Bend over folks. It is happening again. The American people are being screwed.
I apologize for the descriptive words used. However, I want there to be no doubt about what is about to be reported.
TV, the radio and newspapers will be redundant today with the announcement of the possible failure of the U.S. Post Office. The Post Office has a $5.5 billion payment due wednesday and a $5.6 billion payment due in September. It will not be able to meet either. Unless of course there is a Congressional bailout.
How did this crisis come about?
There is no question e mails, Federal Express and other new methods of communication have had their effect on the Post Office. But not to the extent as another cause. The major cause!
The Republican Congress in 2006 passed legislation that Bush 2 signed into law. It was the Postal Accountability & Enhancement Act. It requires the United States Postal Agency to pay $103.7 billion into a fund. The purpose of the fund was to pay health benefits of Postal retirees for seventy five years. You read it correctly! The law compels the post office to prepay retiree health benefits for seventy five years.
As such, the law requires the prefunding for people not yet even in the employ of the Postal Service. Perhaps not yet even born.
The most egregious part of the legislatioon is the time frame within which the $103.7 billion is to be paid. Payment is accelerated. It has to be paid in full by 2016. That means within ten years of its becoming law.
What went on in the back rooms of Congress and the White House, I do not know. How such stringent legislation could be passed is difficult to comprehend.
What happened?
Whatever it is, it is happening all over again. It is one surprise after another.
What I am about to express is not a political statement. Rather it is fact.
The American public has been caught sleeping again. Just as it was when Republican power deregulated banking rules which assisted the mortgage crisis to occur, fight Obamacare which would provide health care to most Americans, and got us into an ill conceived war in Iraq. The same Republican Party that is attempting in several states to cut the pensions of public employees.
Bottom line. The present postal problem is a Congressionally created deficit approved by President Bush only six years ago. It was lunacy to assume such a large 75 year obligation could be funded in full in ten years. Or maybe not lunacy. More like they did not care. Or maybe were not paying attention.
Before this day is out, the Republicans will be shouting that the plan was self funding. It payed for itself. Smoke and mirrors. It was a gigantic give away that has blown up in everyone’s face. Sooner than anyone conceived.
I was going to get into the price of gasoline this morning. A gallon of regualr has dropped $.20 in one week. Good. But how? Normally it moves the other way. Upwards and more expensive.
My day yesterday was good. Blossom’s for lunch. Cuban cheese toast and coffee. Watched the Olympics with the grandkids. Wrote in the afternoon and evening. Never got out.
Pay attention today as this postal crisis develops.
Enjoy your day!
What a surprise (she said with tongue in cheek). And these are the political morons we keep sending to Washington year after year. Wake up Americans!
Again, you are so wrong.. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd pushed thru the banking deregulation and there was a majority to over rule a veto by President Bush..
Better cool it, Mr. Liberal. Sounds like you are pouting for all the wrong reasons. The Post Office is and was
doomed to die when the advent of the web came about, and probably even before that. Let it die.
Actually Patrick, you are in error. The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 passed by Clinton and congressional Republicans. This bill repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and virtually deregulated the banking and financial system. Regulations put in place under the New Deal in response to the finance excesses of the late 1920’s that led to the wonders and harmony of the Great Depression. Phil Gramm (R) was Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee at the time. His goal was to gut the Community Reinvestment Act that was serving to revitalize urban businesses (read minorities) but thankfully that failed.
Glass-Steagall was enacted to create the FDIC in direct response to the collapse of 5000 banks and with them depositor’s money. Faith in the US financial system evaporated and our economy was about to enter the Dark Ages. If one could lie, cheat and swindle their way to ricks on Wall Street and Main Street with other people’s money, then other people sought their mattresses for security. It is a real “Free Market” idea that allowing insiders to game the system and screw the world is a free market; all it is is stupid.
Fast forward to 2012 and we see the results, Great Depression II on the horizon, banks that should collapse propped up by the dreaded Feds while savers and truly hard-working people who live morally and save get the shaft economically. The far rightest mantra of Free Market rings hollow when they don’t allow the markets to be free within an envelope of legality that prevents outright theft and fraud. It is nice to say I am working “within the law” when of course, I write the laws or more precisely BUY them from Congress.
If someone robs a bank form the outside for $5000 they get 10-20 in the penitentiary. If they swindle a few hundred million, perhaps as an institution, they get invited to Bohemian Grove for a party before the Big Owl. The world is always a little more complicated then simply those dang liberals wanting us to become North Korea and this pesky fascists…whoops, right wing nut jobs that want us to live in the Land of Josey Wales.