The slow deliberate killing of our Postal Service

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QuickSilver

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http://occupydemocrats.com/republicans-look-to-destroy-post-office-further/

The fight against the United States Postal Service continues. While the Post Office looks for ways to save itself, Republicans, led by Representative Darrell Issa, continue to look for ways to destroy it. Representative Issa, leader of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, now wants to end all at-home delivery by the year 2022.
Before you can understand why they are doing this, you need to understand the problems facing the Post Office. Prior to 2006, the US Postal Service workers have a retiree health care benefit in addition to their pension. Before Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (or PAEA), the USPS operated under a pay-as-you-go model for retiree health care funding. In 2006, the Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, and was eventually signed by then President Bush. The bill stated that the Post Office had to pre-fund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in just a ten-year time span. In other words, they have to pay for health benefits for employees that A. have not even been hired yet and B. theoretically, have not been born yet. No other government or private corporation is required to do this.
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“The confusion over 75 years may be due to an “accounting” and not an “actuarial or funding” issue. They only have to fund the future liability of their current or former workforce. This would include some actuarial estimate about the mortality rates of their current workers (i.e. how long they live). So a 25 year old worker would have an average life expectancy (from birth) of 78.7 years. Thus, they would have to project future retiree health benefits for this individual up to about 54 years in the future.
But for accounting purposes they must estimate the future liability over a 75 year period (according to OPM financial accounting guidelines). In this case, they would make some assumptions about new entrants into the workforce and addresses your second question.
Theoretically, these new entrants could include someone who is not born yet. While they have to account for these future liabilities on their financial statements they do not have to fund them if they are not related to their current or former workforce.”
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So why would they want to do this?

It could have something to do with hoping to get a private entity in there to take over where the Post Office left off. Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the Post Office has one of the largest unions, the American Postal Workers Union or APWU, with over 300,000 members. But one thing is for sure. Republicans are playing their same game of manufacturing a crisis, then promising to solve it with a solution that benefits them both finically and politically.
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In addition, the Post Office does NOT use one single penny of taxpayer money!!!

“Until 1971, mail delivery was handled by the Post Office Department, a Cabinet department in the federal government. Postal worker strikes prompted President Nixon to pass the Postal Reorganization Act in 1971, transforming it into the semi-independent agency we now know as the United States Postal Service. The USPS in its current form runs like a business, relies on postage for revenue and, for the most part, has not used taxpayer money since 1982, when postage stamps became “products” instead of forms of taxation. Taxpayer money is only used in some cases to pay for mailing voter materials to disabled and overseas Americans. USPS spokespersons have been adamant in emphasizing that they are not requesting taxpayer funds from the federal government to make this year’s payment. Rather, they say, the USPS is asking Congress to authorize access to an estimated $7 billion that they overpaid into the future retiree pension fund in previous years.”
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Does anyone believe a Private Corporation like Fed-Ex could or WOULD deliver a 1st class letter for 49 cents? Fat chance.
 

I rejoice when I find a online purchase is shipped USPS rather than UPS or FedEx which takes longer to deliver. UPS doesn't even work Saturday. I get packages as fast as a first class letter through USPS.
 
The mandated funding is good. The levels at which the post office must comply is not good. And is not what corporate America has to do. Corporate America only has to fund around 85% of it's pension the last time I checked.

It was one of many attempts to make mail an option and private sector concern.
 

I've been a supporter of USPS, but something that happened recently made me wonder.....
my forwarding address from my move in August is valid till next August, & at least 2 Xmas cards people sent me were returned as undeliverable rather than forwarded & it happened those 2 were Able to let me know. Don't if any others went thT way too. Then I just got back 2 cards I had sent in Dec to people who are still at same address for many years one in VA, one in MN, AS UNKNOWN & undeliverable. All addresses complete in plain LEGIBLE printing. What's with that? Never happened before. I checked on why mine weren't forwarded to me, & the only explaination I was given was that "Louie was on leave that week."
 
To say that no taxpayer money has been used by the USPS is not completely accurate. They have borrowed billions from the U.S. Treasury just to try to stay afloat. If anyone would look over their financial records, it would not be hard to see that they are in dire financial straits.

Do homes need to have their mail delivered six days a week? How about three days a week for half of the homes in an area and then three days for the other half? That would eliminate maybe 40% of mail carriers and vehicles. I can understand businesses getting their mail six days a week.
 
Does anyone believe a Private Corporation like Fed-Ex could or WOULD deliver a 1st class letter for 49 cents? Fat chance.

Why FedEx SmartPost?

When you need to ship low-weight packages to residential customers, consider efficient, economical FedEx SmartPost shipping service. By utilizing the U.S. Postal Service® (USPS) for final delivery, FedEx SmartPost reaches every U.S. address, including P.O. boxes and military APO, FPO and DPO destinations. You can even use FedEx SmartPost to ship to Alaska, Hawaii and all U.S. territories.

