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Guest Post: The Great Postal Fraud
Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform
The Great Postal Fraud
“One of the things the government can’t do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt.” – Lee Iaccoca
You may have heard that the U.S. Post Office lost $16 BILLION last year. You may also have heard that Congress snuck a requirement into a bill that had nothing to do with the Post Office, mandating that they must deliver on Saturdays, even though eliminating Saturday delivery would save the Post Office $2 BILLION per year. Congress evidently can’t read a financial statement or interpret a chart. I’m sure the trends detailed on this chart will reverse themselves shortly.
While reading an editorial today supporting the Post Office in its efforts to save money by eliminating Saturday delivery I saw another MASSIVE LIE perpetuated by the MSM and the government.
Here is the Orwellian statement:
“The U.S. Postal Service is an independent governmental agency that doesn’t take taxpayer funds.”
This is complete and utter bullshit. This statement also described Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac until 2008. They were just little old independent government agencies helping out the housing market – until the shit hit the fan!!! Then they became albatrosses around the necks of the American taxpayer. You own them now. They have lost $200 billion of your tax dollars, and will lose billions more before all is said and done.
You can access the U.S. Post Office financial statements online. Here is their December 2012 report:
http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/financial-conditions-results-reports/fy2013-q1.pdf
The honesty of the people writing this report is refreshing. They essentially admit they are BANKRUPT and unable to meet their financial obligations. In other words, a truly INDEPENDENT entity admitting they can no longer operate. How is this for honesty:
“The Postal Service continues to suffer from a severe lack of liquidity. The Postal Service held total cash of $2.9 billion and $2.3 billion as of December 31, and September 30, 2012, respectively, and had no remaining borrowing capacity on its $15 billion debt facility (See Note 3, Debt, for additional information). The increase in cash balances for the quarter is largely attributable to the seasonal impact of holiday mailings, along with additional revenue resulting from this year’s political campaign and elections. Cash balances generally decline during the remainder of the fiscal year, as revenue is not as strong in the remaining quarters. By the end of this fiscal year, the Postal Service projects it will have a liquidity balance that will be less than its average weekly expenses of $1.3 billion. This low level of available cash means that the Postal Service will be unable to make the $5.6 billion legally-mandated prefunding of retiree health benefits due by September 30, 2013. Further, this level of cash could be insufficient to support operations in the event of another significant downturn in the U.S. economy.
Through the three months ended December 31, 2012, the Postal Service has suffered 5 quarters of consecutive net losses and net losses in 14 of the last 16 quarters. The net loss of $1.3 billion for the first quarter of the year included $1.4 billion of expense accrued for the legally-mandated prefunding payment for retiree health benefits. The requirement of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, Public Law 109-435 (P.L. 109-435) to prefund its retiree health benefit obligations, a requirement not shared by other federal agencies or private sector businesses, plus the precipitous drop in mail volume caused by changes in consumers’ uses of mail, have been the two major factors contributing to Postal Service losses since the recession ended in 2009. Without structural change to the Postal Service’s business model, it will continue to be negatively impacted by these factors and, absent legislative change, it anticipates continuing quarterly losses for the remainder of 2013.”
The politicians that are mismanaging this country use governmental accounting fraud to cover-up the fact that the obligations of this bloated pig of an operation are going to be paid by YOU, the taxpayers of the United States. Today, none of the past, current, or future liabilities of this INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENT AGENCY are reflected in the Federal budget projections or the National Debt calculation.
Do YOU want to know how much YOU really owe? Brace yourself.
- In the past six years they have lost $41 BILLION and they have a cumulative deficit of $36 billion. How many INDEPENDENT organizations can run up deficits of $36 billion without going out of business? YOU are on the hook for these accumulated deficits, just like you were on the hook for all of the Fannie and Freddie backed toxic mortgages.
- The Post Office will lose another $10 to $15 billion this fiscal year. You will be on the hook for that too.
- They have $15 billion of debt on their balance sheet, with $9.5 billion payable in the next 9 months. How will this INDEPENDENT government agency that is losing $16 billion per year pay off $9.5 billion? They won’t. The government drones will pass a bill in the middle of the night extending the terms with no cash flow requirements or expectation of repayment. I wonder if I can get a loan like that?
- The really interesting stuff is buried on page 42 of their report. I wonder why it is all the way back there? In addition to their $15 billion of debt, they have another $70.5 BILLION of unfunded future obligations. The two biggest are:
- $33.9 Billion of payments for pension and health benefits for retirees, all due within the next 5 years. It’s not cheap providing gold plated benefits to government workers.
- $25 billion for workers compensation and sick leave payments. Yikes!!! It must be all that stress, because the mail never stops. It keeps coming and coming. It’s almost enough to make someone go postal, or at least file a stress related workers comp claim.
This really sounds like a promising story. Mail volumes continue to plummet. Someone should tell Congress the internet age has arrived. The Post Office has thousands of money losing, unneeded outlets. It has 637,000 employees when it only needs 300,000. Over 70% of Americans favor ending Saturday delivery, so Congress passes a law making that impossible to implement, ensuring $2 billion more losses per year. That’s par for the course. Over 70% of Americans were against passing TARP too. And according to your leaders in Washington, and parroted by the MSM, you are not on the hook for their losses.
It’s beyond laughable, but so is most of what is going on in this tragedy of a country, disguised as a comedy. The truth is that you are on the hook for the $36 billion of accumulated deficits, the $85 billion of debt and contractual obligations, and the annual $16 billion losses they continue to pile up. But what’s $120 to $150 billion among friends? Bennie can print that out of thin air in a few days. Why run an operation efficiently at a surplus, when you can keep hundreds of thousands of union government drones employed (until they go on workers comp) by sticking it to the working American taxpayer. I sure hope I don’t get a visit from the Postmaster General because of this article.
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Far be it from me to defend the cowardly, remote-control murderer of brown children in foreign lands currently residing in the White House.
For the sake of accuracy, though, I must point out that when the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA) was passed, the cowardly, remote-control murderer of brown children in foreign lands residing in the White House was named George.
Also, nobody said anything about eliminating pensions, so you might want to use the straw from that strawman as mulch on your garden.
Having to fund retiree health care benefits 75 years into the future over the course of ten years is certainly a complicating factor.
From Q1 FY10 to Q1 FY13, retiree health benefits rose from 1.375B to 12.632B. That's a fucking order of magnitude!
But the pensions and healthcare aren't actually funded for 75 years, it's an accounting gimmick, which provides politicians with current period cash flows to pay for meter maids (which the postal service could do better anyway) and Solyndra "investment" boondoggles. The United States is the only country in the world where 100% concentration of public pension fund assets in the debt of the public employer is not viewed as extremely problematic, which probably explains why Chris Dodd is now chief lobbyist for the suspension of disbelief industry.
