Scandal: Postal Exec Caught Using USPS Budget to Unseat GOP Senator [Tim Hutchinson]

Townhall.com ^ | Nov 3, 2002 | Sean Rushton/Mark Carpenter

[The Raven]

Washington, D.C.) -- The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today reacted with outrage to reports that a U.S. Postal Service (USPS) executive has been forced to resign amidst allegations that she attempted to manipulate postal service resources to punish a candidate for the U.S. Senate who had been critical of the mismanaged government mail system.

"There has long been much to criticize at the USPS, from financial losses and taxpayer subsidies to regular price increases amidst poor service and low productivity," CCAGW Vice President Leslie Paige said. "But this is a new level of corruption and mismanagement. Taxpayers and their representatives in Congress should be up in arms."

USPS Senior Vice President Deborah Willhite resigned abruptly Friday amid allegations she used the federal mail budget to hurt the re-election chances of Arkansas Republican Sen. Tim Hutchinson. According to U.S. News and World Report, Willhite, the postal service's top lobbyist, pushed to have the budget of Arkansas post offices cut--and Hutchinson blamed. The dollars were to be transferred to Georgia's post offices, allowing supporters there to credit Democratic Sen. Max Cleland. The outcome of the Arkansas and Georgia races could tip the balance of power in the Senate.

"Since this spring, CCAGW has been calling for a complete and public audit of USPS books to root out the millions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse we know exists," Paige continued. "We have reiterated that call today with letters to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of both the House Committee on Government Reform and Senate Governmental Affairs. This latest scandal confirms that not only do postal officials lose, misspend and abuse the postal budget with impunity, they may also be using their scarce resources to manipulate elections, which is clearly prohibited by the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act. It's time for independent third party to get to the bottom of where all our money is going."

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation's largest (one million members and supporters) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

[kcvl]

It is NOT "my list" it happens to be "the list" of CITIZENS AGAINST GOVERNMENT WASTE. What do you have against THAT?! They don't just pick on the Postal Service they do exactly what they say...CITIZENS AGAINST GOVERNMENT WASTE! That is a bad thing, to you?!

[muawiyah]

Concerning that statment to the effect that "Fat Cat Executive Bonuses" - represents the fact that the Postal Service's own Inspector General confirms that the managers responsible for allowing the Postal Service to amass billions of dollars of debt, paid themselves $805 million in "performance" bonuses between 1998 and 2000...."

There is a linkage discontinuity here. The USPS Board of Governors, appointed by the President of the United States, amassed billions of dollars in debt. None of the bureaucrats and managers at the USPS has authority to amass debt!

As far as "performance" bonuses are concerned, this system replaced a pay system linked primarily to inflation and increases in cost of living. If it had not have been, the pay for the affected employees owuld have been much higher. In reality, this "performance" bonus system was used to rip off the supervisors and technicians!

[JoeSixPack1]

Those "independant truckers" must lease back their trucks to the trucking companies who are "AWARDED" mail contracts.

And trucking companies must provide an equipment list before those contracts are awarded. So by the time an independant trucker gets hired on to haul mail, he's making minimal profit but on a continual basis. USPS rarely brokers loads directly to independents. But they do that too!

PS: air mail usually means a fast truck when stateside. But we're not supposed to tell. :-)

[muawiyah]

Sometimes the "old" postal lobby is left open until the public adjusts itself to the "new" posal lobby in a new building.

If you will, go and demand that the "old" lobby be closed immediately so that the savings can be realized.

Really make a big stink about this, please!

[kcvl]

Well, how about NO ONE IN THE GOVERNMENT "RIPPING OFF" ANYONE?! But let's not touch THAT golden egg! Screw the taxpayers...

If they want to send a Hillary Clinton clone all over the world to "promote" the Postal Service, YES, I have a problem with THAT!!!

[muawiyah]

It's a phony list. If you check back through the sources, you will find this group is actually operated by a competing company.

[kcvl]

It's a little late for that! The people who made the "stink" are the ones who WANTED the OLD POST OFFICE! You can't lead "the elites" to do anything they don't want to do. Not if they OWN THE TOWN! Not even for the government postal service!

