8 Feb 2013 10:38 am
Going Postal, Yea VerilyThe USPS has announced the end of Saturday mail delivery starting in August. It's not clear that they can legally do this, since Congress has oversight of the Constitutionally mandated service, and they haven't approved such a move. The Republicans are loving it, so you know this is bad national policy on its face.The simple fact is that the Republicans want to destroy the postal unions and privatize still more of the public infrastructure.The financial problems the Postal Service have were entirely manufactured by the Republican lame duck Congress in 2006 when they mandated 75 years worth of pension and medical benefits to be paid in just 10 years.Workers that are yet to be born are having their retirements paid for, otherwise the semi-autonomous agency would have been averaging a more than 2 billion dollar annual surplus.The big lie is that the PO is suffering from lack of volume, they are still moving more mail than 25 years ago when they were making money. People who study these things aren't predicting volume to decrease by any substantial amount from this point. Some things simply need to physically delivered, why do you think the Republicans want to privatize it?Do you think they intend to lose money? Do you know where the big commission is for a car salesman? It's not from selling you a new car, it's from 'stealing' your trade-in (that's what they call it at the dealership, 'stealing'). The Republicans are telling you how bad your 'used' Post Office is, but they'll take it off your hands. You'll soon be driving a shiny new lemon you can't afford to buy stamps for.Another lie is that Postal Service has a high cost of operations, in fact postage in the US is far lower than the rest of the world. Postage rates are set by a commission, but the Congressional restrictions on increases are making it impossible for the rates to be set properly.There is a long list of goods and services that Post Offices could sell that would be beneficial to the public and make money, but Congress restricts what they can do by law. Privatized mail delivery would eventually mean no delivery in rural areas or even in so-called urban areas. We've got to run it like a 'business', don't you know.Laying off the carriers who do Saturday deliveries, who are mostly part-time employees, will in theory save $2 billion. It will also create a $2 billion hole in the economy for no good reason and make life more difficult for the average citizen. There is a reason they put the Postal Service in the Constitution.Originally the framers wanted to encourage newspaper delivery as well as commerce, but it's already to the point where a newspaper can take two days to arrive, and weekly 'news' magazines are more like historical journals by the time they get to your mailbox. Further cuts are simply going to make that worse and bring the system crashing down.If the Republicans get their way we will return to a period before the Constitution when there was no Postal Service. But that would be consistent with their goal of making everything 'pre-Constitutional', and 'pre-Manga Carta' for that matter. Habeas Corpus? 'Nay, I thinketh not'. Those English Common Law concepts in our legal system need to go too, those are so 400 AD. - Leviticus though, that's a keeper.Stoning for everything and we mean everything. Except witchcraft, then only burning will do. We are Republicans, and we know with certainty that a witch is heavier than a wooden duck. Yea verily.www.prairie2.com