PAEA is far from the worst piece of legislation that the spawn of the Monkey in the Whitehouse ever signed into law (and btw the Healthcare expense dwarfs the FERS expense). I started planning my escape from the Bermuda Triangle (NYC. LA, DC) after the '04 election and the Patriot Act renewal, and long before the HEART Act. I'm still waiting for that FAT FUCK Michael Moore to put his taxpayer subsidized money where his propagandizing mouth is, but his crowd of compassionate fascists seems particularly enamored by the current GW Jolsen routine.
I might be more sympathetic to your argument if the numbers were substantially more viable or realistic w/o the pension & healthcare expense, which actually is less than the target margin would be if the they were a for-profit enterprise, but even without the expenses they are not profitable , and there wasn't even any $5b PSRHBF Prefunding in 2011, and it is not like the USPS is even closing the gap on the CSRS and FERS liability while they were skipping those other payments.
Loss BEFORE Impact of Expense Related to Long-term Portion of Workers' Compensation and PSRHBF Expense
2010 $ (2,450,000,000)
2011 $ (2,685,000,000)
2012 $ (584,000,000)
TOTAL CSRS and FERS
Actuarial Liability / Current Fund Balance / (Unfunded) Surplus
2010 262.9 / 275.4 / 12.5
2011 294.8 / 279.6 / (15.2)
2012 300.4 / 284.7 / (15.7)
https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/10k-reports/fy2012.pdf
http://www.prc.gov/PRC-DOCS/UploadedDocuments/PL109-435PAEA.pdf
2012 Report on Form 10-K United States Postal Service- 39 -
As noted previously, CSRDF is a single fund and does not maintain separate accounts for individual employer agencies.
The actual securities of the CSRDF are not allocated separately to CSRS or FERS, or to postal and non-postal
beneficiaries. The assets of the CSRDF are composed entirely of special-issue U.S. Treasury securities with maturities of
up to 15 years. The long-term securities bear interest rates ranging from 1.375% to 6.5%, while the short-term securities bear interest rates of 1.250%.
The assumed rates of return on the CSRS fund balance for 2011 and 2010 were 5.75%, and the actual rates of return
were 4.71% and 5.10%, respectively. For the FERS fund, the assumed rates of return for 2011 and 2010 were 5.75%,
while the actual rates of return were 4.56% for 2011 and 4.77% for 2010. The projected rate of return on the CSRS and
FERS fund balance for 2012 is 5.25%.
OPM estimates the contributions and benefit payments for the next five years as follows:
SEE THE BULLSHIT YOURSELF ON NUMBERED PAGE 40...
Thanks for your efforts.
Agreed, and a +1 from me.
Also, Urban Redneck's suggestion that
is a great idea.
I don't have all the answers and I'm here to learn like everyone else.
I find it frustrating when someone comes in and does a quick hit piece on one of the very few (and constitutionally mandated) government activities that, aside from management bloat, provides a useful service and does a reasonably good job. What is more disappointing, though, is when the hit piece comes from someone whose ideology is so rigid that their conditioned instant response to disagreement is ad hominem.
I have read Jim Quinn's articles here in the past with generally if not always a favorable opinion of them, so it is with great discouragement and disgust that I find him to be such a disagreeable jerk in the comments section here today.
After reading one angry, off-the-cuff and dishonest post after another from him here, I am starting to wonder if he does not in fact practice bestiality as well, as poster David Pierre has so often asserted.
akak
You've made about ten comments on this thread without saying one thing worth pondering. Do you have anything substantive to add. If not, shut the fuck up. You are actually are making David Pierre appear rational and intelligent.
With friends like you, Jim Quinn, who needs enemas?
Your belligerent and arrogant attitude here today are winning you no fans, I can assure you, quite aside from anything material you have to contribute. Sometimes it is about more than being right --- it can also be about not being a complete prick.
On that subject, you may want to contact your doctor, as your Viagra has apparently kept you a turgid and inflamed cock for more than four hours now.
akak
I'm not looking to win any fans, especially dimwits like yourself.
I write articles based upon the facts. When someone attempts to discredit my data with a bullshit storyline based upon lies and misinformation, I crush them like a bug.
If you don't like it, don't read my articles.
You can just keep sucking your butt buddy's dick.
Thank you for allowing me to summarily dismiss anything further you have to say or write, not only here today, but in the future as well.
Your angry arrogance and bellicose belligerence clearly mark you as a person of low moral character and intellectual integrity. Your last number in real life is not "Nadler" by chance, is it?
Thank you for the pleasure of never having to read one of your inane vacuous comments ever again.
Your inability to comprehend facts and panting worship of Stooge clearly mark you as a key member of the ignorant masses.
I am amused by how you so quickly upvote each one of your comments, as well.
Everything you ever need to know about SmokeyQuinn in under 5 minutes.
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
Hey, Jim, please tell me to shut the fuck up, or maybe other posters here. I can assure you that if you tell me to STFU, I will, if the opportunity ever presents itself, gladly punch your fucking teeth in.
Commenting on your own articles is generally a bad idea and you've shown why that is so.
And, BTW, Jim Willie (DavidPierre) is no better. Give it a fucking break and please note that I have not called you a fucktard, asshat or cocksmoker, NOT EVEN ONCE.
SmokeyQuinn: The Great 9/11 Fraud
ZHers are getting to know him for who he truly is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21pPpYw_axQ
David Pierre
You came out of the barn to join the festivities?
Can you regale akak with some of your 9/11 theories?
You two were made for each other. Added together your IQs don't reach 80.
Building 7
Building 7
Building 7
You're doing such a good job of making an asshole of yourself that I am reluctant to interfere.
A song just for you...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYQs2rRnJYY
You forgot to automatically and immediately upvote this post, Jimmy ol' boy.
EDIT: Took him all of one minute this time to do so.
Urban Redneck actually opened the report and examined the facts. His comment completely supports my article and makes your UTTER BULLSHIT comment look as stupid as it was.
You are not here to learn. You entered the fray in a frenzy of comments designed to mislead the readers.
You have now been revealed as an ideologue by people who actually use facts to make their assessment.
The hit piece was your comments. My article is completely based upon the facts within the PO financial report.
I have an instant response when someone calls my article Utter Bullshit.
I love when you people get your panties in a twist when you are met with a response on the same level as your initial diatribe.
Maybe next time you will actually read the financial report that you denigrate.
It would be less expensive to give a computer to each American that doesn't have one plus Internet service plus computer training than to keep the Post Office open.
check's in the mail.
Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night...
[TAGLINE CONTEST BELOW]
... will stop me from delivering this shiiite.
Last year the U.S Post Office lost $16 billion...BFD, last month, the Fed lost 85 billio (that we know of, and likely much, much more). No entity can top that.
$85 billion plus $16 billion = $101 billion.
Simply, close both of them.
I don't have the money to pay any of this back. What should I do?