[kcvl]

Are YOU trying to tell me that the postal service doesn't waste money? Yeah, RIGHT! lol!

[muawiyah]

I have absolutely no problem with them getting rid of Willhite. However, I do have a problem with Trent Lott and Dennis Hastert not having an interest in getting rid of all the rest of the Democrats holding down ALL of the management positions at USPS.

I'd like to see Willhite as a "first" rather than as an "only". Your Citizens against, etc. buddies would prefer to see their Democratic Party friends continue running USPS.

[kcvl]

Testimony given in April by the U.S. Postal Service’s Inspector General to the House Government Reform Committee highlighted $500 million spent on a failed mail automation project. The agency based the investment on flawed projections the system would achieve a 5% return on investment. The actual return was a counterproductive negative 9%. Of the failed investment Merritt said, “No private sector enterprise would ever consider investing capital for a 20-year (5%) return on investment. Given the magnitude of the investment, this is clearly a problem systemic in nature. If this is the criterion for productivity enhancing investments, it is no wonder the agency has only cumulatively increased productivity 11% during the past 30 years.

The Inspector General’s testimony also chronicled an estimated $1.4 billion in Postal waste, fraud and mismanagement including, such well-publicized incidences as; the two senior executives who received $250,000 in relocation benefits for moving less than 50 miles and the 500 cases of executives commandeering chauffeured cars for personal use. Merritt stated, “Raising rates in order to cover over a billion dollars of waste, fraud and mismanagement is extremely poor public policy.

[muawiyah]

No doubt there's some waste in USPS. On the other hand, the Postal OIG is a big time Democratic Party activist. She was part of that group of radical feminists put in charge of Department of Defense by the Clintonistas. She then was appointed to the postal position by a USPS Board of Governors stacked with Clintonista appointees. Do you think her real agenda has anything to do with waste, fraud and abuse?

I'd keep an eye on her as well!

Frankly, I'm disgusted with Freepers coming in here with nothing better than criticisms of the USPS which have been prepared by Democrats acting under the color of the Postal OIG or this phony "Citizens Against...", aka UPS, aka Teamsters Union.

[kcvl]

This increase is the result of an unusual 'negotiated' settlement of a rate case involving the USPS and 56 of the 63 official stakeholders. However, it is one of Washington's worst kept secrets that many of the parties accepted this rate hike for fear of having even more severe increases imposed upon them in the near future. Though the rate commission stated today that this expedited settlement does not set a precedent for future cases, the public can expect the postal service to be back with more demands before the year is out and they will undoubtedly petition to have that rate case rushed through as well. These are the desperate tactics of a failing, government-backed monopoly.

"The Postal Rate Commission is vested with only the weakest authority to protect ratepayers from the predations of this mismanaged and unaccountable bureaucracy, though several of its commissioners and its Office of Consumer Advocate deserve credit for exposing some of the postal service's fiscal shenanigans. Commissioner Ruth Goldway today made clear that this rate hike is a stop gap measure and that the postal service is plagued with serious systemic problems that call for public policy action in Congress. In the short run, measures should be instituted by Congress, including (but not limited) to: a hard hiring freeze; the elimination of the postal service's advertising budget???; a full accounting of and immediate stoppage of all its e-commerce activities; a complete inventory of all its properties and a thorough review of all its construction expenditures; and the elimination of lump sum payments of any kind for postal managers and supervisors. In the long run, the postal service must be demonopolized and reborn as a purely private sector enterprise."

[The Wizard]

pictures of a whore

[muawiyah]

Glad you brought up the Office of the Commission. Now there's a scandal in and of itself. Presumably the Ooci should be a person well versed in USPS structures and operations so that he or she would not be "tricked".

Well, the Postal Rate Commission (PRC) regularly goes out and hires someone well-versed in ECONOMICS with the requisite degrees in Economics for this particular job. No understanding or experience with USPS is required.

This leads to institutional weakness at the PRC. That's why USPS rate case managers are able to fool the PRC every single time.

