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Broke U.S. Postal Service paying $2M for conference, golf, party
Washington Times ^ | 2/19/13 | Cheryl K. Chumley

Posted on 03/18/2013 2:55:15 AM PDT by Libloather

Four hundred U.S. Postal Service executives are heading to San Francisco next month for workshops, meetings — and a dance party.

And a golf tournament. And a dinner event.

That’s according to a report by KTVU, which found 400 USPS staffers, including the postmaster general, are set to attend the four-day National Postal Forum in March at the Moscone Center in California.

The trip is expected to cost the flailing agency — which is pushing to stop Saturday letter delivery due to revenue issues — more than $2 million, KTVU reports. An estimated $220,000 is going to spent on exhibit space, according to the news agency.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: conference; golf; party; postal
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To: lucky american

Do not return to sender. Send the Harry Reid. He enjoys receiving all kinds of mail.


41 posted on 03/18/2013 5:34:45 AM PDT by Vehmgericht
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To: Libloather

Golf? Is Barry invited?


42 posted on 03/18/2013 5:52:17 AM PDT by Arrowhead1952 (For Jay Carney - I heard your birth certificate is an apology from the condom factory.)
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To: Libloather

Funny. I’ve been seeing all these commercials lately asking me to contact Congress to “tell them to keep Saturday delivery”. They could eliminate Tuesday and Thursday delivery as well as far as I’m concerned.


43 posted on 03/18/2013 5:53:56 AM PDT by woweeitsme
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To: newnhdad

Newnhdad: You must have been pretty far down the food chain if you had to pay for your chain motel and meals at local dives. People in the Jeff Neely class don’t even have to pay for their rumba dancing lessons. Of course these meet-ups are essential because they provide an opportunity to “get familiar with the latest and greatest innovations and discuss the future with actual people that are most familiar with the industry.” Meetings like this probably explain why the USPS is so efficient and innovative.


44 posted on 03/18/2013 5:57:15 AM PDT by Vehmgericht
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To: vet7279

What’s wrong with holding a conference via the internet? They can sit at their desks and “talk”.


45 posted on 03/18/2013 6:07:12 AM PDT by tillacum
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To: Libloather

It is a government agency, despite the legal fiction that it is not. It is run by ruling elite that thinks that it deserves special privileges while it looks down its nose at the ordinary people.


46 posted on 03/18/2013 6:27:22 AM PDT by I want the USA back
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To: Dr. Sivana
Hmm ~ no defined benefit pensions for the retirees from the only federal government agency to actually set aside funds FOR those defined benefit pensions?

Sounds like yet another trick to divert postage revenues from postal operations over to subsidizing the department of education, or some other leech ridden bedbug of a federal agency.

47 posted on 03/18/2013 6:27:23 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Vehmgericht

They actually are, but most of what they do is behind the scenes and stifled by how they are able to do business. The legacy costs are what is killing them.
They have been on the cutting edge on barcode technology, including smartcodes and optical character recognition, handwriting recognition, streamlining and workforce optimization. Just about everything they do is geared towards eliminating as many people handling a piece of mail as possible but union demands and forced inefficiencies are suppressing innovations.

I believe if they were relieved of their union entanglements and allowed to compete with a more private sector mentality, they would offer a robust business model. Mail might be more expensive for the larger mailers, but they would be more market friendly.

A lot of the inefficiency that we see are due to constraints placed on them by Congress (because the fed government would be footing the bill otherwise)and more importantly, the unions.


48 posted on 03/18/2013 6:27:37 AM PDT by newnhdad (Our new motto: USA, it was fun while it lasted.)
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To: Libloather

The postal service is a vital part of commerce. Consider how much sorting, transfer and transportation is needed to pick up that one birthday card and take it across the country (or the world) and deliver it within a few days.

Compare that to a cab ride or any other delivery service - if there were no USPS. The cost of a stamp in the private sector would approach $2 per letter.

Certainly, improvements are needed in management of resources and cost containment - but this is a Government subsidized enterprise. No profit motive = no incentive. No surprise.