Get a bigger loan.
thats easy........buy bit-coins and become instanly rich
the post office has the wrong business model
Shouldn't we also be concerned that Fire Departments across the nation are failing to produce a profit?
Not everything should be purely profit driven. There is such a thing as a societal service. I agree that the post office is bloated and it's gone way too far...however, if you want to "correct" this post office problem by privatizing it, then I hope you will not complain when you start seeing a $2.50 "postage fee" attached to your monthly bills...because that cost will surely be passed on to you.
"postage fee"? Already happening - discounts for "e-billing" and penalties for paper billing.
Not in all cases. For the first time I looked into paying my electric bill online. There was a $1.50 fee! I can still mail the bastard in for 46 cents (or less if I use older Forever Stamps). That's a bargain when ya take a close look at what ya get for 46 cents.
Join a fucking credit union and pay your bills online for free. What idiot still sends a check in the mail?
This service has only existed for 10 years.
I'm just weird that way. Same reason I have a land line and one of those $9.95 Radio Shack desk phones that uses no household power to work. Sure, we have all the new phones and shit, but "just in case" we will be able to use the last ditch technology to reach out and touch someone. As for mailing a check, I've found problems with billing on several utility, phone, cable, etc accounts that would preclude an automated payment. It really complicates things like the last time when they asked me to come into the offices to get it figured out. Yeah, real convenient...
I have a landline too, ONLY, and no cell phone at all --- don't want one, don't need one (nor does almost anyone else). And I have no i-crap of any kind, just my one ten year-old desktop computer which was purchased primarily for business use.
I can waste my time, suck trends and trivialize my life in any number of ways if I so choose without spending many hundreds if not thousands of dollars per year for the privilege of doing so with the latest mass-marketed piece of i-shit.
no cell, no wireless, no tv...using neflix, google and youtube. i'm rich bitch
Yo, akak. I have a cell phone that is 5 years old, and the only reason I have that one is that the old one just plain broke (and batteries were not even available for it any more). The wife has all the most modern stuff because she has to have it and it's paid for by the boss (State). I think my phone takes pictures but I don't know how to make it do that. I actually have a dedicated piece of equipment for that. It's called a "camera". Really cool, eh? Say, I hear they are working on a new gadget that you wear on your wrist that lets you know what time it is! Holy shit. What will they think of next?
Oh, and I must admit that I feel particularly blessed to have had the famous Jim Quinn go out of his way to insult me. I'm honored by his laying on of hands.
Jim Quinn said:
This instant resort to responding to disagreement with ad hominem appears to be a pattern.
The more I read his of his arrogance, hypersensitivity to criticism or challenges, inability to honestly consider other viewpoints, and angry childlike tantrums, the more I believe that this Jim Quinn is in fact a university professor as one poster claimed.
Ah, glorious academia, how do I despise thee! Let me count the ways ....
SmokeyQuinn is a low level Bean Counter in the AdMin. office at Whoreton School of Busyness in Philly.
He is also a self confessed member of the PA KKK....
And a rabid idiot concerning the Truth behind 9/11.
On top of that he is an asshole.
Frank wrote a song just for him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYQs2rRnJYY
Bah
Baaaaaaaaah
.
Careful, I heard that's his mating call.
David Pierre
Looks like you have a couple of sheep lovers to join you in the barn.
I am a member of a credit union, and I still send checks in the mail. I also know a fair number of other technically knowledgable people who are less than sanguine about the security of online banking and who, like me, try to minimize the number of times certain data crosses the intertubes. I think I bought my last box of checks in 2008, and have plenty of forever stamps, so I'm good for a while.
I'm not that worried about federal pension promises because I am pretty sure they will never be honored. This will likely lead to large numbers of pissed-off people, but I think that's pretty much inevitable at this point. If they do honor them, it will be through printing and that will impoverish everyone else not "entitled" to such benefits.
But I don't think the USPS is anywhere near as much of a problem as the Fed and their incessant money printing. I was looking at shadowstats and was just floored by the real annual inflation rates. Seven year doubling time folks. Averaging 10% YOY. Forget the USPS, 10% YOY inflation is outright war. Who TF is getting 10% raises YOY?
ANYBODY who is serious about fucking with the system still uses paper. With tax day (FU IRS, BTW) a day off, I encourage everyone to do their taxes the old fashioned way - by paper and pen and ink.
It takes the IRS and state agencies longer to process these forms in paper form, which, if I am correct, means the usual laziness of the government-worker class will be annoyed when they get your paper return and possibly just pass over it or maybe (hopefully) just trash it. And, there's a better likelihood they will lose your return, making an audit almost impossible.
Just my 2 cents. Been doing my taxes on paper 4eva and won't stop doing it that way, ever.
I also like to do things they explictly forbid, like stapling all the forms together in the wrong order and omitting vouchers and other extraneous garbage. It's entertainment for me, in fucking with the bureaucracy. (I did both this tax year, federal and state)
When they say you need to write some number or other on your check, they're wrong. They cash it either way.
Most people would be amazed at how flexible the system can be when it comes to getting our money via taxes.
+2 only because i and i like your name.
-you got my attention!
-did you say bugs?
Alien, I respectfully submit that we're already going to see a fee when this thing goes bust and we get the bill. We really have no choice. It's either continual failure with the current model or experiment with a new one.
The Postal Service is basically another form of welfare
Maybe so, but the targeted recipients is everyone, except maybe the tunnel dwellers.
The targeted victims(taxpayers) are about 50% of the population. The targeted recipients are less than 1% of the population(not counting postal retirees).
According to the Fair Tax advocates, there is on average 20% of embedded taxes in every new item purchased. This is an effective 25% tax rate on the poor, - besides what they pay in SS and sales tax - since, typically, their entire paycheck is used to purchase shit.
TPTB have so many taxes from sales to SS to Fed, state, and city income tax. Have you ever thought about why it is this way? It is to cause class warfare amongst the population to keep the poor and the rich fighting each other so they won't know who the real enemy is.
So just figure that even those getting handouts are not receiving what they're being told that they are given.
I'm sure the postal workers are raking it in for selling stamps. I've heard lots of stories about their ridiculous wages, retirements and light workloads. It's welfare on steroids.
Your village called. They're looking for you.
The postal rate increase was a bad idea that backfired and cuased many small businesses to go belly up. The better idea might have been to reduce rates and add delivery confirm for the most common overseas nations (like the UK for example) for a slight fee. This would have stimulated the demand and competed more favorably with merchants overseas who mail to the USA extremely cheap and they all get almost free delivery confirm.
of course, the employee benefits issue is another matter.
The US Postal Service is an Affirmative Action experiment gone horribly wrong.
Duplicate post - too much caffeine.
Hey Dude, don't go postal on me.
