If you are still somehow alive after tonight’s episode of “Which Escaped Mental Patient Will Lead America to Hell?” then, well, congratulations, and also you should know that while you were being hypnotized by Michele Bachmann’s laser eyes and reading about it on the Internet, you were also helping to murder the U.S. Postal Service.
The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs.
Facing a second year of losses totaling $8 billion or more, the agency also wants to pull its workers out of the retirement and health benefits plans covering federal workers and set up its own benefit systems.
Congressional approval would be needed for either step and both could be expected to face severe opposition from postal unions which have contracts that ban layoffs.
The post office has cut 110,000 jobs over the last four years and is currently engaged in eliminating 7,500 administrative staff.
But the loss of mail to the Internet and the decline in advertising caused by the recession have rocked the agency.
Oh well, when Herman Cain turns us into the United States of Pizza all of those Post Office people can bring us our cheesesticks and monkey bread, problem solved. [Politico]
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"when Herman Cain turns us into the United States of Pizza all of those Post Office people can bring us our cheesesticks and monkey bread,"
Can't the pizza people bring our mail while delivering our pizza instead of the mail people bringing us pizza?
You joke, but I'm pretty sure that Tim Pawlenty suggested that during the debate tonight. Privatization rules!!!!
We guarantee to deliver your mail in 30 minutes or less!
But who will deliver our "packages" in the plain brown wrappers?
Herman Cain in a pizza delivery uniform…
Needz moar upfists!!1!!!
Bow-chicka-wow-wow.
The folks who are already doing it: Amazon.
Maybe they'll replace the Postal Service: your first class mail delivered free with every $25 order. (No order, no mail, but that shouldn't inconvenience too many of us.)
One good thing about the Post Office — it's over 200 years old
and yet it's never been hindered by progress.
Theodore John Kaczynski does not approve of this.
What is the NRA's position on this?
That postal service should only be used to transport guns across state lines? Also, why not arm all carriers, you commie pussies. What's the worst that could happen?
FIX THE ECONOMY BY FIRING GOVERNMENT WORKERS!!!!!
The main plank of the Tea Bagger Party Presidential Platform.
I guess stamps make nice stickers..
The food stamps these former employees will be on? Not so much.
How the hell will people get their Social Security checks and their Hovaround batteries???????? Huh?
Does UPS and FedEx REALLY want to deal with the 20 million people selling cat ornaments on Ebay????
An acquaintance of mine worked for one of the big delivery / logistics companies, and actually did the calculations to work out what'd cost to take over a national postal service. Basically, there's no way to do it economically.
No and as private companies they're not obligated to deliver to places they don't want to. The post office is like public schools–they have to take everyone while the fancy pants private schools claim they do a better job after they exclude any child deemed a problem.
Let's see how the whiners in Teabagistan deal without any carrier/parcel service, whatsoever.
Of course, they could just increase the cost of postage. But just firing everyone seems perfectly reasonable…
I never got why they didn't just up stamp prices a nickel or dime at a time if they needed to instead of all this 2 cents bullshit every year. Just raise the price to 50 or 75 cents and be done with it for a few years. People would gladly pay that if it meant some certainty and keeping your post office open.
I believe rate changes require Congressional approval, Not sure.
I'm pretty sure they do, but the USPS requests the rates, and they routinely requests the smallest of increases. I guess it's to make it more likely to pass Congress, but they should have been more bold, because if they were, we wouldn't even be talking about 100,000+ jobs being lost.
They do, which is precisely why things are so fucked up. Ditto for Amtrak getting anything done properly. And with the teabagger morons in Congress pushing the Somalia model of government, it's only going to get worse.
I worked in a contract postal unit for 6 years and remember when they first introduced flat rate boxes. There was this guy who would come in often w/ the medium box (roughly 8" x 11" and 6 inches deep) weighing 68 pounds–weight limit was 70#. I have no idea what the hell was in there, I just knew it wasn't liquid, perishable, blah blah blah. Every time he came in with one of those, he saved like 50 or 60 bucks over the cost of shipping it in a regular box. I don't give a shit either way, just saying from a revenue standpoint, decisions like that coupled with an increase in e-correspondence really bit them in the ass.
Heh–I know first-hand that an entire Harley-Davidson engine can be shipped in 3 of those boxes.