49 posted on 03/18/2013 6:35:27 AM PDT by sodpoodle (Life is prickly - carry tweezers.)
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To: bert

The Postal Forum charges fees to attend. http://www.npf.org/pdfs/RegForm.pdf ~ downloadable ~ if you want to attend ~ shows $900 is the fee. Then you can also rent a hotel room ~ be sure to do that early ‘cause there’s never enough. This center has 7,000 parking spaces and it is anticipated the Postal Forum will use all of them ~ there’s a fee you get to pay for that. Adding in the advertising and additional fees on exhibitors, this thing could easily top $5 million ~ and the only USPS cost is to provide the computer based registration and ID system for attendees and send a couple of dozen ‘executives’ to the show. The rest are local postal people sidetracked for a couple of days to check IDs, set up presentation sites, etc.


50 posted on 03/18/2013 6:38:14 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Libloather

Well hell yeah they can afford this after they gutted our rural P.O.s forcing experienced postmasters into retirement and manning offices with know-nothing morons as clerks. Not to mention slashing hours in half so they are all closed when working people get off. Yes they really did a number on us glad the ones who got to keep the high paying job have no problem rewarding themselves on the savings.


51 posted on 03/18/2013 6:38:36 AM PDT by Gasshog (Welcome to the United States of Stupidos!)
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To: lucky american
"Junk mail is just that. Junk."

~~~~~~~~

When I complained to a postmaster about "junk mail", the reply was:

"We call that, 'REVENUE'"..."

Somewhere in there lies a problem...

52 posted on 03/18/2013 6:44:58 AM PDT by TXnMA ("Allah": Satan's current alias... "Barack": Allah's current ally...)
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To: I want the USA back

Certainly never noticed that ~ it does have too many alcoholics at the top ~ typical of so terribly many industries, but in general it is recognized that the American people OWN USPS and that none of them are any more deserving of favor than anyone else ~ hence the kvetching all the time. Some people want to think of themselves as exclusive owners.


53 posted on 03/18/2013 6:53:59 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Gasshog

About 90% of the rural post offices serve no purpose that a rural letter carrier can’t serve. Best to close 28,000 of them as soon as possible.


54 posted on 03/18/2013 6:55:02 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: sodpoodle
Currently mail service in the USA is not government subsidized. In fact, 100% of the employee retirement funds are on loan to the government, and the USPS pays an extra $5 billion per year out of postage revenues to the government for nothing at all ~ just a sort of tribute folks who use the mail owe Obama and Congress.

If USPS could eliminate the problems inherent in being the biggest subsidizer of the US government, your mail service would probably change.

55 posted on 03/18/2013 6:58:16 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Libloather

Anyone remember when the PO sent hundreds of people to an all expense paid vacation to the Olympics?

Maybe one day, these POSs will be held accountable for these debilitating financial decisions.


56 posted on 03/18/2013 7:07:23 AM PDT by Cowgirl of Justice
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To: muawiyah

WOW!!! Thanks for that information.

So why are we criticizing the USPS??? Another reason the USPS should be privatized and removed from the Government’s theivery and tricky bookkeeping.

Union members are probably as ignorant as I;)


57 posted on 03/18/2013 7:30:33 AM PDT by sodpoodle (Life is prickly - carry tweezers.)
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To: muawiyah
Hmm ~ no defined benefit pensions for the retirees from the only federal government agency to actually set aside funds FOR those defined benefit pensions?

Yup. And the reason is simple, numerous businesses and state governments have been badly burned with defined benefits, only to get burned by later economic conditions, including investments that did not earn the optimistic rates of return assumed.

Note I said only for new hires. The folks who paid in would get what they were promised.

To take one of the closer approximations of the catastrophe defined benefits can cause to a shrinking business,Western Union went through very rocky financial times due to the decline in use of its primary products (telegrams), but a bunch of telegram operators to provide for in their retirement.

I know that USPS's pension is better funded, but long term, an undefined retirement benefit based on a fund consisting of employee's contributions is the the safer bet for successful operations. I do not see how an employee owned fund would be diverted to other gov ops, unless Obama or a similar successor decides to do it by fiat, which he could do with ANY benefit.
58 posted on 03/18/2013 7:48:57 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana (HRC:"Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping,"-NKorea)
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To: Libloather

The muslims killed the post, internationally, with 9.11 and the anthrax attacks.

Just another reason for total eradication.


59 posted on 03/18/2013 7:50:25 AM PDT by Hardraade (http://junipersec.wordpress.com (Vendetta))
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To: muawiyah
Every one of them has a government credit card to charge their fees to and back to the taxpayer.
60 posted on 03/18/2013 7:56:28 AM PDT by bdfromlv (Leavenworth hard time)
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