[Vision2020] Playing Post Office

Art Deco art.deco.studios at gmail.com
Sat Aug 10 06:44:11 PDT 2013


  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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August 9, 2013
Playing Post Office By GAIL
COLLINS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html>

Today, let’s tackle a big national problem. Something that’s been going on
for so long that everybody’s exhausted and has lost all hope of resolution
in their lifetimes. (Like the baseball career of Alex Rodriguez.)

The Postal Service. Yes! Let’s fix the Postal Service, which lost more than
$15 billion last year. Lately, things have been going better, but we’re
still talking about a problem that’s actually way worse than A-Rod. More
like something between a plague of locusts and a small, localized zombie
invasion.

And it’s not all the management’s fault. You would be losing money, too, if
your core product had been totally undermined by the Internet and you were
required to be a self-supporting business except for the part where each
and every move required special Congressional approval.

For instance, the Postal Service desperately wants to end Saturday
delivery, which would save about $2 billion a year. But, so far, Congress
has balked. Many lawmakers don’t like the idea because six-day delivery is
currently a universal fact, and even fiscal conservatives do not like
eliminating something their constituents *have*.

So our first step in fixing the Postal Service will be to make it clear
that we are not going to vote anybody out of office for giving us five-day
mail. Voters from the right, ask yourself if you really want to be the kind
of people who will cheer for the slashing of food stamp programs but whine
when you are personally deprived of the ability to receive a new Lands’ End
catalog on a Saturday. Voters from the left, just save your energy for the
food stamp fight.

Next stop, retirees. The Postal Service is supposed to deposit $5.5 billion
a year in order to fund future retirees’ health benefits 75 years in
advance. This was an idea cooked up on a dark day during the Bush
administration, possibly by Congressional conferees armed with eyes of newt
and toe of frog. Almost everybody now agrees it went way overboard. Also,
there is no earthly way the Postal Service can afford to do it. Either
Congress is going to have to give up on the idea or allow the entire
operation to implode. So the mission is pretty clear. Discontinue the $5.5
billion deposits and get the accountants to work out a new plan.

Wow, you’ve cut that $16 billion deficit in half! Move over, Paul Ryan.

How about closing some post offices? There are currently 31,272 in the
United States, which is more than the number of McDonald’s, Starbucks and
Walmart stores combined. This idea drives politicians from low-population
areas nuts. The current House bill, which recently came out of committee on
a party-line vote, says that if the Postal Service closes offices, only 5
percent of them can be in rural districts.

“In an urban area you’re not going to be an hour away from another post
office,” says Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the
House subcommittee on postal issues.

You know, he has a point. City folk, rally around the rural 5 percent plan.
In return for which, perhaps Representative Farenthold will hold a press
conference and announce his support of federal Amtrak subsidies for the
Northeast Corridor.

Urban lawmakers, meanwhile, hate the idea of abolishing front-door mail
delivery, and making everyone use curbside mailboxes or those cluster boxes
you see in the front of new housing developments. This is a favorite cause
of House Republicans, but even the Postal Service management isn’t really
pushing it right now. Take the five-day delivery thing and count your
blessings, guys.

Finally, we have New Business Ventures. And, once again, we are in awe of
what the Postal Service needs Congressional permission to do. One of the
big proposals bopping around Congress this year would permit mail shipment
of beer and wine. Right now this is illegal because there was once, you
know, Prohibition.

“It would generate an estimated $50 million a year,” said Representative
Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who is pushing the idea in the House.

Some lawmakers have expressed concern about the problem of kids attempting
to skirt age regulations on the purchase of alcohol. This presumes that a
group of 17-year-olds in search of a forbidden drink have an extremely high
capacity for delayed gratification.

Let’s allow the Postal Service to ship wine. We have just eliminated
another two days’ worth of deficit!

There are lots of other reasonable ideas bopping around, and all those days
could eventually add up. For instance, Speier, whose district suffered a
terrible gas explosion a few years back, says there’s technology that would
allow postal trucks to carry a small machine that would test neighborhoods
for gas leaks as the carriers complete their appointed rounds.

On a lighter note, Congressional staffers have wondered if the trucks
couldn’t deliver mail from one side and sell ice cream from another.
Really, anything that gets you through another day.




-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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