I always wondered if he was sending engine parts.. I could barely lift the damn thing!
I bought pachinko balls a few months ago that were shipped flat rate. The thing must have weighed 20lbs.
Pachinko!! I got a pachinko machine for xmas when I was a kid.. Fond memories.
Damn. I'll shaddup–must be the booze talkin'..
I just got a modern one for my birthday this year. My sister and brother-in-law got it for me at a auction for my nieces school. Really cool and Japanese. I would love to get an old one now to go with it.
Used to be time when "Made in Japan" meant crap and "China" was fine… don't mean nuthin'… just noticed it.
This is good news for the shippers of 8"x11" concrete blocks.
If all those postal workers worked for minimum wage like everyone else who still has a job there would be no problem.
Well, it'd be a start. Then we eliminate the atheist/communist minimum wage.
Kids don't need more 'n three years of schoolin – then they can use them readin skills to sort letters.
Sorry to be serious, but one thing USPS does that Fedex and UPS don't is deliver mail to remote areas. And in a reasonable time and at a reasonable price.
Honestly, every time I hear someone use the Post Office to bash government, as in "So you want healthcare run like the post office?" my first thought is, fuck yeah. Because he idea that for less than 50 cents I can send a letter from Georgia to my sister in Alaska and have it get there in three days is pretty fucking amazing. And quite a bargain at double that price. Privatized mail through Fedex costs a shitload more.
And no, I don't work for the Post Office.
Customers like you were the best!!
I only send stuff using USPS. We had a family friend growing up that worked for the USPS, knew how hard she worked, which made using it all the more satisfying. Never got the USPS bashing; it just never made any actual sense given our knowledge of the work and our experience with it.
This is one of those :How dare you use facts?" comments, isn't it?
BTW, to quantify "shitload" — sending an ordinary letter somewhere by FedEx costs about FORTY times as much as sending it by USPS.
Eliminate the USPS? The good news: no more junk mail. The bad news: no more birthday/get-well/engagement/sympathy/etc cards, or, you know, letters.
I don't work for the USPS either.
They also hit every mailing address in the country to pick-up drop-off 6 days a week.
The USPS is a bargain.
Yeah, and to further piss off the Tea Baggers be sure to mention that both UPS and Fed Ex employees belong to a union.
I'd be thrilled if my current(private sector) health care coverage was as efficient as the USPS and all I had to do was buy stamps and give them a gift card at Christmas.
If the Postal Service goes out of business, will that mean that no one will "go postal" anymore?
They'll have to "go fedex".
Yeah, but you'd have a shitload of people going ex-postal.
The Postman will stop ringing twice.
I've never understood all the hatin' on the PO. I've never NOT gotten anything I ordered and everything I've ever sent – even overseas – has been delivered. Never even a lost letter or payment.
The intertubes is nice and all, but letter writing (and now the skool kidz aren't even gonna learn how to make the pretty letterz all connected and stuffs) is another lost art. Pity – all around.
But wait, why have I've been paying that five cent tax on every email I send then? I better contact the people in Nigeria who have been collecting it to find out what happened.
None of this would have happened had the Fat Elvis stamp won the vote.
Just to remind everyone, Article I, Section 8, U.S. Constitution:
The Congress shall have Power . . .
To establish Post Offices and post Roads
There you go again with your facts. Just because the post offices are established doesn't mean we need to keep paying for them …
Too bad they stuck in the words "have Power to".
Ben Franklin was a womanizing atheist! Boo this man, spurn his initiative!
"The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs."
Finally a good reason to go postal.
I assume the Republicans are for cutting the postal service because they think it's responsible for food stamps.
Have you ever been to a post office? Seen the kind of people who work there? I'm not saying there's anything wrong them but they tend to be very urban environments.
Don't you go messing with their TV Guide and Readers Digest deliveries. Teabaggers unite! Getting rid of cheap postal delivery is socialism.
as much as i sympathize with the workers,, the postal service is unsustainable anyway
either they improve their business model or they will go kaput
Government services don't have a "business model". (Try coming up with a profitable food stamp program.) The government's job is to do what private business can't… like deliver mail and packages to every address in the country.
No snark, those numbers beinging thrown around in that excerpt are staggering. You keep fucking that chicken, America.