If you want to speak fraud, how about the plan to end Saturday delivery to save money, and congress follows up by by telling the post office to continue saturday delivery- when the country is running huge deficits and republicans are complaining we have to stop the spending.
shit, just send 'em one of those shiney new TRILLION DOLLAR COINS out of the Bernanke's desk drawer, that should hold 'em over for a few weeks. seriously, is this shit surreal, or fucking what?
http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/images/idbb_03_img0225.jpg
circa 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/26/AR201010...
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/11/outgoing_postmaster...
June 22, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post_now/post/ex-usps-exec-jack-pott...
Probably the worst article I have ever read on ZH. This clown has the knowledge of a politician in DC. Pure garbage.
Never go full postal or full retard
"We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?" - Lee Iacocca
" If a poser calls you out punch him right in his letter box post haste!"
Lee Iaccoa
All this plays perfectly into BarakaDoc's plan to collapse the system....get as many sucking on the federal teet and stuck to the tar baby....and yes, it's these private and government unions that are sinking their retirement money into the ponzi scheme to keep the can rolling down the road as long as they can...so as to impliment this final push for gun control and enslavement of you and me and our kids....so what ya going to do about it?????? wait 'till it's too late, that's what....sorry, the truth hurts in this case....but I've had 66 great years and I'm still having it....'cause I stepped up to the plate once by myself and took my medicine by myself....no thanks to anyone else....they came for me and no one took my side....so when some more of you finally step up and resist, maybe I'll get back in the game....but I'm not taking all the arrows this time...lol...next......
The Marvelettes - Please Mr. Postman (1961)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=425GpjTSlS4 (2:28)
A Fraud... you mean like the Masters Cheetah?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4fKHiL8nIw
"Shouldn't we also be concerned that Fire Departments across the nation are failing to produce a profit?
Not everything should be purely profit driven. There is such a thing as a societal service. I agree that the post office is bloated and it's gone way too far...however, if you want to "correct" this post office problem by privatizing it, then I hope you will not complain when you start seeing a $2.50 "postage fee" attached to your monthly bills...because that cost will surely be passed on to you."
All costs are passed on to you.
I heard a story on the news the other day, that the estimated ridership for the California high speed train was over estimated by as much as 77%. It was mentioned that the tax payers may have to subsidize the train by over 300 million a year "just for it to break even."
California is broke and this train is a HUGE waste of money, just to serve as a legacy for Jerry Brown
I think we would've had private parties establishing high-speed rails long ago if it weren't for the massive subsidies to airlines, and massive subsidies to shippers in the form of Army Corps of Engineers who dredge and dam our rivers. I don't disagree with you, public funds shouldn't have been used to build these rails, but I think it must be said that the reason high-speed rail "needs" subsidies is only because we subsidize all other forms of transportation; it's another symptom, not another cause.
What is Government? It is something that was created by a certain few wealthy elite, so they could make you pay for products and services whether you want them or not.
This was given the appearance of approval by allowing people to 'vote'. What comes out of this is not representatives, or leaders... they are rulers. The intentions of the rulers do not matter to economics of the free market.
Some people might wonder why the Government and it's agencies are so far in debt. Well, politicians(rulers) would not be able to get elected if they could not promise free entitlements/benefits/stuff(whatever you want to call them). They cannot promise all this free stuff without going into debt.
And politicians never campaign on or promise war, but they sure deliver it. Politicians never campaign on or promise bailouts, but they sure deliver them. Politicians never campaign on or promise socialism, but they sure do deliver it.
That last one is only partially true. There are certainly candidates that campaign on and promise socialism if elected.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
<sarc>
So America, let's Get The Vote Out! Vote for Hugh Jidette!
Hugh Jidette isn’t concerned with saddling our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt. After all, what have future generations ever done for us? So what if their taxes will have to double to pay for our debts? And the kids today are geniuses. Have you seen them on their computers? They’ll figure it out.
Creating trillions of dollars in government debt has brought both political parties together in a true show of bipartisanship. It’s a great example of how we can get things done when Americans of all stripes pitch in.
Hugh Jidette wants us to borrow like there’s no tomorrow.
http://www.hughjidette.com/issues
</sarc>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
“One of the things the government can’t do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt.” – Lee Iaccoca
You ain't seen nothin' yet - Miss Expectations
“One of the things the government can’t do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt.” – Lee Iaccoca, chairman of Chrysler when it sought and received its first government bailout in 1979.
Fixed it for you.
To be fair, Iaccoca had just come to Chrysler(as I recall reading, also took $1 salary for the year, how many CEOs would do this?) just prior to this, and turned it around, via the bailout, he introduced the mini van to American soccer Moms. To be fair Obama inherited Bush's problems and, uh, fixed, uh...well, another story there.
This is the same Iaccoca who asked Congress for a bailout in the form of loan guarantees (Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979) in order to keep Chrysler afloat (at least until 2008)? Nobody sings the glory of Private Enterprise louder than a CEO who goes to Congress to ask for his risk to be socialized to keep his company from going bankrupt, and never does he sing louder than when criticizing public institutions for being just as bankrupt as his own would be if the government hadn't assumed his risk for him.
Hey Lee, what about the military?
Can the government run that?
The following comments are too far down in the pack after this bs. neocon article:
ILikeBoats
I have no love for the USPS, however my understanding was that:
"The requirement of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, Public Law 109-435 (P.L. 109-435) to prefund its retiree health benefit obligations, a requirement not shared by other federal agencies or private sector businesses"
meant that a huge amount of money was hoovered out of the USPS over the last 10 years. See this: http://www.examiner.com/article/a-brief-history-of-postal-service-reform... and note that the USPS was forced to give extra benefits to those with military service. Pay attention to the part in this article labeled "Section 380" .
In short, they took something that was "working" despite being bloated and figured out how to steal from it in order to pay off someone else (Wall Street? some other part of the gov't?) .
Rest assured, this was not "by accident" but this is about financial engineering and the deliberate creation of chaos. My guess, they will crash the USPS and thus, checks and money orders will be less useful, and everyone will be using electronic means of payment instead, just because the alternatives will be worse.
Sat, 04/13/2013 - 14:21 | 3444863new smartstrike Vote up!
16
Vote down! 0
They also forbade USPS to compete against FedEX and UPS because that would be Communist. On the other hand private business such as Big Farma and Big Health Care exist as monopolies and hoover 18% of GDP each and every year.
So in the end USPS is bankrupt because they're required to fund pensions for their employees, on the other hand Big Farma and Heath Care Industry rake in trillions while bankrupting USA.
You can compete against USPS and send a parcel by FedEx, UPS or a courier but you can't use these services to legally ship LOWER PRICE drugs to USA from abroad. Ain't Private Capitalism great?
To make it even more hilarious, there are other funding requirements that make no sense:
If an employee comes in from military service, the USPS is required to fund the military pension and tricare, no other agency anywhere has this requirement.
