoing decline in public sector employment. Republicans are ordering up more job-killing, pushing legislation (with the postmaster’s support) that would shred the no-layoff language in the four unions’ contracts and allow for 100,000 pink slips (on top of tens of thousands set to retire and not be replaced). At a hearing last year, Issa told the postmaster that USPS has “more or less a third more people than you need” on payroll.
Those layoffs would be particularly damaging for the groups that disproportionately get hired at the post office: African Americans and military veterans. The Postal Service has a multi-decade policy of preferential hiring for veterans. While USPS has been quick to say such preferences would insulate veterans from layoffs, unions retort that if entire post offices are closed, everyone who works there loses their jobs. “If you lay off 100,000 individuals, at least 25 to 30,000 will be veterans,” says American Postal Workers Union (APWU) president Cliff Guffey.
North Carolina A & T State University professor Philip Rubio points out that USPS is “at the hub of a 1.3 trillion dollar mail industry,” which increases the damage to the overall economy if mail service is limited or compromised.
So far the vocal House Republicans have been adamant about seeing USPS shrink and its workers’ protections shredded. Unions and USPS advocates have suggested a range of reforms to address the budget challenge: allowing USPS to mail alcohol; expanding the range of government functions post offices can perform; letting the cost of some forms of mail rise faster than inflation; removing potentially illegal business discounts. But the largest, and simplest, would be to undo an unfair mandate a Republican Congress placed on the Post Office in 2006.
idealist707:
In answer to your question about “what kind of jobs were made”: No, I don’t have any statistics on that but I would say (based on my own recollection) that until the George W. Bush years, jobs were good jobs and not part-time, no-benefits jobs.
Karl, You said previously that a president that had a bad foreign policy also had to have a bad domestic policy. I brought up Johnson as an example of how that might not be true. I still think the Civil Rights Act was a good thing.
SMom:
Re: LBJ
Johnson was responsible for the slaughter of over a million Vietnamese people so to grant ex-slaves the right to vote for one of those 2 parties that serve primarily the 1% a full century after their chains were removed deserves maybe a yawn in the grand scheme of things.
The vast majority of the earth’s inhabitants — poor brown women — if they were given a chance to learn an honest account of Johnson’s legacy and his criminal prosecution & genocidal escalation of the Vietnam War they would have little choice but to conclude he was one of the 20th century’s biggest mass murderers.
Millions didn’t march in NYC, the Capitol & the Pentagon throughout the 60’s chanting: “Hey, Hey, LBJ — How Many Kids Did You Kill Today” for nothing you know.
You’d think a Swarthmore Mom of all people would recognize that before praising a southern baptist swine like LBJ.
You know what Malcolm X said about Johnson and the Voting Rights Act? “You don’t stick a knife in my back then pull it out half way and call it progress.”
Firefly,
Given ýour point, Firefly, is there any analysis on what kind of jobs were made under the different Presidants in regard to their party? Don’t rush off to find any, just wondering over if you think the question might be relevant.
Bloomberg reports that almost two-thirds of private-sector job growth in the past five decades came with Democrats in the White House.
“The BGOV Barometer shows that since Democrat John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, NON-government payrolls in the U.S. swelled by almost 42 million jobs under Democrats, compared with 24 million for Republican presidents… Democrats hold the edge though they occupied the Oval Office for 23 years since Kennedy’s inauguration, compared with 28 for the Republicans.”
http://tinyurl.com/6v6yad3
– – – – – – –
The differences between the Democrats in power and the Republicans in power are subtle but they ARE there.
Karl, MikeS, SwM et al,
If we vote for Obama, we are either one step closer to revolution or one closer to eventual freeing of the majority of Americans. A vote for a Republicana is of coourse a step into hell.
In the times of the Dust Bowl, they were forced to vote with their very bodies, taking them to California.
Now we’ve got better choices. Take them.
Or get yourself a truck and a visa to a refugee camp in Canada. BTW, model T’s are hard to come by today.
