Cross posted from The Book of Cletis
Note from Cletis: The Post Office is in the news again and this is a good time to reprint this excellent piece showing what the real story is behind the headlines. Republicans, who want to destroy unions through privatization efforts so they may complete the return to a feudal society, are constantly decrying the inefficiency of postal workers. That's a lie! It's a ruse and they have so hamstrung the Post Office they are on the verge of succeeding. Read this from Motivatedinohio and tell me these pension funding requirements make any sense.
In 2006, the Republican Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed into law, a bill called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. This bill sounds nice but, in truth, it is a brazen attempt to privatize the post office.
Note from Cletis: The Post Office is in the news again and this is a good time to reprint this excellent piece showing what the real story is behind the headlines. Republicans, who want to destroy unions through privatization efforts so they may complete the return to a feudal society, are constantly decrying the inefficiency of postal workers. That's a lie! It's a ruse and they have so hamstrung the Post Office they are on the verge of succeeding. Read this from Motivatedinohio and tell me these pension funding requirements make any sense.
In 2006, the Republican Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed into law, a bill called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. This bill sounds nice but, in truth, it is a brazen attempt to privatize the post office.
The bill requires the Post Office to fund their retirement plan a full seventy-five years into the future and, to make matters worse, the requisite funds must be set aside by 2016. In other words when future employees hired in 2026 retire at 65, funding for their retirement must be in place ten years before they're born. No other government agency has to do this.
Every year, since 2006, the Post Office has put billions of dollars into the treasury but, five years later, because of this onerous funding requirement things are getting tight. I just finished watching an interview on Democracy Now where one man kept talking about selling off the property of the post office to pay for this bizarre policy.
The Post Office has always been a great American success story. It is self-funding so no taxpayer dollars are spent. It services out-of-the-way areas, that for-profit companies refuse to service because it is not cost effective to do so. The Post Office is even mentioned in the Constitution of the United States (Article I, Section 8, Clause 7).
The Post Office has always been a great American success story. It is self-funding so no taxpayer dollars are spent. It services out-of-the-way areas, that for-profit companies refuse to service because it is not cost effective to do so. The Post Office is even mentioned in the Constitution of the United States (Article I, Section 8, Clause 7).
To undermine the Post Office with this poison pill to make it appear privatization is a better option, is inexcusable and shows where Republican policies take us. If we let them do this, is any program safe?