There is an overpayment already of nearly $80b which is ignored because they can never get it back
The required "investment" is T-bonds which pay nothing and are driven down in value by the fed, so it's literally nothing more than pissing money away.
USPS is not legally allowed to pay their debts down, anything excess must be paid into the pension fund... which is why their actual debt keeps going up (they are not allowed to pay it).
Service restrictions are draconian, many things they can and want to do are illegal for them to offer as services, for no other reason that it would 1) be profitable and 2) in many localities break local monopolies that are sucking in money for "private" business.
There's a whole lotta scamming going on and it's little more than a neo-con bullshit plot to destroy things that work just fine, so they can be hacked up and sold for nothing to their buddies who then gut them entirely. That massive pile of money in the pension fund is a holy grail of corporate raiding.
Hold on, let me mail this story to somebody who gives a shit.
Too many good postmen are getting out of the business. Too many USPS men aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country.
No inside info attall.
OK my brethren I've actually been thinking a little and I think this.
The Un Kim, that hamster headed douche (Who's life style is the nork eqivalent of living in his Aunt's basment) interupts his video games long enough at Aunties direction to go out and do some photo ops- parades, hand gun pratice etc. This gins up the poor, wretched, starving rubes ahead of Granpa Munsters glorius 100th birthday demonstration.
They make a ton of noise and focus world wide attention on their prison kingdom which allows Ahmadinnerjacket to open up more reactors and Assad to gas the opposition with no world attention. Then they back channel the info that their missile launches are "only a test" but leave enough doubt in everyones mind so China gets all info from a free test of our missle defense system.
Then Auntie gets a couple of train loads of Ipads to keep the wardens of the place happy so hamster head stays in power.
So we buy the whole show and the Chinese get a big intelligence coup. Syrians get gassed, North Koreans get starved, the Mullahs get nukes and Obama gets to golf, Hamster Head gets to the 3rd level of pacman.
This stuff makes me sick.
Funny little rock, aint it? Survival of the shittiest.
2 billion for Saturday, 10 billion for the other five days making a savings of 12 billion still losing 4 billion a year For not delivering Any mail.
Years ago the night guard in my office building was a postal employee, nice guy, far smarter than average and investing for his retirement. Thinking he wouldn't be offended, I offered that he seemed far better than the average lazy postal employee. He replied that he hustled and in fact finished his route in four hours. I asked what he did for the rest of his shift, and he said he'd pull the truck over somewhere and sleep for four hours.
I don't mind paying someone to sleep. I do mind paying someone to allow someone else to create money out of thin air.
Tough to do nowadays though, with the bar code scanners, checkpoints and gps...
"Trouble shared is trouble halved." - Lee Iacocca
Jim Quinn is right; the media sets the trends for what Congress wants -- and it wants Big Government.
Much of the direction in the culture comes from media propaganda working hand-in-glove with the social state, fabricating the truth to establish cultural trends that fit the socialist agenda.
You can lay the demise of the country at the door of the US Congress and its monopoly-sanctioned media.
A proper press would be pounding away that this is our tax money propping up a federally protected boondoggle; that this is spending on an albatross. But no, the press pushes the trend toward Big Government, toward socialism, and government monopoly.
A major reason that the Congress just plows ahead into this senseless waste is so that congressmen can give jobs to people in their areas and get money for their districts. If the post office were private, Congress would not be involved. It’s involved because it’s subsidizing the postal system probably in a hundreds ways. And not only that, Congress prohibits real competition in mail delivery.
In short, the post office is government; its employees are federal employees and it has a federal monopoly on US mail delivery and rates. Postal officials go to Congress when the agency wants to raise stamp prices.
And the taxpayers, as Quinn says, are responsible for its losses. Because, God forbid,"we own it." We just aren't part of the management. If 70% of the people want Saturday delivery ended, and it is not ended, that shows you just how little our "ownership" means - until it comes to the losses.
USPS Chief Operating Officer Megan Brennan earned $225,308 in 2011, but brought in a total of $358,996, and Chief Information Officer Ellis Burgoyne earned $220,846 but brought in $508,688.
Top 300 salaries in HQ in 2011; Number in group - 300; Average Salary - $151,210; Average years of service – 22; Vice Presidents – 28 - $189.000 – 25 years; District Managers – 49 - $163,135 – 32 years; Plant Managers – 57 - $143,101 – 29.
Combined list – Number 415 - average $152,428 – years 25…
The average income of the 645,950 total workforce, including benefits, is $74,789. http://www.savethepostoffice.com/it-was-very-good-year-salaries-usps-executives
Although I agree, JR, I cannot imagine any practical political solutions to that problem.
Consider again Congressman Oscar Callaway's report to Congress in 1917 on the banksters' master plan, which has been in effect since 1915:
"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and power interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached. The policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month, an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."
That has gotten way worse in the last 100 years!
THE SOURCE OF THIS PROBLEM IS THAT THE AMERICAN FAMILY HAS SUFFERED A CRIMINAL HOME INVASION, TAKING CONTROL OF ITS HOUSEHOLD.
The condition of the postal service of the government symbolizes everything else regarding the American government being dominated by international banksters, so that the ways that the Anglo-American (Zionist) empire operates are always more and more against the interests of the vast majority of the American people.
However, since 99% of Americans pay for none of their politics directly, (although the middle class massively pays for what that does, indirectly) it continues to be a runaway avalanche of the dominate 1% which pays for their politics up front, to gain all the benefits back from doing that. It is relatively easy to go through the list of WHO pays the politicians directly, for a prolonged period of time, and then perceive the consequences of that.
E.g., Jews, although less than 2% of Americans, pay for more than half of all the political campaigns. Thus, Zionists overwhemingly dominate American policies, and of course, the same matrix of control permeates all of the mass media, and so on and so forth ... Each special interest group, in proportion to how much they dominate the funding of politics, follows that pattern. Thus, the profit from disease systems are next, as well as the profit from junk food systems, etc., and so on, like throughout the energy industries, which all loops back through the ways that perverse politics subsidizes the mass media, which then are able to continue to dominate the political processes. EVERYWHERE ONE LOOKS, THE PROFIT FROM FRAUD IS SUCCESSFULLY REINVESTED IN MORE FRAUDS. (The fact that those "profits from fraud" are delusional, and ultimately self-destructive, makes NO difference to that happening anyway.)
I can not imagine any realistic ways to fix this runaway social insanity situation. The mass media are a trillion dollar industry, pumping out propaganda 24/7. Those mass media put on their puppet show elections, with political puppets that spend billions of dollars in order to perform in those political puppet shows. The mass media excel at the techniques of lying by omission. The more important something is, the less one will find it covered in the mass media. The mass media only tell people some truth about relatively trivial things. The most important things are huge lies, which are submerged inside the techniques of lying by omission.