Blouise,
Can you explain your first sentence to me? Particularly the word “sweetheart” Might be whatever, as such terms current nuances lie in deep darkness from here.
karl, Johnson made it a national concern along with voting rights. The Voting Rights Act is a land mark piece of legislation.
Mike:
There’s rules of law and rules of logic and one need not be a constitutional lawyer nor a philosophy major to figure out that somebody as principled as Turley is simply never going to go out of his way to portray Obama as the most historic gravedigger of the Constitution to date… and then turn around and vote for him.
Ed Schultz–Republicans Want to Lay off Postal Service Employees, Darrell Issa, H.R. 1351, Etc.
Darrell Issa Goes Postal, Job-Killing Retiree Bill Moves to the States
by Mary Bottari — September 30, 2011
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/09/11047/darrell-issa-goes-postal-job-killing-retiree-bill-moves-states
Excerpt:
Darrell Issa is going postal. In the name of “Saving the Post Office,” the head of the House Government Oversight Committee is ready to knock off 200,000 jobs and put the U.S. Postal Service, founded in 1775, on the path to oblivion. President Obama’s rescue plan is only slightly better — 80,000 people might lose their jobs.
The bipartisan eagerness to sink the Postal Service has Ben Franklin, the first Postmaster General under the Continental Congress, rolling in his grave.
The Original Job Creator
For me, the attack on the post office is personal. My daughter wouldn’t be around if my father hadn’t met my mom while working at Philadelphia’s central post office in the depths of the last Great Depression. Back in the dark days of the 1930’s, Postal Service jobs kept millions of extended families and communities afloat.
With 570,000 good postal jobs in America, things are not so different today. The Postal Service not only provides secure high-wage jobs, it is key to providing high-quality, low-cost services to hundreds of thousands of businesses across America.
“We are the original ‘job creators’,” says Ron Berg proudly, a Wisconsin postal worker who delivers to 497 small businesses and homes rain or shine.
So why is Issa threatening to reopen collective bargaining agreements to allow for massive layoffs at the worst possible time, and create a special commission to close thousands of delivery centers and post offices across the nation? When you plant a poison pill, you have to convince people to swallow.
The Poison Pill
Keep in mind that the Postal Service does not take one dime of taxpayer money. It is an independent agency authorized by the U.S. Constitution. The 2008 Wall Street economic meltdown has hurt. Less economic activity in America means less mail. Email and Facebook have taken a toll as well. But the post office could weather these hard times if it were not for a poison pill passed by a lame-duck Republican Congress in 2006.
The so-called “Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006” required the Postal Service to pre-fund healthcare benefits of future retirees, a 75-year liability over a 10-year period. Yup, that’s right — prepayment for postal employees that have not even been born yet. Contrary to what Issa claims, the Postal Service is the only federal agency or private business under this onerous obligation.
The requirement costs the Postal Services $5.5 billion a year, about the amount the economic downturn is costing the post office. Without the prefunding requirement, the Postal Service would have broken even financially despite mail volume declines. With it, however, the Postal Service is moving toward default — a deliberately manufactured crisis that could give the privatizers and profiteers in Congress an opportunity to “restructure” America’s oldest independent public service.
Shock Doctrine for the USPS
Creating a crisis to kill a public service is classic “shock doctrine,” a trick learned from old Milton Friedman who saw every economic crisis, real or manufactured, as an “opportunity” to advance a free-market, privatization agenda.
“We are not broke. This is a crisis created by powerful politicians who want to privatize the Postal Service. We will hear the word ‘bailout’ but I say bull,” says postal carrier Berg. Or as consumer advocate Ralph Nader puts it: “The post office is being pushed to the cliff, into the abyss. The ultimate goal is shrinkage — continual shrinkage and private businesses pick up the cream.”
Private mail carriers only deliver to a fraction of the American population, at a higher cost. The small West Virginia town of West Liberty is so desperate to keep its post office open, that it recently bought the post office building and offered the U.S. Postal Service a free lease.
