Postal Service Is Nearing Default

- As Losses Mount

by Steven Greenhouse - September 4th, 2011 - New York Times

The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances. “Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”

The solution is easy, but will not be tolerated politically. The following is all that is needed:

-Stop giving free mail to incumbent legislators (called franking privilege).
-Stop giving deep discounts to advertisers and bulk mail scams.
-Stop delivering flyers with no address on them.
-Increase automation and technology.
-Ban unions and feather bedding work rules that leave customers lined up in cues waiting for lazy employees who do not care.
-Cut salaries and benefits to reasonable limits commensurate with private employers.
-Stop hiring twice as many blacks and other minorities as the percent of their population would justify while rejecting more qualified whites.
-Fire some of the incompetents.

The postal service is mismanaged because it is a political patronage farce.

However that is exactly why it will never be fixed by any of these rational solutions. What will actually be done is to tax the people to cover up the corruption and bailout the unions, just as they did with Fannie Mae,Freddie Mac, General Motors and Chrysler. They will also tax email to cover up their losses. No way will they ever stop wasting billions on fat salaries, excessive management waste or arrogant lazy workers.

What is sad is that there are many good dedicated Post Office workers, even though only a small percentage of the work force. They get maligned because the system in which they work is such a joke and their co-workers are so bad.