Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006

Ok, as some of you have heard, you may be losing your Saturday postal delivery service to your house and the government may be shutting down a large number of post offices. There are now commercials airing on television and a lot of opinion pieces are being posted out there fearmongering about the PAEA of 2006 to blame the Republican Congress and George Bush for this.

However, the facts are being misrepresented and outright lied about by those tryint to stop this from happening.

The PAEA was created to give the Postal Rate Commission greater power to control postal rates than they possessed in the past... a measure meant to take this authority from groups which had only caused detriment to the postal service. The PRC would now possess the power to do this in an effort hoping to stave off massive layoffs and shut downs which in 2006 seemed imminent if drastic measures were not taken.

A key point many make is how the PAEA requires the USPS to put between $5.4 to $5.8 billion a year into the postal retirement fund between 2007 and 2016. The move was made to stop the USPS from using retirement funds to keep going... in other words, the mandate was required because the USPS was stealing from retirement funds and this measure was to put that money back which had already been removed. In 2011, efforts to reduce the number of days for mail delivery and closing postal offices was defeated largely due to misrepresentations of this issue. In 2011, the USPS was found to be $8 billion in debt but possessed a $6.9 billion surplus in retirement funds... in other words, people were saying because there was a surplus in the retirement fund, this money should be used to help pay off the USPS debt... the reason this retirement fund was created was because the USPS had been dipping into retirement funds in the first place so that retirees in the future would find their retirement funds GONE!

And who was behind the effort to use the retirement funds to pay of the USPS's debt and lying about the purpose of the retirement fund... Democrats! The very people who are desperate to preserve the USPS but at the same time were dipping into the retirement funds of the very workers for the USPS themselves to pay off the USPS's debt.

That $8 billion in debt wasn't caused by adding the money back for future retirees... it was caused because the US Postal Service can't compete with email and have not tried to evolve in that direction even though there are countless internet companies out there where the USPS could be investing but aren't... they above all others would be perfect for this and yet, private enterprise have beat them to it because the markets are there and the USPS isn't capitalizing.

How often do you send photo,s, text messages and so forth rather than using snail mail? Answer for the majority of you now is almost every single day. If the USPS raises it's rates too much, then private enterprise beats them and we won't use their service. With Notebooks and phones now giving us portability we did not possess in the past, we can communicate with photo's, videos and text instantly where snail mail takes days and often gets damaged or lost. You can also send your message to multiple recipients at no cost and communicate on social network sites. You can send emails to local newspapers, to magazines and even to your doctors or family.

Can't be there for Christmas? In the past we'd send photo's and cards by snail mail. Today, we not only send photo's and messages instantly by email... we can send live video feeds so it's like we are there when we physically cannot be.

This is why the USPS is losing so much money and it's why if we closed most post offices and ended weekend deliveries... most of us wouldn't even notice because that's how many of us don't even use it. I don't even receive or pay my bills by snail mail... I do it all online as I do about 99% of all my communications now.

You say look at private companies?

FedEx is now under a class action lawsuit because evidence finally emerged that they were overbilling customers as much as $3.00 a package and have done this almost since the beginning.

In other words, the largest private enterprise competing with the USPS is only prosperous because it's been stealing from the people using it... but that's the equivalent of the USPS raising postal rates in certain ways. The difference is that for all the talk, FedEx offers superior service and people didn't notice the overbilling, or didn't care, because of their service and reliability.

The United States Postal Service once did away with the Pony Express... we forget that the USPS eliminated a host of other services which once provided for our needs including local businesses which offered mail pickup for a small fee with the mail service delivering to this location instead of to your door. The secret to the USPS's success was better, cheaper service and it survived until a new system was developed which does most of what the USPS does, does it instantly and for no cost at all... I send my photo's, my messages and pay my bills for free online... I'd have to pay the USPS to provide this service for me.

What you are seeing are the same old goats who once fought to keep the Pony Express and Stage Coach delivery alive facing the USPS putting those services out of business.

It is time we move into the 21rst century instead of living in the 20th century which is where the USPS belongs.

I'm not saying it has no place as you can't send a cake through the internet, but you can order a cake from a local baker and have it delivered to who you want anywhere around the world within hours of the cake being ordered... or minutes if the recipient is already at the store. I have done this sending a birthday cake to a friend... he knew he was getting a cake, he didn't know his wife was picking up a Democrat themed cake with a toy donkey on top kicking a Republican elephant in the backside... a mechanical one as I do have a lot of Democrat and leftwing friends I treat with respect and friendship regardless of my feelings for their views at times.

My point guys is this.

The USPS has billions of dollars at it's disposal and could have been investing in online businesses to capture a huge chunk of the email and internet services. They could be extremely profitable working with Ebay, Amazon.com and numerous other stores getting exclusive delivery contracts and so forth like FedEx does.

But the local post offices and home delivery would steal away that profit as these people opposed to firing postal workers and eliminating post officers aren't doing it because these things are needed... it's the USPS unions doing their part to preserve an ineffective dinosaur long since extinct as they don't care about you or how you send your mail and services over the internet... they want to save jobs and post offices because they receive union dues from these people.

I don't want to see these people lose their jobs and there actually is no reason to fire them as if the USPS were more competitive and evolved with the internet, their advantages over FedEx could have given them numerous delivery contracts to actually earn enough profit to hire more workers.

In fact, there are several lawsuits against FedEx by drivers because they contract with subcontractors to provide the drivers so abuses of these drivers range from long work hours to driving poorly maintained trucks leading to accidents caused by the equipment FedEx uses... but the drivers can't sue FedEx due to their status as contracted labor rather than being actual employees of FedEx.

The USPS can beat FedEx because of it's thieving ways and how the USPS employs it's people directly and are protected by unions.

But the USPS didn't compete and relies on the unions and people like you to support this obsolete system which still operates largely no different than it did 50 years ago.

Times changed... the USPS didn't and you must allow it to stop delivering on Saturdays and shut down the post offices if for no other reason that to send a message that the USPS either evolves to compete in the 21rst century... or you join the Pony Express as part of our history rather than our future.

They can compete, they can grow... they simply refuse to evolve and make progress towards the future which is what a true Liberal and true Progressive would want... but a Socialist or Communist pretending to be a Liberal or Progressive would support preserving the obsolete system as is just to protect the jobs of the workers which wouldn't be in jeopardy in the first place if the USPS would simply adopt new policies, aggressively compete for their share of the internet and invest in the technologies we see being created every year to improve email and the internet for communication.

Think of it like this. In 2006 when this law was passed, you couldn't do even half the things on the internet that you can do now. If you go back to 1996, most of what you can do now wasn't even thought up yet and the USPS was still strong enough to find justification to keep it going... that's no longer the case.

It's time to let the USPS die off if it cannot evolve to compete where most of us choose to do most of our communicating... we once needed the USPS for even the most basic of communication, today the opposite is true.