USPS needs to get out of sponsor game and back into public service

Union Leader ^ | July 28 2002 | Roger Simon

[2Trievers]

LAST I heard, the United States Postal Service was in terrible trouble.

It lost $1.7 billion last year before Sept. 11. It lost $281 million last quarter and will probably lose $1.8 billion this year.

You can pick your reasons for this: the rise of e-mail, waste, inefficiency, gross mismanagement, a bloated labor force, political interference (making it very difficult to close a local post office even though 26,000 of the 40,000 local post offices lose money), the economic downturn, the anthrax attacks or the fact that Britney Spears is not yet on a stamp.

Government investigators think they know one reason, however: Last year, a federal audit indicated that the Postal Service had wasted more than $1.4 billion over the last fours years due to "mismanagement, abuse and fraud."

The Postal Service's inspector general found, for instance, "that some managers had misused chauffeur-driven cars, hundreds of times, for their personal use."

And right there you will find what is wrong with the Postal Service: The real issue is not whether some managers "misused" their chauffeur-driven cars, the real issue is why anybody working for the Postal Service should have a chauffeur-driven car in the first place.

I can tell you with certainty one thing they are not using these cars for: They are not using them to deliver the mail.

Anybody who gets mail in these United States, which is everybody, has noticed how lousy the Postal Service currently is.

Unless you work for the Postal Service, that is. In which case, you think it is just swell. Here is another example as revealed by the Postal Service's inspector general and as reported by ABC News:

"When Richard Porras, the former chief financial officer of the Postal Service, moved from Fairfax, Va., to Vienna, Va. — a distance of 15 miles — he was given $142,000. On top of that, he received $25,000 for miscellaneous expenses.

"Porras has since retired, but he told ABC News by telephone that the expenses were approved."

Of course they were approved! Why shouldn't the Postal Service lavish limousines and cash on its own managers? All it has to do is raise postal rates to pay for it, which it did in April, upping the cost of mailing a first class letter to 37 cents from 34 cents.

In exchange for this increase, Postmaster General John Potter promised there will not be another rate increase until at least 2004, an entire 18 months!

But why am I thinking about all this now? Because recently I saw a picture of Lance Armstrong as he competed in the Tour de France, this big French bicycle race.

His uniform was plastered with the logos of the United States Postal Service. And, as it turns out, the Postal Service sponsors Armstrong's team.

Let us put aside the question of whether a monopoly like the Postal Service needs such advertising and instead ask whether, at this time of rising stamp prices and falling revenues, the Postal Service can really afford such luxuries.

Answer: We don't know, because the Postal Service refuses to tell us how much it spends on the bicycle team.

David Plotz of Slate magazine tried to find out, but he was told by Postal Service spokeswoman Monica Hand that this was "proprietary information."

In other words, taxpayers have no right to know.

According to the Dallas Morning News, however, the Postal Service has committed $25 million to the team "for a three-year contract that expires in 2004."

To the Postal Service, $25 million is nothing. To you and me, it is real money.

And as much as I admire Lance Armstrong, had the Postal Service used that $25 million to hire a bunch of people to deliver the mail on bicycles, it might benefit the citizens of this country much more.

But that is not my big concern. My big concern is this: If we squander money on bicycle races, will there be enough left over for those chauffeur-driven limousines?

Tough times demand tough choices.

Roger Simon is a political corespondent for U.S. News and World Report.

[PolishProud]

A million here a million there, pretty soon we're talking about real money.

[phalynx]

This is clearly a corporate scandal. We need to go after the houses of those at the top.

[Dialup Llama]

>David Plotz of Slate magazine tried to find out, but he was told by Postal Service spokeswoman Monica Hand that this was "proprietary information."

Competing postal delivery companies might use that financial data to give themselves a business advantage.

[Thebaddog]

The larger point the writer made is that USPS is a monopoly and need not advertise. We can use alternate routes of message delivery but not another post office. It truly is a vanity that those mopes advertise and it's also slimey to buy disney toys at the post office.

[Dialup Llama]

Bet she gets kidded about her name alot.

[2Trievers]

I wish it were so easy for them to fall like a "house of cards. &;-)