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Postal Service Archive

Saturday

28

May 2011

0

COMMENTS

He Was Probably Promoted

Written by , Posted in Big Government

Mail carrier who defecated in yard gets to keep job“:

A mail carrier who was caught using a yard as his personal toilet will not be fired.

The incident happened last month at a home in southeast Portland and a neighbor, Don Derfler, captured the man in the act with his camera.

Derfler had been waiting for his babysitter when he saw his mailman acting odd at his neighbor’s house across the street. The postal worker then pulled down his pants and that’s when Derfler began snapping pictures.

…The incident was an embarrassment to the post office and the worker was immediately placed on unpaid leave. Now, a decision has been made to keep the worker but he will be transferred to a different route.

Government workers do this sort of thing to taxpayers all the time. I always thought it was part of the job description…but I didn’t think they were supposed to take it so literally.

Wednesday

20

April 2011

0

COMMENTS

That's Embarrassing

Written by , Posted in General/Misc.

The Post Office is commemorating the 125th anniversary of the Statute of Liberty with a first-class stamp. Here it is:

 

Anything seem off to you? Well, it should. You see, that’s not the real Statute of Liberty. It’s the one in Vegas.

I’m sure glad we gave these guys a monopoly on mail delivery, aren’t you? Hmm, I wonder if they do health care, too…

Saturday

12

February 2011

2

COMMENTS

There's More Than One Way to Handout Government Benefits

Written by , Posted in Free Markets, Government Meddling

I recently read this article about the postal service, and there was one part that jumped out at me:

The USPS, a self-supporting government agency that receives no tax dollars, said it suffered a loss of $329 million in the first quarter of federal fiscal year 2011. That compared with a loss of $297 million a year earlier.

There are two things wrong with this statement. First, the USPS does receive tax dollars. The Postal Service Fund is a subsidy program established to  pay for postage-free mailing by the legally blind, pay the cost of election ballots, and keep open rural post offices.

Second, the USPS is not “self-sustaining” even if we ignore the contribution of the Postal Service Fund. Money is not the only means by which government benefits particular entities. Rules, regulations and laws are often also used to pick winners and losers. The USPS gets just such a benefit, and it’s a whopper: it is illegal for any other group than the USPS to deliver letters. They have a government granted and enforced monopoly, which refutes entirely the idea that they are “self-sustaining,”  at least in any meaningful sense of the phrase.

Thursday

7

October 2010

0

COMMENTS

Some Delicious Union Irony

Written by , Posted in General/Misc.

This is what you get when you mix the twin disasters or government monopoly and unionism:

The American Postal Workers Union has extended its internal election after thousands of ballots appeared to have gotten lost . . . in the mail.

The union’s election committee was supposed to be counting those ballots this week in downtown Washington, D.C., following a tradition mail-in election. But the union announced that only about 39,000 ballots were turned in — and that “a large number of union members had not received their ballots.”