90% OF ALL THE INFORMATION AMERICANS GET COMES FROM A HANDFUL OF HUGE CORPORATIONS, WHICH ARE IN DEBT TO THE BANKSTERS, AND EFFECTIVELY CONTROLLED BY THE BANKSTERS.
EVERYTHING that America does is legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, benefiting a tiny minority fantastically, in the short-term, while harming everyone else much worse in the longer term. BUT, there are no practical political ways to do anything about that, since that tiny minority has already sewed their whole system up. There are no realistic ways to be able to compete with the trillionaire mass murderers that have taken control over the government of the USA.
The decline and fall of the US Postal Service symbolizes the decline and fall of the USA. It is quite reasonable to expect that the plan is to deliberately destroy that old government service, so that it can be broken up, and privatized, and then another new domain for oligopoly, leading to de facto monopoly could arise, so that the few can screw the many even more than they do now.
THERE ARE NEVER ANY GOOD SOLUTIONS TO ANY AMERICAN PROBLEMS THAT DO NOT CHANGE THE BASIC MONETARY SYSTEM RUN BY THE BANKSTERS. MOREOVER, THERE ARE NO WAYS TO FIX THAT WHICH DO NOT ADDRESS THE DEEPER REASONS WHY!
We are stuck inside of systems whose foundations are rotten. Anything built on top of those rotten foundations, as some kind of "reform," is still based on systems which are rotten to the core. Everything that the American government does, including even its postal service, is already crazy and corrupted to an almost inconceivable degree. Nothing within the established systems can fix the problems that their basic foundations have become almost totally rotten. It is impossible to come up with any sufficient "reforms" to fix the postal service by itself, the same as it is NOT possible to fix any of the other problems which the government of the USA is manifesting, within its current system.
To understand how everything that the government is doing has become constantly more crazy and corrupt, while all its financial numbers have become NUTS, (like those in the postal service) one must address the ways that money is backed by murder, and that the application of the methods of organized crime have taken control over the government. Moreover, there are no sets of impossible ideals which could actually fix those problems, by picking that system up by its own boot straps, through a series of political miracles. Therefore, thare are terrible tradedies that I believe are being driven because nothing would fix the problem that the foundations are ROTTEN, except for the whole system to eventually collapse into chaos ... not that that is any kind of good thing for anybody!
The only way to "fix" these problems is by forces beyond human control, i.e., beyond the powers of the ruling classes, and those who believe in their bullshit, to be able to continue to get away with lying about any further. I do not believe there is any way to stop the social storms from building and blowing through. They are being built up to an astronomical size (global eletronic fiat money, backed by atomic bombs) but they are still all built on legalized lies, while the legalized violence that backs those legalized lies up can NEVER make those lies become true. Therefore, the whole thing MUST drive itself through psychotic breakdowns... NOT that that will be a good thing for anybody to attempt to survive through ... but, I can not imagine anything else happening ... The only dim hope is that we MIGHT, by understanding that better, be able to catalyse the changes which happen when a superstructure built on rotten foundations finally collapses?
The postal service merely illustrates the ubiquitous situation that ALL the financial numbers in the USA are NUTS! Everything the USA is doing is operated through fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems. Therefore, everything is automatically getting more insane, and psychotic, in the sense of out of touch with reality! However, that system is still totally sewed up by the ruling classes, the trillionaire mass murderers, being able to overwhelmingly pay for the politics, especially the not-stop political propaganda found throughout ALL aspects of the mass media "enterainment" and "news." The most important issues are proportionately the ones that they never mention, but rather deliberately ignore!
In that context, there are NO solutions to the postal service problems, that are possible to imagine within the established systems. The only genuine solutions are outside of the frame of reference of the established systems, since the DEEPER PROBLEMS ARE THE UTTERLY ROTTEN FOUNDATIONS OF EVERYTHING!!!
Exactly, Radical.
As to: “The only dim hope is that we MIGHT, by understanding that better, be able to catalyse the changes which happen when a superstructure built on rotten foundations finally collapses?”
Yes. As someone on Zero Hedge said, When credit must grow by 12% in order to produce 4% GDP growth, “this sucker’s going down.”
We’ve been sold down the river into a current of rapidly diminishing returns, constantly rowing against the tide, trying to navigate loss of sovereignty and national identity, fraud and corruption. As economist Herb Stein said: "When something cannot go on forever, it has a tendency to stop."
Trust in the system already has stopped for a vast number of Americans. Americans have tasted freedom and will never relinquish it without a fight. Trust me. Their willingness to protect that liberty is being tallied every day in the growing purchases of guns and ammunition. In essence, freedom started here and it is here the battle for it will be refought.
The real truth is that the power elite, the financial piranhas, need to be severed of their privileged connections. The concept of a “power elite” is as anathema to America as is a monopoly press.
A nation with a privileged power elite is in the throes of a tyranny. T he solution is to throw out this Congress and replace it with a Congress that represents the people. When it gets to the point that the privileged are telling a willing president and a willing Congress what to do, it’s gone too far.
“From the ashes of a financial crash, there is a chance to create a new economic settlement that is more equal, sustainable and democratic.” – Frances O’Grady
I hope you are right, JR!
Don't forget to add that recently hired Postal employees do not receive pensions. They get some matching 401k money instead. Older postal employees had any Social Security benefits they might have previously earned stripped from them by Clinton and Gingrich although their pensions did not pay as much as UAW pensions. Are you saying that that those executive incomes are outlandish compared those of executive of large corporations?
yeah, I have USPS workers come through my checkout and they look and dress like bums.
The chart (egad the facts) suggests that USPS should be OK. Volume decreased around 25% but revenue fell less than 15%. So they are making more per piece. Just get the costs in line.
No biggie really.
Try to look past all the ofuscation. If the Post Office was a private business it would have been bankrupt and gone long ago.
And here is a secret no one is allowed to talk about. Because of building design improvements, fire alarms, and integrated sprinklers, fire related emergencies have dropped dramatically over the last decade where I live. We are very oversubscribed firefighters now. However, if you mention this you are burned at the stake.
I met a 67 year old ultra progressive who blames all the problems the post office has with the GOP forcing them to fund all the pensions now. I asked him what he thought about the post office developing its' own clothing line. He said he had not heard of that. In the few short weeks I had to work with him, I never heard another political comment again.
Paging Lysander Spooner...you are needed for a cleanup in aisle 6
According to the financial figures given in this article, if the postal service were a bank they would be hugely profitable. LMAO. Debt is an asset remember?
This whole fkn country is going to up in smoke. And when it does it sure will be nice to not have a fucking gun to protect ourselves from those that lose their minds.
Fuck the US gov't.
why bother anymore? all these blogs have essentially convinced most of the readers who follow them that the system is unsustainable. what to do is perfectly clear as well, prepare according to your resources for hard times. the only remaining thing to find out is how hard will times be and how long will they last. my estimation is something like the lifestyle of mexico in the slums for most of us. and probably for the rest of your life. happy days!
