Republicans Slow Mail Delivery Down, Creating another problem solved by Privatization.

What, the mail is late again? Don’t you just hate the post office, another big government failure?

So far nothing has changed the Republican plan to dismantle the U.S. Postal Service. Forcing the post office to fund employee health and pension plans for 75 years in just 10 short years is bankrupting the service. It’s pretty safe to say most Americans don’t know what’s happening, and are unaware of the upcoming service center shutdowns. When they did know (below), they complained.

That’s bad news, because once service delays starts pissing people off, the public will unjustly blame the post office instead of the GOP’s back breaking requirement.

   

No matter what Sen. Tammy Baldwin does to try and right this wrong, Republicans will be proven right; government is bad at delivering mail. Despite the intent of the founding fathers, who included the post office in the constitution, Republicans are okay with getting rid of this guarantee.

After continuing to lose billions of dollars in fiscal 2013, the U.S. Postal Service will move forward with plans to close four processing centers in Wisconsin in 2015. The centers to be shuttered are in Madison, La Crosse, Eau Claire and the Wausau area.  

Funny, I remember back in 2009 when Republican Representatives James Sensenbrenner and Paul Ryan bravely came to the rescue of rural communities and farmers, after they bitterly complained about distribution center closings and the resulting delays of their business mail; products, payments and shipping.  

Milwaukee Journal: As the U.S. Postal Service searches for $2 billion in spending cuts, residents in several Wisconsin communities are objecting to changes at their post offices. Consolidation of mail carriers in Oconomowoc, West Bend, Oak Creek and elsewhere has stirred complaints that mail is being delivered late and that residents feel neglected. In Waukesha, business owners fear that cutbacks in mail collection hours will undermine their ability to conduct business.

Some have found a sympathetic ear in an influential place: their (Republican) congressman. U.S. Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner and Paul Ryan both have intervened successfully on behalf of constituents who were unhappy with planned belt-tightening measures at their post office. In both cases, the Postal Service shelved its plans and re-examined its cost-cutting strategies.

Sensenbrenner ... found the cuts being imposed in southeastern Wisconsin to be too disruptive to customers. "You've got to remind the Postal Service repeatedly that their last name is service," he said.

Republicans Slow Mail Delivery Down in attempt to Anger Public, turn them against Postal Service.

This is a huge story that will someday be used by Republicans to make their final argue; our postal service has got to go private. Their scheme to slow service down, just to anger the public, is obvious. It would also be an important tipping point in their quest to cut government.

If the media doesn't question their motives for slowing delivery down now, than the GOP's intentional poison pill reduction in service will go unnoticed in later debates.

All of this started by making the post office prepay the employee retirement fund 75 years in advance, a $5.5 billion cost per year. Without this outrageous 2006 GOP requirement, the postal service would be making a $1 billion profit this year. So you can see why this is so transparent.

Our tea party pocket constitutionalist apparently don't mind trashing this section written by our "big government" founding fathers of all people. What were they thinking?:

Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".

Anyone see a tea party bus of seniors stopping to protest the nationwide closing of process centers? Didn't think so.

Here's WKOW's coverage a few days back, just before the protests Friday:

WKOW: Thousands of postal workers across the country spent Friday protesting a possible end to overnight mail. The postal workers rallied outside the main post office on Milwaukee Street. USPS is set to close 82 mail processing centers, including one in Madison.

"Our postal service is under attack. Our postal workers are under attack for this community and we don't need to have a distribution center closed down," said SCFL President Kevin Gundlach. "Instead we need to strengthen our postal service. We need to strengthen our public infrastructure." If the consolidation plan goes into effect that would mean all outgoing mail from Madison would be sent to Milwaukee.

Here's Ed Schultz with Mark Dimonstein of the American Postal Workers Union. Union rep or not, the facts are the facts:

Profitable Postal Service struggles under GOP mandate Tammy Baldwin hopes to repeal.

It's always seemed odd to me that people who call themselves "constitutional conservatives" would back efforts to get rid of the constitutionally provided postal service. This irrational hatred for anything having to do with the government, you know-we the people, still doesn't make any sense to me.

One of the real defenders of the constitutional framework designed by our founding fathers is Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin:

WEAU: Half of the U.S. senate, including Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, wants to block a plan to shut down mail processing plants next year … a letter dated August 14 to the heads of a congressional committee and subcommittee on appropriations … calls for a one-year moratorium on the U.S. Postal Service's plans to close up to 82 of the plants. The senators said the moratorium would give Congress time to enact postal reforms they say are needed for the Postal Service to "function efficiently in the future." 

They go on to say that reports about the Postal Service's "supposed financial woes" are misleading, and that the Postal Service has taken in almost $1,000,000,000 more in revenue than it spent since fall 2012.

Dumb Ron Johnson doesn't want to fix the Post Office, he wants to destroy it!!! And Big Business in Wisconsin is Pissed Off.

