Posted on 05/28/2011 6:47:53 PM PDT by 4buttons
He is struck by how many USPS executives started out as letter carriers or clerks. He finds them so consumed with delivering mail that they have been slow to grasp how swiftly the service's financial condition is deteriorating. "We said, 'What's your 10-year plan?' " Herr recalls. "They didn't have one."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
Sounds more like Congress has been ripping off the fee paid service money machine just because it can.
"They" are not losing the money ~ your Representatives are losing it; your President is losing it; your Senators are losing it.
It is remarkable that you find it at all useul to blame the agency for the misdeeds of the politicians.
Why are you covering for Obama and Congress?
Still refusing to take responsibility eh.
How bizarre. Mail users paid for it ~ it's hardly like tax money.
Yeah its a shame all those mail carriers didn’t get a chance to stuff that money in their pockets.
It more properly belongs to the retirees. Darned shame Obama is holding onto my money. So typical of a thieving Democrat skunk isn’t it. Bet he’s buying fancy condoms for Michelle with my money.
Aside from the military I don’t think anyone deserves a taxpayer funded retirement after only 20 years of employment. Sure the govt should contribute just like the private sector. We cannot afford these massive pensions especially the double dip kinds.
A 20 year retirement under the FERS system will give you about 20% of your high 3. Under CSRS that'd be about 30%, but you wouldn't get Social Security.
But the question was about what you think a FULL BLOWN PENSION might be. If you want to say 20% is FULL BLOWN, go ahead and say that.
I didn’t lose $8.5 billion dollars last year. Get back to me when you make a profit.
LOL
The “bail out” they are referring to was not about the crashing market or economy a couple of years ago forcing ups or fedex to seek help from the government or go out of business. It was about what fedex called the brown bailout. The regime’s attempt to reclassify fedex’s employees under the NLRB rules instead of the Railway Labor Act. It would allow the Teamsters to organize fedex location by location, instead of the whole company in one bite.
Using government’s powers to intervene in normal business decisions is a bailout when a company requests it.
“Congress robs the employee retirement funds”
Correct. I’ve mentioned that on other threads where some have said the USPS retirees had better not receive govt funds / bailout and that they’ve already taken enough tax dollars. What these posters don’t realize is that USPS is not run by tax dollars.
They’re also unaware that employees pay into their retirement accounts just as anyone at any company with a benefits program - that this money was supposed to have been invested - and those accounts have been robbed, as you’ve mentioned. This makes jesse jackson extremely happy, yet it’s still not enough.
“Aside from the military I don’t think anyone deserves a taxpayer funded retirement”
I agree. The thing is USPS employees do not receive taxpayer funded retirements - they are part employee funded and part of it is the benefits package they were offered when they hired on, which also is not taxpayer funded. There is no golden parachute type of retirement as many seem to believe.
When they keep getting bailed out its tax payer funded.
“When they keep getting bailed out its tax payer funded.”
Do you want to be informed and know the facts, or do you want to spread falsehoods?
The fact is the U.S.P.S. operates in the black MOST of the time and they do it through the sale of a product that no one is holding a gun to anyone’s head to purchase. Occasionally they are in the red, and they do go to Congress for funding in order to purchase multimillion-dollar equipment,etc. [BTW, this equipment processes your mail whether you use USPS, UPS, or FedEx]. However, the next year, when they are in the black once again, the money is paid back to Congress, so no loss to the taxpayer there.
Regarding the retirement accounts — if Congress takes money from private accounts that people have paid into without any taxpayer funding for 20 or 30 years — then that money has to be paid back. If you want to call it a taxpayer bailout, I can’t stop you, I just think you should know the facts as they are and not the facts that have been spun.
More falsehoods to spread
Post Office Loses $3.5 Billion as 2011 Cash Crunch Looms
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/08/05/post-office-loses-3-5-billion-as-2011-cash-crunch-looms/
80% of post offices losing money
http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20101010/DEPARTMENTS02/10100307/1029/FACILITIES02
Post Office reports loss, may cut Saturday service
http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/16/news/companies/US_postal_service/
The first step to fixing a problem is to admit there is a problem. There is no reason it should be losing money, but it does. The Post Office loses money because it is poorly managed and is forced to deal with unionized labor.
Is there anything a union can’t kill?
[Sorry this is so long, but I’m working and wanted to post my thoughts while taking a break.]
You may have some points there regarding other problems within the USPS. I apologize for not reading the articles you posted, but I don’t have a lot of time to read and comment on them right now as I’m self-employed and only get paid if I produce.
But I thought we were talking about whether or not tax payers were funding USPS retirements - which they are not. Now you want to talk about problems within the USPS and you appear to be diverting me to discuss another subject :).
That’s okay, but I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that if Congress has robbed the personal/private investments of USPS employees in order to dole that out, we should be suspicious.
It seems to me they’re putting forth a lot of energy and effort at getting folks angry at postal employees and not at the jerks who have robbed them. Does that sound like a familiar tactic to you?
We should not accept any propaganda they feed us about any govt entity, including all the news we hear about how broke the USPS is. Keep in mind we’ve been hearing that for decades, yet nothing changes. We should be looking at it as any other govt propaganda instead of repeating it until it becomes the truth to the masses - such as harping on taxpayer bailouts for USPS employees, etc.
As for the unions, they’re poison and I despise them. And they are another reason for the USPS reporting being “in the red.”
Whenever a contract comes up [such as this year] all of a sudden the USPS is operating in the red. But then the “negotiations” take place and smoke and mirrors are used with great skill by all parties involved. They scratch each others’ backs. In other words, it’s all propaganda and many fall for it - even on FR.
The unions operate to:
Legitimize thugs
Make millionaires of thugs
Provide funding for the election of thugs — who then prop up the thugs
- and around we go!
Good news is unions are losing membership by the droves and the USPS is losing skilled workers to private businesses and to retirement [I’m speaking of the workers who keep the multimillion-dollar computerized machinery running].
But the bad news is [my opinion] that eventually employees will have their checks garnished and given to the unions - and the skilled workers will have been run off so that all the jokes about nothing but idiots working there may finally be true - and they’ll be paid a “living wage” of course.
Also, for reasons of my own, I don’t believe Congress will allow their cash cow to privatize. I do believe they have something in mind to replace it with and this would be what the taxpayer would be forced to support - a mail tax if you will. I believe that may be where the propaganda is headed, and folks are asking for it because they’re falling for it. Again.
What was the starting point for that increase? 700% of 0 is 0.
If you’ve got a tax-free monopoly on a core infrastructure, an $8B loss is just incompetence.
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