Big Dogs House

Post Office To Charge More For Less

Dec 6, 2011 Political

The United States Postal Service is a bloated government agency that is charged with delivering our mail efficiently. It charges for the service so the money it gets to operate is not supposed to come from the taxpayer. The establishment of the Post Office is a Constitutional requirement but there is no Constitutional requirement for that service to be run by the government.

Government does NOTHING efficiently and money is never a concern because government begs, borrows, or steals the money it gets and since it makes the laws, it can beg, borrow, or steal as much as it wants without the fear of being jailed.

The Post Office is a prime example of government inefficiency. It has grown, and grown, and grown, over the years while offering extravagant benefits to the people who work for it. The Postal Service has tens of thousands more employees than it needs but can’t seem to downsize appropriately.

In addition, those tens of thousands of employees retire and receive very generous benefits. Those benefits are a huge part of the Postal Service’s fiscal problems because the Service is required to pay into the benefit fund up front and the cost has risen to more than the Service can afford.

This has not stopped the Service from keeping employees on or from closing facilities over the years regardless of the dire circumstances. It seems to live in a vacuum ignoring the reality of its fiscal circumstances in hopes that some Congressman will bail it out.

The Postal Service claims it is finally doing something because it is facing bankruptcy. Some sorting facilities will be closed and the cost of a First Class letter will rise to 45 cents (up one cent) starting January. I doubt the increase will have an immediate impact because the Postal Service sells what it calls forever stamps. Purchase them at the current price and you can use them forever regardless of what the actual rate is. People will be buying a lot of forever stamps this month. In addition, the Service will have reduced service in that letters will take longer to arrive. Yes, we will pay more for decreased service.

There are several problems with what the Postal Service is doing. The biggest is that it is retaining its employees. No one who works at the closing facilities will be released, they will just be reassigned. The amount of mail has decreased year after year but they can’t seem to downsize the workforce.

Another problem is that the Postal Service is a branch of government. It is, by its very nature, inefficient. There is little regard given for costs or to fiscal responsibility (until they start talking about reducing pensions) and there is no concern for efficiency. One only needs to go to a Post Office this time of the year to see one clerk at the counter with a line around the block. It is not like they don’t have enough people to man the place, they just don’t do so. It is almost as if they do it on purpose to fool the public into believing they need more help (or to punish us)…

The government is responsible for the Post Office. This cannot change as it is a Constitutional requirement. However, serious consideration should be given to making the Postal Service a private entity that can work efficiently and for profit. The government would still have legal and oversight authority but a private company would work to deliver our mail. It could earn a certain profit and all other money would go to the federal coffers. If several companies were allowed to carry out postal functions they could compete for our business and provide better service.

Don’t look for this to happen any time soon (if at all).

Perhaps it is time to go postal on the Postal Service…

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: bankrupt, constitution, disaster, government, pensions, post office. inefficient

Will There Be A Post Office Bailout?

Jun 22, 2011 Opinion

The postal service is a Constitutional item that is run by the federal government and it is run like a typical government bureaucracy, that is, there is a lot of waste and a lot of overhead and a lot of cost overrun. The kicker is that the postal service actually charges for its service and should, if run properly, be able to pay its bills. Unfortunately that is not the case. The postal service is billions in the red and has suspended its share of retirement contributions for its employees.

Will Congress and Barack Obama step in and bailout the postal service? The government already believes that it has the authority to force you to buy products. Obamacare mandates that we all buy health insurance and the Democrats stand by that generous and incorrect interpretation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The Democrats assure us that health care is unique because everyone will, at one time in their lives, enter the health care system so it is OK, according to them, to make people buy insurance.

What would stop the Democrats from making the same argument about the postal service? Everyone at one point in their lives gets some sort of mail. What would stop Congress from forcing us to use the postal service or force us to buy a certain dollar amount of postage stamps each month? Maybe Congress will decide that in order to boost postal revenue all online bill paying activities must stop and people have to mail their bills in. Maybe they will take down the email contacts for all members of Congress and make us send them letters via the postal service.