Tea party zealot Dumb Ron Johnson is starting reveal his true intentions; he didn't go to Washington to fix things, he went there to destroy things. Like the U.S. Postal Service.

I've never understood why conservatives decided they really hated the post office. It's even in the constitution for gods sake. And the odd thing is, Johnson hasn't tried to solve any problems since he took office. That inaction is about to seriously hurt the survival of the Post Office, and private industry is starting to get pissed off. From reporter Matt Pommer:

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is in the political doghouse of Wisconsin's largest industry. At issue are Johnson's tea-party rhetoric and committee votes on postal-reform legislation. Postal votes are a vital issue for the multifaceted mailing industry, which accounts for more than $26 billion in annual economic activity and employs more than 180,000 Wisconsin residents.

The industry warns that ever-increasing mail rates will become a disincentive … The industry had supported an amendment advanced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., that would have retained the existing power of the Postal Regulatory Commission and kept the latest increase as a “temporary” measure.

But Dummy just can’t stop whining about the cost to taxpayers, even though it's not about the taxpayers, yet:

Johnson criticized the Baldwin amendment saying higher rates “could put jobs at risk,” but added, “My job is to protect the American taxpayer.”

Business is getting a taste of being on the receiving end of this ideologically driven Republican Party monster they've financed and create:

Wisconsin's mailing and publishing industry quickly issued a sharp rebuke to Johnson. It issued a public letter signed by top paper and mailing industry executives and officials at 52 newspapers. It noted the mailing industry provides about 90 percent of Postal Service revenue.

“We are confused by your taxpayer statement, considering the fact the Postal Service is funded solely by revenue from postage, most of it paid by mailing customers like us. No taxpayer dollars are used to fund the Postal Service. The real threat to the American taxpayer is allowing the Postal Service to price mailing out of the market, causing steep declines in mail volume that will further destabilize the Postal Service financially and lead to a taxpayer bailout. Postal reform is critical, but only if it accomplishes the goal of encouraging customers to use the Postal Service, which in turn will keep business costs reasonable and protect Wisconsin jobs,” the letter said as the committee prepared for a decision.

We ask that you join your fellow senator from Wisconsin and allow the Postal Service to right-size, innovate, reform health care costs and create a postal system which reflects the 21st century,” it concluded.

Baldwin's plan never got a chance. The committee chair offered a plan that advanced to the floor of the U.S. Senate and that severely limits the power of the Postal Regulatory Commission. Joel Quadracci, chief executive of the printing-industry giant QuadGraphics, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “It will result in reduced mail volumes and further acerbate the Postal Service's financial trouble.”

Well, that doesn't sound like Dumb Ron Johnson is solving the problems of big business either. In fact, Johnson complained about what he will ironically force the taxpayers to do someday:

Johnson's response to the industry letter suggested he hadn't changed his emphasis on the taxpayer. “The Postal Service is on a crash course. If it is not fixed, it will need a taxpayer-funded bailout.”

Pommer ends his piece with this:

There are many elements of the industry, including small, medium and large firms. It includes paper manufacturers, publishers, marketers, catalogers, magazines and newspapers. In Wisconsin, it means a lot of jobs.

Republicans go "Postal" on health benefits for Local Governments. Hey, if it can destroy the Post Office, why not local governments and their employees?

If it worked against the Post Service, it might just do the same to public workers here. Are emergency managers far behind?

Republicans want to dismantle local governments and schools through advanced payments into retirement health care coverage for employees. The strain of such payments will force big cut backs of local communities or the elimination of public schools once and for all.    

WSJ: Republicans who control the state Legislature want local governments and schools to start socking away millions of dollars for employees’ post-retirement health benefits soon after they are hired. But local leaders say their existing “pay-as-you-go” method of budgeting enough each year to cover that year’s costs works just fine, and the proposed new requirements would add crushing costs for decades to come. While Republicans insisted a law is needed to protect workers…

…um, Republicans want to protect workers?

Democrats and local officials said the cost of the GOP proposal would lead to cuts in services while actually forcing the end of such benefits for at least some workers.

The Straw Man Cometh: Solving a problem…where there isn't any. Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt, R-Fond du Lac, who authored the bill has come up with the biggest line of bullshit yet.

“If the employees were promised this, and it was simply removed, you could make a case for saying these employees were cheated,” Thiesfeldt said. “The ones who were cheated were the employees who put their trust in their union leaders to negotiate well for them.” Thiesfeldt pointed to his hometown as a place where such actions may have occurred, but officials there said benefits were reduced, not removed.

Oh boy. This “postal ploy” doesn't seem to be going over well, which is just fine with me.

Standing legislative committees passed the bills on party-line votes Wednesday over objections from the League of Wisconsin Municipalities. “No communities have failed to pay the benefits they promised because of a lack of money,” said Curt Witynski, the league’s assistant director. “The bill is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Pay-as-you-go has been working.” However, the proposed new law could escalate costs enough to force benefit rollbacks for some workers, he said.

