"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," reads the unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service.
I guess no one ever thought it would be the Republican Party finishing off the Postal Service when those words were borrowed from the ancient Greek and chiseled in granite over the entrance to the James Farley Post Office in New York City on Labor Day in 1914.
Our postal system is quite remarkable if you think about it for a minute.
For just 44 cents, you can send a Mother's Day card from anywhere in the United States to the woman who carried you for nine months providing she lives in the United States and it will arrive in a matter of days. Or as Comedy Central's Jon Stewart more simply quipped, "Someone comes to your house, takes something you've written, and brings it to a person that you want them to give it to anywhere in the world for like 50 cents" before deadpanning, "oh, but it's going to take a couple of days."
The power to create post offices is enumerated in our Constitution. Our Postal Service is even fully funded by the sale of stamps, not through tax dollars. That is a combo that should bring tears of joy to the eyes of tea partiers and Republicans alike.
GOP efforts to cripple the Postal Service predate the current tea party "cut government spending" drumbeat echoing throughout Washington during these difficult economic times.
Five years ago, during the Bush administration, the Postal Service handled the largest volume of mail ever seen in its 236-year history. It was in that year, that the Republican controlled Congressed passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA).
The legislation's title certainly sounds pretty great. But, as is the case with so much in Washington, the words chosen were simply window dressing for a very destructive proposal.
As Truth-Out.org's Allison Kilkenny recently reported, by passing PAEA, Congressional Republicans mandated that within 10 years the United States Postal Service would have to fully fund retirement health care benefits for the next 75 years. Or to put it more plainly, the Postal Service had a decade to fully fund the retirement health care benefits for future employees that will not even be born until 2057 at the earliest.
Of course, if tea partiers succeed in repealing child labor laws (because we all know that little hands are better for cutting stamps) we can probably drop that year to the mid-2040s.
Interestingly, this dreadful law holds a delicious bite of irony in that it requires government-funded universal health care benefits for Americans that will not be born for a generation.
Imagine what the right would say if President Obama and the Democrats proposed legislation that required businesses and corporations to fully fund health care benefits for all of their current workers and workers who haven not even been born yet.
Socialist. Communist. Marxist. Maoist. Pick any of the ists. They would call Obama a cartoonist if they thought it would kill the bill.
The only reason we keep hearing so much about the Postal Service's impending budget shortfall is because PAEA requires that on September 30 a down payment be made on the health care benefits of postal workers 75 years into the future. This law has forced the Postal Service into the red for two years running.
In the end, Republicans know the Postal Service is a government agency that works well for Americans. And you know the GOP cannot have an example of good government floating around out there lest it get in the way of their political aspirations.
Why let a self-funding government agency flourish when you can privatize it and make your corporate cronies even richer?
Left to the Republicans, we would probably start receiving our mail intermittently from some smelly, scruffy, raggedly dressed character on horseback like Kevin Costner from The Postman, 1997's worst picture Razzie award winner.
It is enough to make you go, well, postal.
Rather than collecting federal scalps to appease its insatiable anti-government appetite, the GOP would do better by the American people if it became a Party of philatelists, or stamp collectors for my friends on the right who believe strange sounding words have an intrinsic liberal bias just like the media, science, math, letters, numbers, and the truth.
Karl Frisch is a syndicated columnist and Democratic strategist at Bullfight Strategies in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at KarlFrisch.com. You can also follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and YouTube, or sign up to receive his columns and updates by email.
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While other carriers (UPS, FedEx, etc.) may claim to voluntarily provide delivery on a broad basis, the Postal Service is the only carrier with a legal obligation to provide all the various aspects of universal service at affordable rates.
A question though, if the USPS is privatized, is the money the service has had to fund healthcare benefits part of the fruits for the plunderers, who will then otherwise cheapen or eliminate healthcare and rape the fund, or is it to keep the new "owners" from having to pay for it?
The hate of all things government and the hate of unions by a select few seems to be sounding good, but when you actually think about it, it seems sort of backwards to remove the one long standing proof and metaphore that shows the early founders belief in unity and communications as being a needed part of this nations freedoms and national ability to stay connected.
computers are still luxuries for many and most still pay bills.
Keep this service, fix it, fund it, and be happy you can reach all the corners of the world without the private and ideological judgements of a specific corporate "individuals poitical agenda" being used to screen where and who they will deliver to.