FedEx SmartPost is a great solution for online retailers, catalogers, fulfillment houses and direct marketers who are looking for a cost-effective means of shipping low-weight packages to residential customers.

FedEx SmartPost shipping advantages — state-of-the-art technology, 25 strategically located hubs, dock-door to doorstep pickup and delivery, zone-skipping expertise, and an alliance with the USPS — all work together to provide a streamlined process and reliable delivery.

http://www.fedex.com/us/smart-post/outbound.html
 
I have merchandise delivered by FedEx SmartPost from Amazon. I guess they must be using this service.
 
[h=1]A Manufactured ‘Crisis': Congress Can Let The Post Office Save Itself Without Mass Layoffs Or Service Reductions[/h]

Both the news media and a number of politicians have claimed recently that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is in “crisis,” and that it is necessary to lay off thousands of workers or reduce service in order to make the post office fiscally stable. And the Post Office itself has proposed laying off as many as 120,000 employees and withdrawing from federal health care plans in order to navigate upcoming fiscal crunches.
It is true that USPS is facing fiscal challenges — it lost nearly $20 billion over the last four years and is at risk of not being able to meet a $5.5 billion mandated payment to the Treasury at the end of this month (which has been put off six weeks thanks to the last continuing resolution in Congress).
But what has been lost in the political debate over the Post Office is why it is losing this money. Major media coverage points to the rise of email or Internet services and the inefficiency of the post model as the major culprits. While these factors may cause some fiscal pain, almost all of the postal service’s losses over the last four years can be traced back to a single, artificial restriction forced onto the Post Office by the Republican-led Congress in 2006.
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.”
As consumer advocate Ralph Nader noted, if PAEA was never enacted, USPS would actually be facing a $1.5 billion surplus today:
By June 2011, the USPS saw a total net deficit of $19.5 billion, $12.7 billion of which was borrowed money from Treasury (leaving just $2.3 billion left until the USPS hits its statutory borrowing limit of $15 billion). This $19.5 billion deficit almost exactly matches the $20.95 billion the USPS made in prepayments to the fund for future retiree health care benefits by June 2011. If the prepayments required under PAEA were never enacted into law, the USPS would not have a net deficiency of nearly $20 billion, but instead be in the black by at least $1.5 billion.
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In order to remedy this problem, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) has introduced bipartisan legislation (which has 193 co-sponsors) that would allow the USPS tospend more of its own money to pay down its deficits, including $6.9 billion in pension overpayments or other overpayments that may total as much as $25 billion to $50 billion. These are Post Office funds, not taxpayer dollars.
Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has been pushing for legislation that wouldlead to widespread layoffs and break the back of the postal workers’ unions to defuse the “crisis” that Congress created. Yesterday, thousands postal workers and the Americans who value their contributions to our society held hundreds of rallies at congressional offices across the country to support Lynch’s bill and to protest against Issa’s. Here’s are some snapshots of the demonstrations:
[FONT=Open Sans, Calibri, Trebuchet MS, Lucida Sans, Arial, sans-serif]http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/28/330524/postal-non-crisis-post-office-save-itself/[/FONT]
 
I think this is really a matter of the holy grail of "Privatization" AND "Anti-Unionism" That's all it's about.. We need to save our Post Office and remove the ridiculous demands made on it by the GOP. Call your Congresman and Senators and tell them to support the above legislation.
 
QuickSilver said:
I think this is really a matter of the holy grail of "Privatization" AND "Anti-Unionism" That's all it's about.. We need to save our Post Office and remove the ridiculous demands made on it by the GOP. Call your Congresman and Senators and tell them to support the above legislation.
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That link says Updated: September 29, 2011 at 11:50 am..
 
I found this...it looks like the bill was blocked by the chairman Rep. Darryl Issa(R).........surprise surprise

"It is paramount that Congress defends this important institution, lest it become a skeleton of its former self, or worse — completely dismantled. Congress can take the first step toward saving the Post-Office by passing H.R. 1351 proposed by Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., designed to eliminate various accounting games that have for years hijacked postal funds for the U.S. Treasury. The bill would be a financial lifesaver — stopping $55 billion to $86 billion of potentially unnecessary post office overpayments to the two federal retirement programs.
"Despite the fact that the bill, introduced in April last year, has 229 co-sponsors, it has yet to reach a vote on the House floor. House Government Reform Chairman Darryl Issa, R-Calif., is blocking it because he 'wants to privatize everything, and destroy union jobs,"' according to Sally Davidow, communications director for the American Postal Workers Union.
"Thus far Congress has shown itself incapable of defusing the pension pre-pay time bomb. If this trend continues, the Postal Service may as well start packing up in preparation for its new home — in national museums," Weiner and Clingan conclude.
The full published oped may be found at: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/ar...iew-The-myth-of-the-Postal-Service-s-finances
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...rman-issa-pushes-privatization-159224595.html
 

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