Postal Waste
Stamp Prices Up Amid Postal Budget Bloat
W A S H I N G T O N, April 4 — Government auditors have just placed the U.S. Postal Service on its "high-risk" list, meaning that among government departments, they are most susceptible to waste, fraud and abuse.
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:Ut6qUKvv2ZgC:abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/GoodMorningAmerica/GMA010404Postal_waste.html+Deborah+Willhite&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Over the past four years, government auditors have discovered that more than $1.4 billion have been wasted because of mismanagement, abuse and fraud. While the service was raising rates for first-class mail, they discovered, some managers were treating themselves to a variety of perks and bloated benefits.
The USPS Office of Inspector General found that some managers had misused chauffeur-driven cars, hundreds of times, for their personal use.
The Postal Service has not revealed the names of the managers misusing chauffeur-driven cars. Some of them have gone to other positions, but to Willhite's knowledge, none had been fired.
Monuments to Waste
Postal service managers have also received unusually large relocation packages in some cases.
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.
Outrageous, yet not surprising.
How sad that 500 postal workers in Arkansas were fired so that a lobbyist could blame one Senator while "creating" 500 new jobs in another state to credit another Senator.
Misusing chauffered vehicles still doesn't add up to $1,400,000,000!
I think the article you copied is referring to a presumption by the Postal OIG that it was possible to obtain greater efficiencies by changing various postal operations - not that there was that much waste, fraud and abuse going on.
Leastwise the OIG has admitted as much and the folks who prepared the studies claim they never used those words anyway.
Here's a choice for you - it's always been there - would you rather have reliable postal service, the fastest possible postal service, or the cheapest possible postal service?
The Postal Service OIG assumes that you want the cheapest possible postal service. "Fast" and "reliable" are words which are not in their lexicon! But if USPS listens to the OIG and starts "saving" that $1.4 billion, you are going to see your First-Class mail taken off of airplanes and put on trucks.