Really, this is good news for Walmart. Here's another batch of formerly unionized workers that you can pay $5/hr with no benefits and label them part-time while calling them back in for work when things get busy (so, really, a full-time job) and threatening to terminate if they don't.
OMG, Blair. You just said "Herman Cain" and "monkey bread" in the same sentence!
"Herman Cain" and "monkey bread" in the same sentence? You racist bastards! Wait the folks on Redstate get a-holt of this outrage!
DEMOCRATIC PLANTATION!!!!!
“Which Escaped Mental Patient Will Lead America to Hell?”
And with that BB, I think you're ready for the bigs.
How come is it that Democrats always want to keep robust government services like the postal service and train access that Republitards always want to dismantle when it is the Conservatives who live in those sparsely-populated, rural areas that cannot support viable postal and train systems through the free market? I am tempted to say, "Fuck 'em."
Ah yes. If you listen closely to teabaggers, they are almost always arguing against their own interests. Let's call it altruism for suckers.
Or meanspirited bullshit by people who believe they're worthy of their government assistance, but everyone else is a worthless POS.
Let's just sell all the postal delivery routes to Capital One. Thats the majority of the mail I get each day.
Jesus Christ I think Capital One and the local cable company are single handed keeping the local postal branch open.
I get something in the mail from Direct TV every week. No snark.
But without the USPS how will I get my Netflix delivered? The good stuff isn't instant view yet!
We all have to make sacrifices in this artificially created recession. If you have a cell phone or prescriptions perhaps you could cancel them and just pay the $12.95 per disc for UPS delivery.
FREEDUM MARKET RULES!!!
Poor people don't get Netflix.
To paraphrase an episode of Futurama, "Nobody goes to the post office, the lines are too long."
Anyway, for a good time, go search the web for "usps overpayment" to find yet another Bush legacy screwing us over.
And laying off people is all you can do when it's illegal to close a post office solely for underperforming. Getting Congress to close a post office is up there with getting them to close a military base, except that Congress doesn't have to worry about paying the people who work there.
Came up from the ghetto with the help of my stiletto
Every day I hear the people groan:
Why should we buy postage stamps?
We can make our own ♫
Stop subsidizing junk mail and stop Saturday deliveries and you've accomplished a lot in fixing this. But no, we want to destroy everything and make everything "business friendly."
United States of Pizza??? I wonder what toppings my state will have? Bible, gator meat, hanging chads, swamp mud and voldemort?
Don't forget spec housing and NASCAR.
sadly a majority of postal workers are right-wingers. the union will be next, then pension and benfits to the already retired. you get what you vote for.
Is there some way the postal service can deliver mbs of hawt tranny porn instantaneously? If not, I guess it's time to pack up.
I have a PO Box in the smallest town in Georgia, a nice l5 mile ride up the Interstate from my home. It costs me $35 a year, I have 24-7 Access to it and the tiny customer service counter is never crowded. Free boxes are left out at all times, just fold and tape shut. I gave the clerk two quarters yesterday and had something delivered to Bumfuck, Oklahoma and got change back. Private, secure, cheap and friendly. Like a sore dick, you can't beat it.
I live in the "suburbs" of a small town (okay, the town I would be in, if it still existed, burned down 80 years or so ago and they never rebuilt, so now it's just the woods outside of the teeming metropolis of Trinidad, all 300 people, and I'm not giving up my wonderful P.O. box, dammit! I'm guessing we're huge compared to Georgia's smallest town. Population-wise, not girth-wise.
Gotta love that southern cooking: greasing the skids all the way to the grave.
I gotta ask…..are the people around where you live right-wing crazies? I lived in rural Mississippi and WOW it was scary sometimes…..it made me wonder if Americans in general were as insane and ignorant as many of the people in rural MS were.
These poor clods wake up in the morning hating all things Barry, badmouth him at every opportunity and go to bed praying he dies a quick but painful death of Ass-Cancer. Yes, they are (95% of them) fucking Rightards. I am barely tolerated because everybody knows I go armed and I'm a documented shooter. It is a shame.
A 2006 bill pushed by Repubs intent on restricting the outfit for the audacity of having unions, legislated the USPS into an unmanageable and unsustainable pension scheme and is the real culprit here…
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