It is not unreasonable to assume that the government could force us to use the postal system citing the Commerce Clause like it did with Obamacare.

I would not put it past them to step in and screw over the taxpayers in order to make the postal service solvent.

There is nothing that prevents the government from moving the postal service to the private sector. The Constitution says Congress has the authority to establish post offices and postal roads (which actually means they don’t have to but have the power to) but it does not say that Congress (or the government) must run the post offices and postal roads. Congress could establish the post offices under the private sector and let that company compete for business against other similar services. Congress would have oversight and a portion of the revenue could go to the Treasury.

In any event, I would not put it past the Democrats and their messiah to try to bailout the postal service by putting into place policies that would force people to use the service.

Let’s face it, we are losing more and more freedom so it is not hard to imagine this taking place.

Then again, perhaps they could start reducing the number of employees, increase the amount employees contribute to their pensions, force them to pay the same rate for insurance as the rest of the federal employees (contrary to popular opinion, federal employees pay quite a bit for their health insurance), and stop delivering mail on Saturday. They could also cut the number of post offices and consolidate routes. Greater efficiency would help the bloated system to be more solvent.

Then again, why do all that when Congress could force us to use them.

Be wary. The Socialists in our government would love to intrude even more into our lives.

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: bailout, bankrupt, budget, commerce, postal service

Pension Spending

Jan 18, 2011 Political

Oh, this should be good. The article linked talks about the $2 trillion (that’s $2,000,000,000,000.00) shortfall in pension funding. That is money that states have promised to give to state employees. Remember now, the states are out of money. They have simply spent it all. So, what are they going to do? What’s the most likely plan?

The very unfortunate consequence is that various safety nets for the most vulnerable citizens will be cut back.

So this is the Democrat Party, saying that they’re going to reduce funding for social issues so they can pay pensions. Oh, did you notice this was New Jersey? The place where huge numbers of public “servants” get 6-digit pensions? Tell me again how the Democrat Party is for the “little guy.” Oh, and try and tell me in a way that’s at least partly serious while paying retired bureaucrats $100+K and shorting medicaid.

Tags: bankrupt, pensions

Lesson: Don’t Depend On Government For Retirement

Oct 15, 2010 Political

Social Security was never supposed to be a complete retirement plan. It was a plan that provided insurance to those who retired so that they would have some income after their working years ended. There have been revisions along the years and they have expanded the scope of Social Security to something it was never intended to be. One of the provisions enacted was to index cost of living allowances (COLA) to inflation. When there is inflation the COLA goes up and when there is no inflation there is no COLA.

The government has announced that, for the second year in a row, there will be no COLA because there is supposedly no inflation. Prices are rising but there is not yet a measured inflation.

One would think that since there are rules in place that they would be followed. This is a pipe dream when it comes to Washington DC. Last year the politicians passed a law to give Social Security recipients a $250 check to make up for not getting a COLA. If the mechanism in place determined that there should be no COLA then why did they circumvent that mechanism and pay the money anyway?

When I originally wrote about this recent COLA news I indicated that it would not be long before Congress worked to send another check to people who did not get a COLA. Keep in mind that they did not get a COLA because of the law that Congress passed, but that makes no difference.

After all, it is an election year.

As I predicted, the Congress is working to pay another $250 to offset something to which Social Security recipients are not entitled (in accordance with the law).

Representative Earl Pomeroy (Democrat, North Dakota), who introduced the legislation, had this to say:

“Seniors who rely on their modest Social Security payments need these cost-of-living adjustments for their day-to-day survival,” Pomeroy said. “Passing this bill will ensure that the lack of cost-of-living adjustment will not jeopardize seniors’ ability to survive on their benefits.” My Way News

The message here is that Seniors are DEPENDENT on government. Seniors, according to Pomeroy, rely on the payments from government which means that they are at the mercy of the government when it comes to the amount of money they will receive. He also is saying that the laws the Congress passed dealing with COLA jeopardize senior’s ability to survive.

In other words, seniors depend on government to survive. This is not a place anyone should EVER desire to be.