Fate of Postal Service Awaits Action in House
By RON NIXON
May 1, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/us/postal-service-awaits-house-action.html
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Despite Senate approval of a bill to help the debt-ridden Postal Service, thousands of post offices across the country still face closings beginning in two weeks if the House has not completed work on its version of the legislation.
The Senate passed a bill to overhaul the Postal Service last week. But legislation has yet to come up for a vote in the House, and lawmakers there do not appear to be in a hurry to proceed despite a May 15 deadline set by the Postal Service before it begins closing post offices.
“The May 15 moratorium deadline was manufactured by senators opposed to legitimate postal reform,” said Ali M. Ahmad, a spokesman for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Postal Service. “It has never had a meaningful purpose in advancing efforts to help the Postal Service.”
Facing billions of dollars in debt and losing an average of $36 million a day this year, the Postal Service plans to close 3,700 post offices, or 12 percent of them. It would also close 250 mail processing centers, or about half of them, and reduce its work force by nearly 20 percent, or 100,000 people.
Facing billions of dollars in debt and losing an average of $36 million a day this year, the Postal Service plans to close 3,700 post offices, or 12 percent of them. It would also close 250 mail processing centers, or about half of them, and reduce its work force by nearly 20 percent, or 100,000 people.
The Postal Service said it would delay the planned consolidation of mail processing centers during the election season.
Patrick R. Donahoe, the postmaster general, agreed to hold off on closings until mid-May to give Congress time to work on legislation to address the agency’s growing debt. The agency has the authority to close facilities without the approval of Congress.
“We are continuing to explore options,” said Sue Brennan, a Postal Service spokeswoman.
On Tuesday, a group of senators who co-sponsored the Senate legislation called on House leaders to bring the postal overhaul bill to the floor for a vote. The co-sponsors include Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut; Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, both Republicans; and Senator Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware.
“The Postal Service’s financial crisis will likely come to a head in the next few months,” the senators said in a letter. “Without legislation, the Postal Service will not be able to make payments that are due and will likely be forced to slash services. We fear that the resulting degradation of mail service will further drive away postal customers, only hastening the loss of postal revenue, the accelerating contraction of mail processing and mail-related industry, and further loss of associated jobs.”
The senators also sent a letter on Tuesday to the postmaster general, asking that the Postal Service delay closing post offices until legislation is completed. The Postal Service did not respond to the letter, but Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, denounced it, saying the senators were seeking to protect post offices in their states.
“compared to a world famous preeminent Constitutional Lawyer & Scholar arguing in Foreign Affairs Magazine & the LA Times that Obama ranks as the most perfidious under-miner of over 2 centuries Constitutional Jurisprudence since…. the last torturerer occupying the White House.”
Karl,
You’re right JT has his reputation and his ideals to uphold. I have actually written about that in comments many times through the years to differentiate the difference between JT taking a public stand and anyone (me) taking a public stand. Yet I really am not interested in predicting whether or not he will vote for someone for President. Why is that true? Because being in his position as a leader in trying to return this country to constitutional values, he would be undermining his cause and his work to adopt positions on who he is voting for, that is obvious.
However, what you are skating around is you used your hypothesis on who JT is voting for as a backup for your own opinion. That was disingenuous don’t you think? This is especially true since no one here knows, or can know who JT is voting for and by your response to me you understand that.
However, your implication is clearly that no one who believes strongly in the
“Rule of Law” could be sane and vote for Obama. Well I don’t know who you truly are, but in my life I’ve been for the “Rule of Law” ever since I watched the Army/McCarthy Hearings 57 years ago. Nevertheless, I am voting for Obama, for the reasons I outlined. One point of clarification just in case you were referring to me when you wrote:
“There’s an enormous difference between a not so famous retired union local president bashing Obama and then turning around and voting for him”
While I did run for President of my radical Civil Service Union Local in 1969, I came in third, though I did beat the Trotskyites by a fair amount of votes, considering they had an organization and I didn’t. I’ve never made the claim that I was a Union President, though I have said that it was the aftermath of that campaign that made me realize that I wanted nothing to do with being a politician.