Posted on 04/27/2012 1:47:30 PM PDT by IBD editorial writer
Postal Service: This week the Senate passed a postal bill that throws billions at the beleaguered monopoly but does nothing to fix it. If Congress can't even manage to get this reform right, the country is doomed.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Now it is up to us to be mature adults and change what we can and accept the impending doom otherwise.
Why on earth should any government agency need to advertise their services? Do we really need a federal agency to deliver junk mail and birthday cards?
The “fix” is to close down the whole operation in and orderly and efficient manner.
The solution is to quit reading, driving and playing the radio.
Heartless repubublicans trying to deprive the elderly of their beloved direct mail adverstising!
USPS is already the world's least expensive postal operator.
Now, first, to correctly inform everyone, IBD, much like the US Senate imagines that USPS consists mostly of thousands of small post offices ~ which it doesn't.
Worse, the Senate imagines those little post offices are the most important part ~ which they aren't.
The deal is the folks who SEND MAIL pay all the costs. The recipients get their service for free.
Those little post offices serve mostly as delivery units ~ EXPENSIVE delivery units in fact ~ fully manned with a postmaster and a relief clerk, or maybe even up to 5 clerks. There are about 28,000 small post offices, stations and branch post offices that are NOT NEEDED.
3,000 small facilities devoted solely to rural route service can handle all the delivery service presently provided by those 28,000 useless buildings with their 80,000 (app) unneeded employees.
With the modern mail sorting/reading equipment we have available today none of the people served by those 28,000 useless facilities will even need to change their addresses!
They can can be converted over to rural route delivery effortlessly and without disruption to their rural lives.
Next, get rid of door delivery. Why should an elite core of impudent snobs get delivery to the door when they should get it at the curb like the vast majority of Americans.
This is the US Senate which is owned and operated by Mormons ~ it’s one of Romney’s toadies trying to steal your advertisements.
And of course the senate couldn’t vote to end Saturday delivery which is the easiest and most cost saving fix.
How hard could it be to let the Post Office quit delivering on Saturdays? If the Congress had done this 6 years ago when the Post Office first asked for it, the problem with PO closures would have gone away....but NO, the Senate votes to STUDY the feasability of no Saturday delivery for another 2 years.
The biggest problem with the Postal Service is that it is so heavily regulated by the Congress!!
Good points on the useless postoffices, and alas Senate bill just digs the hole deeper by forbidding the USPS from doing what they need to do there.
Whatever operational changes are needed, and I am sure there are many in this internet age, this is the way to go:
“Of course, what the Postal Service needs isn’t just a little more freedom to cut costs, but wholesale privatization.”
Privatization and free the USPS from the pension burdens via some kind of buyout would work.
Sen Rand Paul(R KY) put a rider on the bill which allows private mail boxes to receive other than USPS mail and packages. When this gets to the House I hope that revision is kept in.
The problem the Senate had was an uncovered $5 billion cost in the general ledger accounts and it had to be covered with something.
Else they'd had a bigger deficit than they had said they would have.
So, without thinking they tapped USPS For the $5 billion, then justified it on the basis that this money would pay for medical insurance payments for retirees in 75 years!~ In short this was a retiree health care benefit for retirees NOT YET BORN!
They actually thought no one would notice, and next thing you know we had the Great Obama Recession, and USPS Didn't have an extra $5 billion to toss down the Congressional rathole.
Cutting USPS Loose from current retirement payments would probably cause more trouble than you can possibly imagine. I sure wouldn't work for those batardes without a guaranteed pension.
There are, I Suppose, people who don't care ~like Doufous Rand.
There are, I Suppose, people who don't care ~like Doufous Rand.
Are you speaking English? I have no idea what you are saying.
If the USPS can only operate in the red, shut it down. It’s yet another textbook example of public sector failure.
If Congress wasn't tapping it for that $5 billion per year they'd be in the black.
USPS was set up to run on postage ~ but Congress is stealing the postage!
Um, no, the USPS is running in the red. They said themselves that they were $10.5 billion in the red for 2011. After correcting for the $5 billion pension payment, they are still more than five billion in the hole.
USPS are insolvent, regardless of the pension payments.
The Postal Reorganization Act requires the Postal Rate Commission to consider only lawful postal costs in its determination of what postage rates may be and they didn't allow USPS To claim that cost.
They've been paying the $5 billion since FY 2007 ~ and it has been exceedingly destructive of sound financial management.
At the same time, as you saw in the Senate vote, Congress will not allow USPS to shed unnecessary operating costs.
It may well be time to start burning down useless post offices ~ since the law does allow USPS to not reopen a post office that burns down.
Regarding insolvency, they continue to be a government agency ~ and even if 'Bailed Out' they'd still run a smaller deficit than Commerce, State, Defense, Energy, Education, Human Resources, .........
USPS is obsolete. Also, I don’t care if the other Departments run larger deficits—it doesn’t change the fact that USPS is running in the red!
Time for USPS to be eliminated and so-called “First Class” mail delivery to be opened up to the private sector.
I can tell you that as a business owner I *never* trust critical documents to the USPS. I’ve never had a Fedex failure, but I have had too many thefts, delivery failures, etc. with USPS to count.
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