Red ink for post office: $8.5B lost last year

Virginian-Pilot ^ | Nov. 12, 2010 | RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

[Mr. Lucky]

If postal service employees are unhappy with their contributions to the civil service retirement program, they should petition the government to cut them loose to compete in the private marketplace.

[muawiyah]

A number of them did ~ years ago ~ and went to Seattle to found United Parcel Service.

Why is it you imagine the employees are the ones standing in the way of privatization?

[Mr. Lucky]

...because the private express statutes are defended only by postal service employees.

[muawiyah]

The private express statutes are defended by the American banking and credit card industries. What you've forgotten is that the statutes also have a legislated exception that provides that the clearing house banks need not send their "letters" (checks) through the mail.

Remember, there's no power in government more powerful than that of an exception to the law ~ and the banking industry is far more powerful than the USPS.

[Mr. Lucky]

Ummm, if banks aren’t required to send their checks through the mails, why would the banks want private competition with First Class Mail outlawed?

[muawiyah]

Banks don't send their checks through the mail ~ when they "clear" them. There are some other exceptions.

They use private carriers now. There are lots of private carriers.

The monopoly is not on First-Class Mail but on "letters".

[Mr. Lucky]

Actually, banks clear their checks electronically (and UPS was founded by two teenage boys in 1907).

The notion that private express statutes prohibiting private competition for delivery of letters are somehow maintained at the insistence of privately owned banks is just a little far fetched.

[muawiyah]

The detail truth is trimmer. UPS was a furniture delivery company. The former postal headquarters people BOUGHT IT and turned it into a package delivery company they’d designed and which Congress refused to support.

[muawiyah]

You only think everything to do with the clearing house banks is done electronically. Things move, and they move outside the mail. Those are "the letters" excepted by statute.

Backup tapes being sent to underground storage facilities in Kansas are "letters".

Of course the banking industry supports the continuation of the statutes.

[Mr. Lucky]

By the Post Office’s explanation, apparently, Wells-Fargo is responsible for Wells-Fargo being forced out of the private letter delivery business.

[SgtHooper]

Constitution, Article 1, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power...
.
.
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
.
.

Good luck on getting Congress to give up this one or to even allow competition.

[muawiyah]

There are people here who have no idea that the Congress is charged by the Constitution with establishing post offices and post roads.

The USPS doesn't create itself and its legislative basis for existence. That job was done by a document that begins "We the People.....".

[SgtHooper]

Agreed, but “we the people” need to drive Congress to amend the Constitution. I think we agree on this, but an enormous barrier to getting this one turned around at least insofar as amending the Constitution. Perhaps it is easier to restrict the funding to drive out the union.