By any measure, money paid to Social Security would have returned much better profits than government if invested in the market. The claim that seniors would have been wiped out is wrong. First of all, the most recent legislation would have exempted people over a certain age so they would have been unaffected. Those who are younger would have had plenty of time to recoup the loss. Second of all, if the money had been invested the return would have been higher so the amount lost would not have been as devastating.

In addition, had the system been set up that way decades ago, people would be much better off and not waiting for government to hand them a few more scraps. If those accounts belonged to the people (it IS their money) they would control it, it would not be taken by the government to spend on worthless endeavors and the money could be passed to heirs thus ensuring growth of wealth in this country.

But government can’t have people being wealthy and independent in their senior years.

How else will government control the people if they are not at its mercy?

The lesson is to save as much as you can. The old saying about paying yourself first is great advice. Decide how much you can save and then invest it in a vehicle that pays good interest. A balance between interest and risk is a good idea.

If people fail to save they will be at the mercy of government, which is just where they want you.

They need that to pander for votes.

And to control the population…

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: bankrupt, bondage, control, lies, social security

What Social Security Trust Fund?

Aug 7, 2010 Political

Social Security is in the red this year meaning that it will pay out more than it takes in in payroll taxes. The system was already unsustainable but was expected to have money for at least a few more years. However, the economy has millions of people who are not working and when they are not working they are not paying into Social Security.

That, of course, is only part of the problem. The bigger problem is that the federal government has spent all the Social Security money collected over the years. We have been told for years about the Social Security trust fund as if there is actually a fund with money in it. There is not but that myth continues as evidenced in this article:

The deficit will last through 2011, then an improving economy will put it back into balance for three years, then it will dip back into the red in 2015, the actuary said. The program has enough money in its trust fund to cover the annual deficit for two decades beyond that. Washington Times

This is an actuary perpetuating the myth. If the uninformed were to read that paragraph the assumption would be that there is a trust fund full of money that will fund SS for two decades.

In reality there is nothing more than a drawer with a bunch of IOUs. The federal government requires SS to send the money it collects (above what it needs to make payments) to the Treasury and in return the Treasury issues a Treasury Bond. It is basically a piece of paper like a bank deposit slip. It tells the Social Security Administration that it deposited a certain amount of money into the Treasury.

The problem is, once the money hits the Treasury it goes into the general fund and is spent by Congress. In other words, Congress is using Social Security money to pay for other things under the guise that it will pay the money later. The only fault in the plan is that the government does not have the money to pay back. We are trillions of dollars in debt and there is no way that we can afford to pay our bills without borrowing even more money. Social Security money has been spent and will not be replaced. We will either go deeper and deeper in debt borrowing money or burden people with tax increases to pay back what should have never been spent in the first place. Keep in mind, the special bonds purchased are supposed to be redeemed later but as the Office of Budget and Management states:

These [Trust Fund] balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other Trust Fund expenditures – but only in a bookkeeping sense…. They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures. The existence of large Trust Fund balances, therefore, does not, by itself, have any impact on the Government’s ability to pay benefits. (from FY 2000 Budget, Analytical Perspectives, p. 337)

If the money collected over the years had been invested in precious metals or placed in interest bearing accounts there would be no worry about the solvency of SS. We would have more than enough money to pay people and things would be good.

But the greedy politicians in DC could not keep their grubby little hands out of the till. They have committed malfeasance and bankrupted the socialized retirement system that was established long ago. SS should never have been created but if they had to do so then they should have ensured it would be protected from the greed and corruption that permeates our government.

Face it. If a private company did this with retirement funds the people responsible would be in jail and the dolts in Congress would be attacking them mercilessly. You can bet that no CEO would be able to get away with saying that he would simply borrow the money to fund the system.

And no company could remain in business being run by such people. This might explain why we are on our way to financial collapse.

The Treasury bonds Social Security holds in place of its money are backed by the full faith and credit of the US Government.

Given how the OBM described the bonds (quoted above), that should comfort absolutely no one…

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: bankrupt, lies, social security, socialism, theft