Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Forced Between a Rock and a Hard Place II

Trey Smith


Today we're taking a look at the article, The Postal Service Outrage, by Dave Johnson of The Campaign for America's Future. In a previous post, we looked at Bullet Point #1.
Bullet Point #2: Republicans have been pushing schemes to privatize the Postal Service since at least 1996. In 2006 Republicans in the Congress pushed through a requirement that the Postal Service pre-fund 75 years of retiree costs. The Postal Service has to pay now for employees who are not even born yet. No other government agency – and certainly no company – has to do this.
Have you ever heard of anything so insane? You want to talk about a strategy to undermine an enterprise, this has got to be it. By itself, it hamstrings the US Postal Service (USPS).

Take away this one mandate and the so-called crisis virtually disappears. This one mandate is the chief reason the USPS operates at a deficit. Without this crazy mandate, the USPS would be in the black.

Imagine if Congress had issued this same mandate to the branches of our armed forces. You think war is expensive now? It would be off the charts!

Come to think of it, wouldn't it be nice if the military-industrial complex had to meet this mandate even halfway? As it is, our soldiers are underpaid while in service and basically ignored afterwards. Since any war theater can mess with the minds of our service personnel, not to mention the physical injuries they may incur, having a strong retirement system would help our soldiers as they deal with unemployment, mental issues and medical costs.

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