UPS, FedEx, DHL, RPS, Airborn Express and hundreds of unsubsidized local delivery services report profits. What is it about the delivery business that the Post Office aka Bank of CONgress... oh. Nevermind.
Dimwit - a one pound parcel costs about $11 to send cross country to a rural address if you use UPS or the others you mentioned. USPS is doing delivery for under a buck. I prefer to not use UPS for small stuff.
...and the Bank of Congress has a monopoly on 'letters', so not only can the private sector not defray their heavy lifting on a level playing field, plus whatever tax the despot demands, you have no choice. You can be sure the serfs are picking up the tab, plus the hookers, blow, inconvenient dimwits, nefarious schemes beyond your imagination of what a stamp is. Got any PMs you want to post my way? I'll pick & pay the s/h, pvt carrier. But for the sake of waking you up so I won't have to support you, what taxes would the USPS pay IF they earned an honest dollar? To whom would they pay this 'tax'? That's what I thought. Maybe it would reveal too much if they didn't. Learn about the postal inspectors, boy. Better hurry.
If closing one day saves $2 billion, then they would have to be closed 8 days a week in order to break even.
$16 billion/year is chump change for Bubble Bernanke and the fed. Bernanke says no problem.
He'll buy the debt and make it disappear. Just like the $9 trillion the fed made disappear.
9 TRILLION Dollars Missing from Federal Reserve,Fed Inspector General...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYNVNhB-m0o
Bernanke and the fed have hot keys for billions and trillions, to add the extra zeros.
Bernanke and the Fed better make sure you don't accidentally push the trillion button after inputing the 16.
The post office would go crazy if they recieved $16 trillion/yr instead of $16 billion/yr. With 16 trillion imagine the bonuses. Goldman people would be happy to become postal workers.
PO workers are some of the HARDEST WORKING AMERICANS around. Same old story brainwash the masses so we all get used to low wages, add in a dose of jealousy and bam the slaves do the work for their Masters.
Oh yeah sure, Zero Hedge commenters are very intelligent people Just as dumb as the rest of the public
Divide and conquer works every time
Hardest working around?!? Thanks! I just blew coffee all over my keyboard as I laughed. Your parents were related, weren't they?!?
What are you talking about? If you rationalize the Post Offie you will add 300000 to the unemployment count and that might boost the unemployment rate above 8%. The PO is an off balance sheet employment centre.
What are you talking about? If you rationalize the Post Offie you will add 300000 to the unemployment count and that might boost the unemployment rate above 8%. The PO is an off balance sheet employment centre.
So let the post office open up postal savings banks as a new revenue source as has been done successfully in New Zealand, Japan and Brazil, previously in the US. Maybe the federal reserve can pay interest on deposits instead of reserves.
From Counterpunch:
"The USPS has been declared insolvent, but it is not because it is inefficient (it has been self-funded throughout its history). It is because in 2006, Congress required it to prefund postal retiree health benefits for 75 years into the future, an onerous burden no other public or private company is required to carry. The USPS has evidently been targeted by a plutocratic Congress bent on destroying the most powerful unions and privatizing all public services, including education. Britain’s 150-year-old postal service is also on the privatization chopping block, and its postal workers have also vowed to fight. Adding banking services is an internationally proven way to maintain post office solvency and profitability."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/13/how-to-save-the-postal-service/
I've had generally good experiences with the postal service in my lifetime.
I'm not saying that I believe in it. But this whole idea that everything government is bad, and everything private is good, is simply wrong.
Cable TV is private. Think about it.
USPS does a fine job providing a service that every self-respecting country has. There are millions of other ways to balance the budget. For crying out loud try to name a country without a postal service.
Even Nepal and Bhutan do it on foot in areas unreachable by road traffic. It's a necessary service to unite a country. The postman in America is a visible sign that I'm connected to folks in Florida or Oregon, or Texas or North Dakota by only a couple days.
It's physical, it's tangible, it's one of the few bureaucratic systems we can actually SEE benefitting (even if it is broke) whole from the homeless to the 1%ers. I'll have to agree with your assessment.
+1
Short cable providers FTW!
It's ALL about the push to go ALL electronic, currency too, bitchez.
No mail service for America. Crumbling infrastructure and extreme poverty visible to all. Yet billions still flow to israel and our military adventures, taking orders from Tel Aviv, rack up trillions in expenditures which benefit no American. Murrika fuk yea.
Magnum said it all +100
36000000000/
16000000000000
0.225% of the problem, right?
what's the rest of the 99.99775%?
I'd always had sympathy for the P.O. growing up, my best friend's dad was a postal worker (still is, nearing retirement) and hard working dude. He gave it his all through bad knees and bad back. Eventually I learned this working class dude (who grew up in a Pittsburgh steel family) was the exception to the norm and most are just there for benefits in the end. I'll still do my part to recycle those credit card applications back to the sender because, well, fuck Citigroup et. al., but that's about it. I haven't sent a package by the USPS in years when flat-rate boxes went from being a good deal one year to being a rip-off each subsequent year.
Eventually, too, the Postal Service will turn into a retirement fund. No longer are they hiring new mail carriers as those jobs are being outsourced to independent contractors for $16/hr. (was $22) with no benefits. I say GOOD to that, the public sector unions have raped this country though you can't really blame the working sloth for going along with it. You can however blame the union bosses and lawyers (the sellouts and the ultimate beneficiaries) for bankrupting virtually every company and government agency which may have been viable at one time. A study of unions post-1960s America is a study in how not to bite the hand that feeds.
Postal expert Michael Schuyler reviewed the studies on postal compensation and found the following:
Another factor that reduces postal service efficiency is that union contracts inhibit the flexibility of USPS leaders in managing their workforce. For example, most postal workers are protected by "no-layoff" provisions, and the USPS must let go lower-cost part-time and temporary employees before it can lay off a full-time worker not covered by such provisions.
Collective bargaining agreements also make it difficult for the USPS to hire part-time workers, which would help to reduce labor costs. Hiring workers who can work less than eight-hour shifts would also give managers needed flexibility to address seasonal and weekly fluctuations in workload.
Jim-
USPS has about 100000 part time workers. I am willing to concede you could save expenses by going to an all-part time, temporary, no benefits workforce without lay-off protection. The workers you have just described are called day laborers. Your acceptance of the Wal-mart business model is depressing me.
YEAH! The Post Office should be more responsible for it's obligations, like a bank...oh...wait...
And UPS has never lost a package...EVER!
What?
LOL, remember the poatal worker that stashed all the mail he was supposed to deliver in his home?
Many more....
Where is your missing mail?
