Comments

1
Thank you for the accurate reporting. Srsly.
2
Let the USPS die already. It's 2014 and there's zero need for it anymore and it's been surpassed in product offerings, speed and price for decades. Stop supporting daily recycling/trash at your front-door.
3
You have to hand it to the GOP for their tactics here, and slap the D's around for their usual craven failure to respond in kind. In the comments to that old ThinkProgress piece, Richard Thompson, a "Top Commenter" from Akron, OH, fumes:
Could the fact that the postal workers are unionized have something to do with Republican opposition to postal workers? What company has to pay 75 years of advance pension payments? The Postal Serivce is paying for employees they haven't even hired yet!
To which "purplek_1" bays in harmony: "The Postal Serivce [sic] is paying for employees they [sic] haven't even BORN yet!"

Sponsored by Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), co-sponsored by one other R and two shithead D's, passed in the House by voice vote and Senate by "unanimous consent," so no record of individual votes in either case, and signed into law by Shrub.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/1…
4
@ 2, bullshit.
5
Fuck Congress. I <3 USPS. I always put extra stamps on the things I mail as a small show of support.

There is need for it, at least here in Alaska where nobody else has figured out or cares to figure out how to do things quickly and cheaply.
6
@2:

Clearly, you don't operate a business. For general mailing & delivery (and I'm not talking about junk mail here, just regular old-fashioned correspondence) USPS is still the best deal out there.
7
Not just "future employees" -- future employees WHO HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN BORN YET. Benefits must be fully funded 75 -- that's seventy-five -- years into the future, thanks to Republican scumbags.

@2, sadly for you and your Republican bullshit masters, the Post Office is a rare government program that is specifically mentioned by name in the Constitution.
8
Anyone who thinks there is "no need" for the postal service needs to move out of their parent's home and start living their own life.

9
The assault on USPS sickens me. Thank you Rob!
10
Ben Gibbard should be ashamed of himself!
11
A recap, for the comprehension-impaired:
1) The USPS is mandated by law to engage in a bunch of practices that are inefficient or bad business, but probably good for society. These include Saturday Delivery, delivery everywhere, flat rates even if you're transporting something from deep in a Kentucky holler to an isolated outpost in the Aleutians, and small post offices all over the place. Also, paying a decent wage.
2) The USPS is prevented by law from engaging in many other complementary business practices - for example, banking and money transfers, or using their immense network of small post offices to sell dry goods.
3) The USPS cannot set their own rates for their services, and the prices they charge are incredibly low. In particular, they are required to subsidize the delivery of magazines and certain forms of junk mial.
4) Even so, the USPS made almost a $4 billion operating profit this last year - until you factor in that Congress has required them to pre-fund the retirement benefits of USPS employees who have not yet been born. This is a practice not followed by any private business, and not followed by the Congress in other areas (imagine for example if we had to come up with as a lump sum the $2 trillion it will cost to care for veterans of the Iraq war and to replace equipment used up there).
12
They should allow people to open and use USPS savings accounts without fees to deposit pay checks and withdraw cash in places without a credit union branch

Just the Social Security deposits alone will make that worthwhile.
13
2 billion whole dollars?

That's enough for like one entire fighter plane for the Air Force. Or, almost.

What a terrible waste.
14
@11, that's a great analysis.
15
The USPS should be a national bank. No fees/no frills accounts for check cashing, change making, and sending/receiving money orders.
16
@5 I live in Chicago and USPS is the only reliable way for me to get packages. UPS and FedEx are worthless if you live in a gated complex.
A few months back I left a note BEGGING FedEx to just leave a package outside my gate. No dice. I had to wait for days while they repeatedly tried to deliver it at times when no one with a job would have a hope of receiving it and then go out of my way to go pick it up.
17
Conservatives are like children who misuse a toy until it breaks and then complain that their toy doesn't work anymore.

/paraphrasing something Jon Stewart said
18
@17 no, conservatives are much worse. the post office is mentioned in the CONSTITUTION, the one document that conservatives claim to support. Yet they deliberately saddle and destroy the very government the constitution would have them defend.
19
@2 Some of us still get paychecks in the mail because our employer(s) don't do direct deposit. Fuck off with your silly nonsense.
20
I am dealing long distance with Mother Vel-DuRay's estate, and I can tell you the USPS is not only amazingly more affordable for all of those dreary documents the lawyers send, but also much more reliable.

The attorney sent the first batch of documents via FedEx. FedEx cannot find Chez Vel-DuRay (in part because they scabbed out all of their residential delivery drivers) and the package bounced between Iowa and Seattle twice. I finally told them they have to send stuff certified mail (the mailman can find the house every day) and I have had no problems since - and I made sure that lawyer took the charge for the original FedEx off his bill.
21
Bring back the pony express!
22
Why do Republicans hate the Constitution? You'd think they could read at least the first article. "The Congress shall have power . . . To establish post offices and post roads . . . ." art. I, sec. 8. But the Republicans are all about slavers like George Washington and not so hot on Quakers like Benjamin Franklin.

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