Who Cares What it Costs (remember WEDC?). As usual, our bumbling stewards of taxpayer money don't even care how much it costs, because it's a good conservative idea, and because a silly Democrat wanted a cost estimate. That's so funny: 

Thiesfeldt acknowledged that nobody knows how much the bill would cost statewide. Republicans rejected a proposal by Sen. Julie Lassa, D-Stevens Point, for actuarial cost estimates in a few cities. “I believe the goal of this proposed law is to make it so expensive to offer these kinds of retirement benefits that it just won’t be done anymore,” Lassa said.

Brilliant.

Rural Republicans Whine about losing Saturday Deliveries, all the while trying to Destroy the Post Office.

Republicans refuse to let the post office make its own decisions, because the plan is to make them collapse sooner if they’re prevented from doing so. That’s the truth. And forget the constitutional guarantee of the post office. Will it still be a federal crime to commit postal abuses, or will it be just a private internal decision by a for profit company?

The Hill: Sam Graves (R-Mo.) noted in a Wednesday letter to the Postmaster that postal officials had previously asked lawmakers to give them the legal authority to switch to five-day delivery … clear acknowledgement that, absent Congressional action, USPS lacks the statutory authority to do so.”

The change would save about $2 billion a year. USPS lost roughly $16 billion in fiscal 2012, around 70 percent of it due to defaults on required prepayments for retiree healthcare.

That loss is due to the Republican efforts to destroy the post office through outrageous pre-payments to their pension fund.

USA Today: The agency's biggest problem -- and the majority of the red ink in 2012 -- was not due to reduced mail flow but rather to mounting mandatory costs for future retiree health benefits, which made up $11.1 billion of the losses. Without that and other related labor expenses, the mail agency sustained an operating loss of $2.4 billion, lower than the previous year.

Congressional Republicans, who hate the post office and want it closed down, have not taken the responsible steps to stop the ridiculous overpayments. Bellicose as usual:

House Speaker John Boehner called postal overhaul a "pretty difficult" issue, "Congress needs to act. There's no question about that, and I hope that we'll act soon," he said.

"I hope we'll act soon?" Good god.

Even when the post office tries to make sensible money saving changes, guys like Representative James Sensenbrenner and Rep. Paul Ryan stop them cold when their own rural conservative voters complain.

My favorite response comes from Investor Place, where the columnist spews all the Republican privatization talking points, longing for a Dickensian future. "Are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?" 

Since we know Fed Ex and UPS rely on the post office for delivery, I wonder how these two giant services will like daily deliveries. And how will the public like mailing a birthday card at $2 or $3 a pop? Profit, profit, profit:

It’s getting better and better to be a shareholder of Federal Express (NYSE:FDX) and UPS (NYSE:UPS) these days. The U.S. Postal Service will cease delivering first-class mail on Saturdays. You can practically see the ads coming: “They don’t deliver on Saturdays. We do!” … one can see annual results back to 2003 … when the USPS managed a $3.87 billion profit. Since then, that profit dwindled to $900 million in 2006 and then to massive multibillion-dollar annual losses every year thereafter. Defenders will assert that this loss was the result of having to pre-fund employee pensions. First, that’s not the whole truth …

But pre-funding is mostly the “whole truth."

But the worst and most costly thing the post office provides, brings us back to that pre-funding problem ; providing a pension for its workers. Retirement savings? But that’s not profitable.

Second, the fundamental flaw in government-driven businesses is providing taxpayer-funded, defined-benefit pensions to government workers at all. Why should a government worker get a guaranteed pension when private sector workers have to contribute to their own retirement plans?

And we wouldn't want private sector employees putting money away for retirement, would we? Republican voters have bought into that idea, because they hate it when someone has something they don't, even though they should be demanding pensions from their private employers.

Mail to get slower? Thank you Republicans for moving us...forward?

Thanks to the efforts of the Republican Party, we now will be losing distribution centers in Wisconsin. Last time this happened, rural area residents screamed bloody murder and got the attention of their Republican lawmakers, Rep. James Sensenbrenner and Paul Ryan, who put a stop to the closings when customers found out their mail would be day late.

So will that happen this time? Probably.

Again, thanks to the Republicans rabid hatred of the constitutionally created mail system, for forcing them to pay 75 years in advance into their pensions, and breaking their backs.   

WKOW: The U.S. Postal Service is moving several Wisconsin processing and distribution facility operations, including the one in Portage. The Postal Service says Portage mail processing will go to Madison; Kenosha's will be moved to Milwaukee; La Crosse and Eau Claire will be moved to St. Paul, Minnesota; and Wausau's will move to Green Bay. Right now, there is no word on when the consolidations will take place. The retail operations at the facilities will remain open.