Prison sentence for Maryland postal worker convicted of mail theft
http://postalnews.com/postalnewsblog/2013/01/12/prison-sentence-for-maryland-postal-worker-convicted-of-mail-theft/
2010 Netflix
http://www.justice.gov/usao/txs/1News/Releases/2010%20May/052510%20Luna.htm
From the OP: "The net loss of $1.3 billion for the first quarter of the year included $1.4 billion of expense accrued for the legally-mandated prefunding payment for retiree health benefits."
In other words, the Postal Service would have turned a very small profit last quarter except for the having to prefund 75 years of retirement a mandate which was designed to destroy the Postal Service infrastructure so private companies could make off with its more profitable parts. Why not privatize all roads while we are at it? Maybe that's next. This is what goldman-Sachs is doing to Greece; selling off the public sector and balkanizing it for less than it is worth. While the Constitution does provide for postal roads, it doesn't specify that they have to be government owned by even our own elected government.
Yes this is the real story. There is a full-press pro-privization propanda campaign going, just like with social security, which could be easily funded by changing the income cap. But Obama and whoever follows him in 2016 will continue to dismantle what is left of the public commons. That worked out pretty for the 1% in Russia and I'm sure it will work out well for them in the USA as well.
inside sources say allpostal real estate is owned by federal reserve bank? how interesting...
The Post Office is also an Affirmative Action dumping ground, just like the VA and many other badly performing government agencies. You have a class of "entitled" employees who scream "racism" at the drop of a hat. Affirmative Action comittees and all the other things that scare any career manager into silence.
I saw an extremely rude 400 lb secretary with a big mouth that even scared the doctors at the VA, because at the first sign of any trouble screamed "racism" at the top of her lungs. It goes on and on with the government! If you want to fix things, the first order of business is to abolish Affirmative Action and all related garbage programs.
A glance at the Balance sheet will tell you that the Post Office is far from bankrupt. Instead it has an incredible amount of wealth locked up in buildings and land. Consider the real estate holdings of the USPS. It occupies prime space in every city and town. Land and buildings that will go for pennies on the dollar when the forced sale occurs. This will just be one more fleecing of the American taxpayer. So this is just another article to get the firesale of prime real estate. Guess who will be invited to the auction.
A glance at the Balance sheet will tell you that the Post Office is far from bankrupt. Instead it has an incredible amount of wealth locked up in buildings and land. Consider the real estate holdings of the USPS. It occupies prime space in every city and town. Land and buildings that will go for pennies on the dollar when the forced sale occurs. This will just be one more fleecing of the American taxpayer. So this is just another article to get the firesale of prime real estate. Guess who will be invited to the auction.
the land and buildings you refer to are the property of the federal reserve bankperiod
Where the fu ck did you come up with that info? I know for a fact that most rural PO are rental property, rented by the PO. In the little town I live outside of the building was built in the early sixties, basic square brick vineer building and has been a cash cow for the last 50 years for the politically connected owner. This is the case for most rual PO I know about throughout Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, The PO has paid these people more that 50 times the cost of the building and still collecting the rent.
Good deal for the political connected Democrat I know that owns it, not so good for the PO!
I now actually wonder who owns the new Federal Reserve Building in Kansas City, and for that matter the old building at 10th and Grand downtown.
You won't get a visit from the Postmaster General, but he may send you a nasty email.
That's why the postal service became so closely associated with different kind of frauds, starting from original Ponzi
Where is Lysander Spooner when you need him?
Just wanted to add this.
My first real life experience with the Postal Service was when I was about 7 years old and my family went to visit my mother's relatives in Trenton, NJ.
We arrived mid-afternoon on a weekday, and my uncle Mike, a postman, was HOME, wearing his USPS uniform. After the usual glad-handing and small talk, uncle Mike said he had to finish doing his route and asked if I'd like to come along. I did.
Uncle Mike delivered mail to about 12-15 houses and then we went into a corner bar. Everybody there knew Mike and the bartender gave him a glass of beer, for free. I got some beer nuts, which was OK with me.
Mike and his buddies chewed the fat for a while and we went back home. That's how it was in the early 60s. Ah, the good old days. I simply cannot wait until the government crashes from under its own weight and we can go back to the days of when government was actually OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE.
Excelsior!
Thanks for that useless anecdote.
Jim Quinn is an interesting person. He is obviously not completely stupid since he puts together coherent, fact-filled, and interesting pieces. but he is a bit of a psychopath when he enters the Comment Zone. I always chuckle when I imagine him typing EXTRA hard to show how angry he is, shouting at his screen, frothing and shooting spittle over his keyboard, and turning lovely shades of blue and red.
Perhaps he get angry because is so very, very RIGHT! Like the Pope is right, or Jerry Falwell is right. And damn you blasphemers for challenging his doctrine, for disputing his views and for introducing rational thougth, logic, and facts into a debate which has nothing to do with those three tools of the liberal and other 'Murica hatin' commies, etc.
I eagerly await his piece on how the US military is losing hundreds of billions every year and doesn't even prefund their liabilities AT ALL!
First, who gives a rats ass what Lee Iaccoca thinks. Second, the US Postal Service has what the big money boys in the private sector want, CUSTOMERS! So, they got their pawns in congress to pass legislation that required different accounting rules for the Postal Service. Thus was created the great Postal Service shortfall. With the media cheerfully cooperating, everyone now believes the Postal Service is a bankrupt organization staffed by lazy bums who sleep in trucks and steal mail. Soon, the bloodsucking capitalists will get what they want and the Postal Service will be nothing more than a sentimental memory of a quaint time in the distant past. Privatize! That's what it's all about boys and girtls. Prisons, education, war, mail delivery, etc, etc. Makin money off of everything. Glory, glory ain't soulless capitalism a wonderous thing!
Raise the rates on junk mail and reduce the rates on mail services that compete with FedX, Brown, et al.
One state of the art fighter plane costs more than 41 billion. The post office lost 41 billion in six years. Does the pentagon "turn a profit"? Call me crazy but I think the post office deserves more support than the pentagon. This is propaganda towards privatization of the USPS. If you want really expensive mail service, then we can go that route. The USPS is important enough in the lives of most citizens that it deserves tax payer support -- it is hardly wasted money.
stud duck... i should have clarified that statement of the federal reserve bank actually owning all postal real estate to read .... all distribution facilities... these are large buildings in every major city and region... buildings range in size from 200,000 sq ft to 600,000 sq ft....
Ok, so time to privatize this into a TBTF organization? Worked great for the banks, they still get bailout money even though there's ZERO accountability. Last time I checked the post office money is peanuts in comparison.
Remove this and you get rid of half the fucking problem. No other organization is subject to this requirement.
As always, blame the idiots in CONgress:
At the very end of that year, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). Under PAEA, USPS was forced to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in an astonishing ten-year time span” — meaning that it had to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees it hasn’t even hired yet, something “that no other government or private corporation is required to do.”