Once it is privatized, it is up tp the "free market and those individuals who run it" to decide the locations and costs and the contents they deem OK to handle. They will even be able to use their personal ideologies to determine who can use their services. That's the free market right?
its not just as simple as "I hate junk mail" and the government sucks.......
Many states use it to deliver ballots (absentee) and registrations. (voter disenfranchisment?)
The consistant delivery of your mortgage statements and other bills which will have huge fees attached when you don't get them might be a consideration you want to take into account folks. (not everyone has access to computers, nor should have to )
when your delivery is provatized, do you really think they will care about your late fees?, or will the banks care about them either?
The US postal folks have usually never been mote than a few days despite the worst weather or disaster related events. NO PRIVATE COMPANY will come close for the same low costs. Even if the Post office doubled it's regular rate for first class delivery.
small businesses rely on low cost and local marketing.
and again the poor and the working class suffer the most. (fewer have access to the internet)
The FedEx delivery person LITERALLY runs back to his truck after a package drop-off. The USPS drives into my driveway and then beeps the truck horn until we come get the package.
I am TOTALLY excited about the USPS closing, they have earned it.
Dec 8, 2006: This bill passed in the House of Representatives by voice vote.
Dec 9, 2006: This bill passed in the Senate by Unanimous Consent.
To claim Republicans want to privitize the USPS is ludicrous since the majority live in the less densely populated rural states that would be the most adversely impacted by curtailing delivery or loss of universal service. Republicans value the USPS. Democrats value the postal union PAC contributions. Neither party wants it to fail.
But Congressmen have a dilemna to resolve. The Federal government's current debt problem is even larger than the USPS's. If the USPS is allowed to apply it's previous overpayments in lieu of this year's USPS retirement pre-payment, the Congressional budget will need a tourniquet to stem the gush of red-ink.
The only delievery service the has do well in the last ten years has been Fed-Ex because the Post Office bolstered it revenue by giving it a contract of .7 billion dollars a year for the past 7yrs to fly the Post Offices letters and Parcels. (DHL Also got a 3 billion 5yr contract, when for 4.2 billion the Post Office could have purchased the whole company) The benefit the Post Office recieved in return was a reduction in days of delivery and service because Fed-ex planes do not fly 7 days a week.
The U.S.G has used the Post office to help many bussiness on the verge of failure throughout the years. Chrysler Motors the P.O. Purchased K-Cars to deliver mail. After five years this"fleet" was scrapped do to the poor workmanship of said cars.(LEMONS). IBM/Payless Cashways equiptment purchased to upgrade on all post Offices. Northup-gruman Longlife delivery Veh. purchased to deliver redesigned 10 years. Postal delivery materials sold at retail units are purchased from Hallmark cards at higher prices and after not selling are heavily discounted to clear the way for more items from Hallmark.
At that point the Post Employee was seperated from civil service and a systomatic reduction in services was put in play by the REPUBLICANS against the P.O.
Now however It is time to start busting Up Unions. All congressmen are on board for that!!!
even though the P.O. cannot go on strike and has no large war chest for a strike the fact that it is a union is good enough for most congressmen. Plus now they want the Post Office to do more stupid non-smart by anybody standards operations that will sink the Post Office further in the mud. Enjoy That 1.00 dollar a stamp letter .
I suspect though, after reading about the retirement requirement, I now understand why individual
post masters are treating envelopes larger than a business envelope or anything that cannot be
machine processed as parcels! They're being pressured from above to increase income. What's
happening is that they're causing people to turn to the internet for their incidental mail. And this
started about 2-3 years ago, first in cities and just recently to small towns.
And your "matter of days" baloon is interesting. I have turn-of-the-century post cards with both the
sending and the receiving postmarks. Left a small town in New York state at 9:something A.M. Arrived
in Chicago about 10:something P.M--the same day! I guess their horses were faster than our trucks!
Go figure.
The history of the post office is a strange mix of a sleight-of-hand and sweat-shop enterprises. It can
save itself but it needs outside help to sort through and eliminate stupid rules and regulations. Let the
post office do what it does best, deliver mail, not play politics.
Sad really.
Also, the USPS was the way the government subsidized the airlines in the early days. It used to be that USPS paid peice rate for mail. So the airlines had people hired to write air mail "letters". Then they switched to weight rate, and the airlines hired people to air mail Sears catalgues since the air mail was so heavily subsidized. The mail plane would land, the heavy mail off loaded, then people would re-address the mail and put it back on the plane.
The USPS is responsible for much of the transportation web we have today.