Postal Service losses continue (Grrrrr)

[No Elephants]

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- The U.S. Postal Service's financial struggles continued into 2012, as the agency reported a $5.2 billion loss for the three months ended June 30 despite improved revenue from shipping and packaging.

The service said declining volume in the type of mail that most Americans use and a congressional mandate to prefund retirement health care benefits continued to cause deep losses.

ut the Postal Service also reported 9% growth in revenue from shipping and packaging, which brought in an extra $3.3 billion -- although that was not enough to offset other losses. The $5.2 billion net loss was worse than $3.1 billion loss posted during the same period in 2011.

First-class mail -- the kind most Americans use to mail letters and pay bills -- took another hit in the latest quarter, with volume falling 4.4% from the previous quarter.

And the health care funding mandate, a $5.5 billion tab that was due to the federal government on Aug. 1 --but did not get paid -- continued to drag on the Postal Service's balance sheets. The service defaulted on that payment and will default on another $5.6 billion payment due Sept. 30, unless Congress steps in.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/06/news/economy/postal-service/index.htm?iid=HP_LN&hpt=hp_t3

So, ACA put yet another burden on the Post Office?

Which other entity, public or private, has had to fund the pension obligations to its employees for 75 years in advance in order to exist? And also beg to raise its rates.

Has the WH done that for the President, the Vice President all their staffers? Has Congress? Has the Food and Drug Administration?

My mail carrier told me that he had earned one pension and was working on his second when Reagan said no government employess would be getting two pensions. So, his first pension was blown away. Now this.

Now, he is much older that he was in Reagan's day and he looks so tired and stressed every time I see him, I could cry.

[Enthusiast]

1. Republicans have had designs on the USPS for thirty years!

The dumbest group of American voters would be that group of postal workers that would vote Republican. They might be "pro-life" or NRA supporters. But most of all, they're not so bright.

[No Elephants]

2. Not only Republicans, my friend.

It was bipartisan legislation.

Waxman was a co-sponsor. I believe both Kennedy and Kerry voted for it, or so says a DU post. I did not check that myself.

And Obama filled a vacancy on the Postal Commission with the chief architect of the 2006 postal "reform" legislation. (Watch out for the word 'reform' anymore.) As a reaction, the postal workers union paper carried an article asking Obama what he was doing.

Link to that article is in this post of mine. (Reply 68). http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=5079858&mesg_id=5080212



See the thread generally. It's very enlightening.

We need to shift our paradigm about who is doing what to whom in this country these days. The DLC changed EVERYthing.

It's a brave new world, Miranda.

[Enthusiast]

3. Okay. But it was a Republican idea to privatize

the USPS for thirty years before the Democrats decided to act like Republicans. I do not like fake Democrats.

[No Elephants]

4. Are you sure it was only a Republican idea, even thirty years ago?

I used to think the idea for charter schools was a Repubicanoidea. Turned out, it came from the Democrats and the Republicans quickly jumped on the bandwagon. Now, it's hard to tell who is in the foreground on that one.

I don't like fake Democrats, either. However, there are many in the Party today who would say that my kind of Democrat is the fake kind. Just ask Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, and, in some moments of candor and frustation, even Obama. There is a reason they call themselves New Democrats.