Reality Bites…
The tocsin has been sounding for a while now.
A Government agency is undergoing a reality check.
The current mail system of the United States is “no longer financially sustainable,” and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is looking for billions of dollars in cuts to its services.
The postal service announced Thursday it was considering closing nearly 250 processing facilities, cutting equipment by 50 percent and slowing mail delivery in an extreme cost-cutting effort. It is looking for $3 billion in annual savings.
Wouldn’t be my first choice, but I’m hoping the noise will begin to include others.
I doubt it, the USPS seems to be the only agency which has been so exposed?
Category: Geezer Alert!, Politics
Allow the USPS to file for bankruptcy. Once that happens, then they can renegotiate all the union contracts, or, preferably, become a non-union shop. That will solve the lion’s share of their current financial problems.
Email. On line Bill Pay. They had to have seen this coming for a decade and a half or so. If it were a public company, its stock price would have been punished severely by investors who observed that they had Zero proactive reaction to what would eat into the major portion of their revenue stream.
Which would have forced them to take action.
But since they are on the government/union IV drip, they wait until armageddon arrives. Which describes Every facet of government run operations. Amtrak, etc. Why people want government to handle anything beside page boys and hookers is stunning.
We don’t have buggy whip manufacturers anymore for a reason.
The USPS can still provide a service…but it needs to face reality.
The only reason its been made public is because it the one true Point of Service Fee the public pays as a consumer. All others are hidden in withholdings the public sees but doesn’t truly feel.
I’m all for shutting it down and letting UPS, FedEx, and whoever else wants to fill the void step up to the plate.
I suppose the irony of the USPS woes, a government run program, is lost on the vast majority of supporters of the other socialist/entitlement/welfare programs.
Until UPS, FedEx or any other entity will pick up my letter at my house and deliver it anywhere in the US or, with the help of the military postal service, to anywhere that the US military happens to be tha day, including aboard ships at sea and in combat zones, there will always be a need for the USPS. that people whined about paying just a few pennies for that service has always irritated me.
We need the Postal Service, but we don’t need the enormously bloated union shop and pension mill that it’s become. Trim the fat from it. Stick to first class and lesser classes of mail and leave the overnight stuff for FedEx, et al; that’s why they exist.
And damn it, get those postal workers back in uniform where they belong. Put the pride back in and dismiss those who won’t conform.
Here’s an idea–how about charging the fuckers who mail all that junk mail shit full freight? That might be a start.
@NHSparky – That’s my biggest problem with the USPS. The taxpayers are subsidizing companies/groups/etc to send us garbage we didn’t ask for and in most cases do not want. And these direct mailing entities are allowed to pay a lower postal rate than you and I, for the purpose of spamming our mailboxes.
Amen NHSparky, junk mail is 99% of my postal mail. It doesn’t get a look, it goes directly into the trash.
Those people who wanted the government to buy and run private corporations, should have looked at how the government runs the USPS. Of course, it is not meant to be a profit maker, its a constitutional mandate.
You might be interested to know that Netflix is the USPS’ number one customer. And, I don’t think that they’re paying the full shot on mailers and and movies. I found that little nugget attending hearings on post office closings.
And, if government construction projects are any indication, I’d bet that USPS is the same way, one guy feeding the sorting machine, and seven or eight supervisors, all unionized, of course, telling him how he’s doing it the wrong way, before they go for coffee.
Get rid of the Government monopoly of the mail. Open it to competition (UPS, FedEx, etc). Get rid of the union fat. If need be, let the USPS go under.
I’m with AW1 Tim and UpNorth on this one.
my understanding is that Congress has hobbled the PO so much they can’t react to changing circumstances. Congress knows best, right?
Right, Play nice, look how well it worked out for the home mortgage business, and anything else they touch.
Listen guys, you forget something-
BOTH UPS and FedEx are union-controlled as well. Ever hear of the TEAMSTERS?
Go ask a driver who really pushes their paycheck. That would be the unions.
The USPS serves a purpose- recall that it USED TO BE a gov’t agency- but in its heyday, it was seen as being self-sufficient so it was ‘cut loose’ so it could be prevented from being raped by the rest of gov’t for the cash cow it was.
I have plenty of family in the USPS- I know it far better than you would expect. Does it need overhauled? Oh HELLZ yes.
Expunged? Not by half.
Mr. Wolf, last I read, Fed-Ex is not union, but UPS is. That may have changed but when the R’s took the House, they killed the bill that would have allowed the Teamsters and James “Take those sons of bitches out” Hoffa to set their work rules, and make unionization easier. And, Sen. Rockefeller, D-WVA, said he won’t insert what the Teamsters want into any bill anytime soon.
The USPS has never been a money maker. It was never intended to be.