Someday the PRC will get smart and hire somebody who knows what the post office really does and how it is managed. But I wouldn't expect it any time soon!

[kcvl]

NANCY MILLER: We've got about 20,000 people that are sending us Internet payments. We also have about 10% of our customers who are on automatic debit. It really has affected the checks coming in in the mail.

LEE HOCHBERG: But critics say the economy and e-mail are only aggravating what's really a much deeper problem with the Postal Service.

RICK MERRITT, Postal Watch: Here we have an organization that is massively bloated, has institutionalized, systemic problems relative to waste, fraud, mismanagement, and can't even break even when it has a monopoly.

LEE HOCHBERG: Rick Merritt heads the Florida-based citizens' group Postal Watch. Its web page blasts the Postal Service for increasing productivity only 11% in 30 years, far below private sector companies. It points to recent reports from the General Accounting Office and the Postal Service's own Inspector General outlining $1.4 billion of agency waste, fraud, and abuse over the last four years.

RICK MERRITT: This reads like Harvard Business School's guide of what not to do when you're trying to run a business.

The Postal Service has a workforce of more than 800,000. Labor costs eat up 76% of revenues, far more than at competing UPS or Federal Express.



LEE HOCHBERG: The agency says it ma $9 million last year on postal service product lines, things life Looney Toons key chains and pens; sweatshirts and bike team fanny packs. And it hopes to begin profiting from the e-mail business. Already it offers stamps and bill payments online through its web site, and recently it introduced a new electronic postmark that marks a verifiable time and date on e-mail messages.

SPOKESMAN: U.S.P.S. Electronic postmarks bring the trust, security, and power of the Postal Service's
brand to the field of electronic communications.

LEE HOCHBERG: But its detractors urge the post office to stop dabbling in the internet and focus on its core goal, delivering traditional mail.

RICK MERRITT: What in the world makes us thank that they can go out and compete with some dot-com company that's got a workforce that's willing to sleep under their desk 24 hours a day to program? They won't be successful at it any more than they had been successful at their previous ones.

[Thebaddog]

I want fast, cheap and reliable first class mail. If it were privatized, the service could be managed a lot like the telecos. It would also be better if it were a fair fight bcause these mopes misuse their monopoly power, in my opinion. What a suprise.

[muawiyah]

Oh, yes, almost forgot to criticise Senator Hutchinson. He's been kissing everybody's a$$ over there at L'Enfant for years. Little good it did him when it came time to put the screws to Arkansas.

These guys in the Senate and the House have got to understand that the Democrats never stopped playing hardball with the USPS. All the management positions are stacked with hard-core Democrats. Republicans are not welcome there! Instead of going after just Willhite, Hutchinson should have been going after "the system" that led to someone like that being so acceptable in such a critical government agency.

[kcvl]

“The U.S. Postal Service tries to give the impression that it is run like a business, but anyone who looks beyond the rhetoric can clearly see that it is just another bloated government bureaucracy,” said NTU Deputy Press Secretary and Policy Analyst Jerry Terry. “Although the U.S. Postal Service has begun making positive changes, the only way to truly eliminate the typical government inefficiency and waste found in the Postal Service is to get the government out of the mail delivery business. Even the Postal Service has acknowledged this fact by signing an agreement to have a private company transport some mail.”

According to the U.S. Postal Service, its recent partnership with FedEx will save about $1 billion in air transportation costs over the next several years. This is in spite of the fact that, unlike the Postal Service, FedEx must pay taxes and other fees imposed on a private company while still making a profit.

“A private company that is subject to competition and that is accountable to its shareholders must be as efficient as possible to survive,” observed Terry. “Unfortunately, the Postal Service, with its government-imposed monopoly on First Class mail delivery, has no competition and is only accountable to big-spending politicians and powerful labor unions.”

[muawiyah]

Brother Terry is not a very good source of information. The USPS, as did the Post Office Department before it, contracts private transportation for ALL long haul mail.

Come up with better sources - people who are believable, who know something about the business, and not just paid flaks.

[wewillnotfail]

plus a candidate who has been in a secure seat so long he forgot how to campaign and the dem goveror candidate's coatails.