USPS – The Burning Platform

BEND OVER

What would we do without these dedicated union drones? I guess we need to rework the famous description of our noble letter carriers:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, but bending over is out of the question.

Are you tired of getting bent over by government union workers yet?

Hat tip BostonBob

Postal Service Halts Deliveries to Low Mail Slots Forcing Workers to Bend Over

by William Bigelow

Some residents in Borough Park in New York City are irate with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) because their service has been halted due to their low-set mail slots, according to the New York Daily News.

The postal service claims the slots are dangerous for their carriers and, as a result, the residents have to stand in lines an hour long at the 51st St. post office, many of them trying to pick up badly-needed medicines or their Social Security checks.

The residents of 46th Street were alerted to the change in their service by a letter from a postal service customer service manager arriving on August 21. The manager wrote, “My carrier has brought to my attention of his safety and I can’t afford for him to get injured. We are not trying to cause any unnecessary expense but we need this corrected.”

Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Borough Park) was furious, calling the halt in service “insane.” Hikind asked, “Whatever happened to the post office delivering your mail in snow, sleet, hurricane?” He joined other elected officials to urge the USPS to resume its normal activities.

One 35-year resident of the neighborhood, Necha Altman, said she never had a problem getting her mail before through the slot at the bottom of her door. Once she got the letter warning of a change in service, she put new mailboxes on the wall, but the mail carrier balked because the new location required him to walk up nine steps. Altman said, “He’s not thinking of us. He’s thinking of himself.”

Dr. Hemlata Parmar joined her neighbors to discuss the issue with their postal carrier, but the carrier was apparently quite upset. Parnar said, “He started screaming and yelling at me.”

USPS INCREASES REVENUE BY 2% & EXPENSES BY 9% – GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY AT ITS FINEST

The U.S. Post Office seems to have this efficiency thing a little backwards. Revenue is supposed to expand at a faster rate than expenses. Of course, your feckless Congressional puppets blocked the USPS from closing money losing post offices that would have saved $2 billion per year, because they might lose a few votes. I wrote a little ode to the Post Office a little over a year ago that drew a bunch of clueless trolls.

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2013/04/13/the-great-postal-fraud/

The clueless dolts who believe the USPS is not a government agency also believed Freddie and Fannie weren’t part of the US government. The USPS is on track to lose $8 billion this year. They have a cumulative deficit of $47 billion. Business organizations in the real world with negative net worth of $47 billion declare bankruptcy. They don’t operate in the real world, but the surreal world of Congressional oversight.

Their volumes will continue to decline. Someone forgot to tell them about the digital age. Their solution will be to increase prices while delivering poor service. That’s a can’t miss business plan. They will default on their pension payment obligation on September 30. You the taxpayer will be on the hook, even though the USPS is not a government agency. So it goes.

US Postal Service: Over $47 Billion In Losses In The Past Decade And Counting

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/11/2014 12:09 -0400

Curious what pure, unadulterated government efficiency in practice, if not in theory, looks like? Then the following chart of USPS operating profits, pardon, losses over the past decade should be sufficient. The punchline: having generated revenues of nearly $700 billion in the past 40 quarters, the USPS has been bleeding red ink more or less consistently since 2006, and has now generated just over $47 billion in operating losses over the past ten years.

It gets better.

From the WSJ: “The USPS said its total liabilities were $67.16 billion at the end of the period, compared with $23.16 billion in assets.”

That means the net capital deficiency, or “cost”, to keep the USPS alive, amounts to some $44 billion as of this moment (which includes $3.1 billion in contributions from the US government and a $47 billion deficit since the 1971 reorganization).

Continuing: “The Postal Service reached its $15 billion credit limit with the Treasury Department in 2012. Under law, the USPS must pay its own way. It doesn’t receive an annual taxpayer subsidy, but is reimbursed by Congress for some services such as delivering mail to the blind and overseas voters. The agency is saddled with a congressional mandate that requires it to prefund more than $5.5 billion annually for health benefits for future retirees. The service said Monday that it won’t be able to make its required $5.7 billion payment by Sept. 30.”

In other words, more pension accruals that will never be paid out until, finally, the administration has no option but to make the payment on behalf of the postal service (thank you PBGC).

Finally, one may ask: why doesn’t this bloated, anachronistic, money-losing zombie just go away and make way for the far more efficient and nimble private sector? After all, there are countless companies which could step in and do what the USPS does for a fraction of the cost?

Simple. The answer: