Redstate

I voted for him so that he could worry about this stuff while I relax at home. It seems he's doing a good job. Thank you, Mr. Istook.

I'm wondering how Coburn voted in the Senate (has this come up there yet?).  Istook would have been a great Senator, maybe he'll run later.  Coburn let me down on the Transportation and Energy Bills... good to hear Istook is still fighting the good fight.

when the Senate version (S. 622) passed out of committee.  

My understanding of the Senate bill is that its stronger than the House version.  For whatever reason the House bill got dilluted down from what conservatives wanted.  That increased the price tag and got rid of a number of key reforms.

Don't get me wrong: the Senate bill's a boondoggle. But it's closer to what House conservatives wanted.

It seems the insiders in DC were pushing for yes votes in the House as a way to "move the process forward" because the White House has committed to pushing the bill in a conservative direction during conference.  

Something tells me that won't happen, though. :(

From Heritage Foundation's Policy Brief:

Yet the House and Senate bills fall far short of the comprehensive reform that is needed and, in some ways, would make the current situation worse:

    * The bills provide for billions of dollars in new subsidies for the Postal Service. The legislation relieves the Postal Service of its obligation to pay postal retirees some $27 billion over the next few decades in pension benefits for prior military service. Instead, the U.S. Treasury would assume this obligation. However, these obligations are Postal Service costs, triggered by retirees' postal employment, and part of the total compensation paid for postal work. Taxpayers should not be saddled with this burden.

    * The bills keep in place--or even expand--political restrictions on the USPS's ability to cut costs. For instance, the Postal Service would continue to be banned from closing post offices because they run a deficit. Moreover, the bills ignore a proposal by the President's reform commission to streamline closures of other facilities through a process similar to that used to close unneeded military bases.

    * Most of the special privileges enjoyed by the USPS would remain in place, including the most important one: the statutory monopoly that makes it illegal for anyone else to deliver letter mail. This monopoly should be repealed. Short of that, a number of important changes could be made. For example, the President's postal reform commission proposed giving the Postal Regulatory Commission the authority to determine the extent of the monopoly rather than letting the Postal Service define the limits of its own monopoly.

    In addition, the USPS enjoys a monopoly on the use of customers' mailboxes. This also should be repealed. Individual consumers--not the Postal Service--should decide which providers can use their own mailboxes.

The Senate bill is slightly better but not by much.  It has a stronger rate cap, meaning the USPS can't blow through the new cap whenever it is reasonable or necessary, and it includes some good workmans' compensation reforms.  However, it still (as the Heritage piece notes) shifts the pension costs onto the taxpayer when USPS ought to pay them.

The Administration does seem earnest in its desire to improve the bill in conference, but Bush has never vetoed a bill (which means his first is going to be based on a whole lot more than on the policy merits of an obscure postal bill), and there is some political sensitivity regarding the size of potential stamp hike.  In addition, Tom Davis and Susan Collins (the respective Chairmen) are at best somewhere between luke-warm and hostile to bringing the bill's costs down and adding new reforms that would upset the unions.  So let's just say that I'm pretty skeptical that this bill is going to somehow get conservative in conference.  

Why would a Republican House of Representatives schedule and pass such a bill?

If I recall correctly, isn't the USPS considered a strategic asset in the event of a biological terrorist attack?  Glenn Reynolds posted something about that at Instapundit a couple of weeks ago.

http://instapundit.com/archives/024648.php

From the link:

On your item this morning -- the plans for the U.S. Post Office are more extensive than you might realize. About a year ago I was at a conference with an ex-NYC fire chief now working as a consultant with Giuliani's firm. Aparrently, in case of any national disaster, the only organization with both national reach and enough vehicles to reach virtually every citizen is the postal service, and they are being factored into all sorts of preparedness planning

Just a thought.

While in an extreme circumstance, USPS may at some level be prepared and/or capable of helping out, we can all agree that the priority of the Service is to deliver mail, not emergency vaccines.  The mere possibility of providing assistance in a national crisis hardly justifies the passage of H.R. 22 and the squandering of $6 billion on what is supposed to be a self-financing federal entity.  Unfortunately, this is just another example of how the GOP is abandoning the fight for reduced federal spending and a smaller government.  

concern nowadays. I don't accept the premise that USPS is absolutely crucial to reaching every household in America with vaccines (because those billions in first responder grants have certainly not been going to USPS in the past few years), and I don't think the vast majority of firefighters, EMS personnel, and police in the nation would either.  

Of USPS ridiculousness.  I could go further right now, because I really want to see the entire Postal Service be privatised, but for now I'll stick with a very simple, personal example:

I purchased a money order at the counter of a local post office four months ago, along with a roll of stamps.  I signed the money order, filled out the "proof" portion, tore it off and put it into my wallet along with the the cashier's receipt.

I delivered the money order personally to the recipient, but through a process that is still essentially a black box to me, that money order was misplaced.  Didn't matter -- I needed my money back from the post office.

So I went back to the post office branch where I had purchased it, presented my receipt(s) and my identification, and filled out a form that would require the USPS to investigate the MO.

47 days passed, no word from the USPS.  So I returned to the branch and got the telephone number (after pestering the rep. behind the counter) of the nationwide clearinghouse for Money Order Investigation.  I called them:  they were able to inform me, 47 days into this rigamorole, that my money order was still unaccounted for, that the "number was in the system" but that I would have to wait until at least 60 days had passed before I could expect a refund check.

60 days passed...70 days passed.  Finally, on the 72nd day I opened my mailbox to find my refund check.

Now, this was an electronic money order with a GUID that was never cashed and I still had to wait 72 days to "cancel" it (even though I bought it...and presented ID and receipts to PROVE that I bought it.)  And I had to return to my post office branch and wheedle out the telephone number to learn this from a woman who was initially reluctant to give it to me.

This is an efficient service?  This is something that I should be supporting?  I should have been able to walk into the PO, show my receipts and ID, and gotten a refund on the spot, so long as it hadn't been cashed.  Maybe with a $.50 service fee.  

More to come...because the USPS is the biggest albatross around the neck of the commonweal that I've ever seen.  It's a vast, sprawling octopus of inefficiency and bureaucratic gobbeldygook.

more efficiently and in better condition (I have gotten broken UPS items) than UPS or FedEx (although I confess that Fedex overall has been better than UPS, you couldn't pay me to use UPS).

Frankly I don't think I want UPS or Fedex to take over my mail delivery, I suspect that me being way out in the middle of nowhere rural NH would put me on a low priority for any private company.

I could deliver your packages as efficiently as the USPS does with the help of Google Maps.  The only thing that's preventing the private sector from running this business efficiently are the civil servants who are lobbying tooth-and-nail to keep it, and who, once they are replaced, will try to sabotage it.  

Into Google Maps and see whether or not your street address comes up, and then report back.  The USPS is obsolete, and the only people hanging onto it for dear life are the people who don't want you to realize that.

UPS, FedEx and USPS.  I can tell you who gets packages here more quickly and more affordably-that is the USPS.

There isn't a FedEx store anywhere close (maybe 45 minutes or an hour away) there is a UPS (with crappy service) about 40 minutes away-sometimes 30 if the traffic is really light, my post office is 5 minutes away, and the people behind the counter are much nicer than the people at the UPS store.

I think UPS and Fedex do a very good job in most places, but it takes 5-7 business days for a package to come to me through them, unless I want to pay $20-30 for the privilege of getting it hear more quickly.  I have never had a USPS package take more than 3 days, and they almost always arrive within two (and I tend to do a lot of packages since I make jewelry-USPS is always my choice, if it is an option-I get much better service).

what does my address in google have to do with who I know from experience has given me better service (and it ain't the private companies).

So how does my address being in google mean I get better service from UPS and why hasn't anyone told UPS this?

btw only recently has my address shown up on google, it always made doing mapquest a pain in the rear.

The USPS has a monopoly on mail delivery is because of their control over the Zipcode system, and to a lesser extent, their ability to grant price breaks to mailers based on their postal regulations.  This is how they maintain their monopoly over mail delivery -- they write the rules, and they decide how much the postal discounts will be based upon those rules, and everyone else has to fall in line.  The Domestic Mail Manual is an 18 megabyte download and specifies exactly what constitutes legitimate mail under USPS rules.  Every mailer in the United States has to conform to those rules in order to qualify for postal discounts, and that's how the government monopoly is maintained.

I think private industry should be allowed to break this monopoly and run the business more efficiently.  In order to qualify for the discounts in the first place, if you are a large mailer, you already need to know every address you are sending the mail to.  These things are not secrets.  The Zipcode system is just an abstraction that helps the USPS figure out where to deliver mail -- but it's not the only system, it just happens to be the conventional one, enforced through a government monopoly.  I think we should break the USPS into pieces, privatise them, and make them compete along the lines of cellphone companies.  

How the USPS subsidizes the government at your expense, I'll direct you, just as a single example, to page 1051 of the DMM, section 604.1.10:

1.10 Special Standards for Semipostal Stamps

Semipostal stamps are subject to the following special conditions:

a. Semipostal stamps are stamps sold for a price that exceeds the postage value of the stamp. The difference between the price and postage value (also known as the "differential") less an offset for reasonable USPS costs, as determined by the USPS, is contributed to a specific cause. Semipostal stamps are offered for sale for a limited time as provided by law or by the USPS.

b. The following semipostal stamps are available:

1. The Breast Cancer Research semipostal stamp. The difference between the purchase price and the First-Class Mail nonautomation single-piece first-ounce letter rate in effect at the time of purchase constitutes a contribution to breast cancer research and cannot be used to pay postage. Funds (net of reasonable USPS costs) raised in connection with the Breast Cancer research semipostal stamp are transferred to the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.
2. The Stop Family Violence semipostal stamp. The difference between the purchase price and the First-Class Mail nonautomation single-piece first-ounce letter rate in effect at the time of purchase constitutes a contribution to domestic violence programs and cannot be used to pay postage. Funds (net of reasonable USPS costs) raised in connection with the Stop Family Violence semipostal stamp are transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services.

c. The postage value of each semipostal stamp is the First-Class Mail nonautomation single-piece first-ounce letter rate in 133.1.5, Rates for Letters, Flats, and Parcels, that is in effect at the time of purchase. Additional postage must be affixed to pieces weighing in excess of 1 ounce, pieces subject to the nonmachinable surcharge, or pieces for which extra services have been elected. The postage value of semipostal stamps purchased before any subsequent change in the First-Class Mail nonautomation single-piece first-ounce letter rate is unaffected by any subsequent change in that rate. The purchase price of each semipostal stamp is listed in 1.1. [P022.1.6]

In other words, you buy these commemorative stamps, which have a postal value less than purchase price, and donate the extra money -- back to the government!  What a country!

get with my cell phone service I am not so sure I want dead areas in my mail delivery.

I wouldn't be opposed to competition, but frankly it concerns me, because where I live I don't think anyone would consider a hot market, and I guarantee you that slow deliver will turn into the standard, and we will get a "tough you live far away from everyone else, and that's the breaks" reply.

Neither UPS or FedEx go out of their way to get thing to me faster than the USPS does, and they can, because they want to charge me triple the price to do so.  I suspect if mail delivery gets privatized that is the way things will go for everything, and those of us in rural out of the way places end up with crappy and slow service, and we probably won't even have a store within a convienient drive.  Thanks but no thanks.  If I lived in a State that was more central, or in a large city I might bite with you, but I think if private company's took over the mail delivery, those of us in rural out of the way states get screwed.

But I have the feeling that within the next 15 years or so you will see increasing efforts to privatise bigger and bigger sectors of what the USPS currently does.  I agree with you about the concern for delivery to underserved areas, and I think that's probably the most important (maybe the only) think the USPS does better than private companies do at this point.  

But I'm thinking about this problem on a regular basis, and the day I come up with a good answer that will:

1. Guarantee the QOS to rural areas
   
   
2. Privatise the USPS so that it cannot be a pork project and longer and
   
   
3. Stops it from being another avenue of indirect government subsidy

You can be sure that I will post (no pun intended) that solution.  

In the reply.  You know what I mean.  My objective is to look carefully, not in a rash way, at what the USPS does and find ways to increasingly peel off the parts of it that private enterprise can legitimately do better.  I'm not a revolutionary, you know, someone saying:  Abolish the USPS TOMORROW!  I would like to put the heat under them a little more, though, and get as many parts of it out from under the civil-servant bureaucracy as possible without disrupting critical services.  That's my goal.

Because your post is a tired variation of the "free markets don't work in rural areas" argument that is just ridiculous.  Free markets do work in rural areas -- it's called supply and demand.  In a privatized world, if you didn't want "crappy and slow service" you would be willing to pay for it.  As it stands, the government forces people in the cities and suburbs to subsidize the low rates of providing six-day a week universal service to non-hot spots like yours.  How is that fair in a free society?  The "just me" approach to public policy is so typical of some (and by no means all) in rural America.  There are many benefits to living in rural areas, including less traffic, peace and tranquility, proximity to nature, etc.  Why can't there be costs?

so I don't know that I think they are a problem.  I consider it akin to checking the box at the bottom of your tax return that gives a dollar to politicians or whatever it is.

Shoot I would rather research get paid for with postal stamps than turned into a line item on the budget.

That said there are things in the postal service that I think stink-I never quite understood why they want to keep raising the costs of stamps, when they are sponsoring Bicycle race teams, and the Olympics-seems to me they could put that money back into the system.

But as a whole I don't think that privatization will give rural out of the way states anywhere near the quality of service they currently get-privatization will probably make service in large metropolitan areas and certain routes much better, but people like me will probably be waiting a week or two for a piece of mail that used to take a couple of days to get here.

Rep. Jeff Flake offered an amendment to institute a pilot program in just 20 areas out of about 38,000 postal branches nationwide that would have allowed local postmasters to test private methods of mail delivering.  It got only 51 votes.  

under them, and I think there are things the USPS does that is either stupid or wasteful.  But I am not biting at the idea of abolishment, the day the USPS gets abolished is likely the day my mail service goes to pot.

guess I don't think it is fair that somebody in a more populated area gets dirt cheap and fast mail, while I don't simply because of geography.

I think the fact that UPS and Fedex have crappy service already where I live pretty much indicates it isn't going to get any better.  And frankly we would go broke if we had to pay $2 or $3 dollars to send a single letter or $30 to send a single package.  And that's probably the way it would end up.  And what's worse is that the higher rates probably wouldn't result in better service.

There is already competition in the area of packages, and at the moment the USPS wins the contest hands down.  

If the USPS is so flush with cash that it can afford to take this money from stamps and send it to the NIH, the HHS and the DoD, why can't it meet its unfunded pension obligations?  Or would that be impolite to ask?

I wouldn't be opposed to opening markets up to competition in all types of mail, but to ditch the postal service all together and toss rural low profit yield areas to the wolves isn't going to improve the mail delivery system, if improvement is the goal.

Actually when it comes to mail delivery I guess I don't think it is fair that somebody in a more populated area gets dirt cheap and fast mail, while I don't simply because of geography.

That's an awfully strange position for a conservative to take.  

like I said there is room for reform, but an argument for abolishment isn't I don't think the best way to improve service.

I think wondering just why the USPS can't pay pension plans is a good question.  Although how is this situation different than the airlines the taxpayer is now picking up the pension tabs for as well?  Is it a union issue?  

Ok, I won't fight with you on this any more today, but this may be the most hilarious thing I've read all week:

the day the USPS gets abolished is likely the day my mail service goes to pot.

I would venture to guess that in many, many cases around the United States the people who deliver your mail have already gone to pot.  And will continue to go to pot, and nothing but the pot.

Anyway....

As far as the "rural delivery problem" goes, my parents live in a fairly rural town in a state very close to yours.  A dirt road, a dirt driveway.  They have one postal carrier in the town, and my father uses UPS and FedEx for all his business deliveries.  Those services have been more reliable for him than the USPS.  They only thing he relies upon from the USPS these days is junk mail.  

In fact, partially in response to your very good questions, I talked with him a bit about this tonight in order to pick his brains a little on the subject.  His comments so far support my idea in broad terms, and he's been involved with the direct mail business for almost two decades.  His first reaction, like yours, was about the QOS to what he estimates are the 15 percent of the people in the country that a private company wouldn't be equipped to deliver to "ordinary" mail to right away, but after a little prompting, he came up with these observations also.  I think they're worth reading, and with his permission I've pasted them here:

I see 1 Postal Jeep a day, I often see 2 FedEx and 2 UPS trucks in the same day.

The mailing houses make up trays and drop them at the SCF's and BMC's and most trays are moved maybe once or twice and they are across the country and in the regional SCF or BMC ready to be delivered to the post office.  The mail collected from the mailboxes is all sent to the SCF or BMC and electronically sorted and some of it is sent back to the post office where it originated.  It's cheaper that way.  The biggest problem with mail is the last 5 miles, but I'm sure they could easily make up a walk sequence bundle to be delivered by carrier and have that bundle on the truck [UPS or FedEx] in the morning.

I'm sure they would LOVE to have packages of mail that could be sent today or wait a couple of days for an almost empty truck.  They could optimize their fuel usage and save a ton. In fact FedEx and UPS would probably make even greater profits just because of 3rd class mail.  The fear for FedEx is not that the truck is going there; the fear is that an ALMOST empty truck is going there.  Let's face it the really important mail is ALREADY being delivered by FedEx.  Most of the legal documents shipped around the country go FedEx overnight or UPS Priority because they say they deliver the next morning before 10:00 am and by God they DO!  I'd trust my next day's insulin (assuming I was a diabetic) to FedEx but not the post office.

He's been in the direct mail business for almost two decades and knows the DMM better than a lot of the people who either contributed to it or who currently administer it.  His baseline estimate, tonight, straight off the top of his head, is that with a year or two of preparation we could probably close 60% of the post offices in the United States and privatize them.  So: we're working on this problem.  And I really believe that in the next decade or so, we're going to solve it, and we're going to peel away the onion of the USPS, and make sure that you can also get your mail in rural areas, cheaply.  Wish us luck, and keep an open mind.

there isn't a Fedex truck (it is actually somebody who contracts with fedex, goes to the airport or where ever their sorting facility is, and drives their own car on the routes around here to deliver the fedex stuff).  They don't have Fedex on their car, and they aren't in a Fedex uniform, they do have the fedex scanning stuff.

The issue of having a full truck because of the addition of mail is a legitimate one, and may end up making the problem not that much of a problem, but I still suspect in the end I get screwed.

As for your dad's experience, it hasn't been mine-I don't mail Fedex or UPS from my home, because the nearest mailing points are 40 minutes or more away, and the costs is higher.  I do receive quite a few packages, and I can't say that UPS or Fedex have ever taken less than 5 business days to get something here-although Fedex is much better than UPS (I admit I really don't care much for UPS) and right around Xmas one year my sister mailed me a package UPS that took over 10 days to arrive-that hasn't happened with anything sent USPS.  Maybe if the USPS was out of the equation service would improve, the problem is I can't really complain about my actual USPS service-it is fast and affordable.  UPS isn't fast or affordable, but maybe it would get that way, or maybe not, I am just not sure I am ready to exchange service I am content with for service that I already think is pretty poor.

For a long time, the USPS was the only Government program that regularly funded itself. Of course, no one writes letters these days. They write emails. The momentum shifting us all from hardcopy to electronic media is an example of one of functional changes in the economy that have brought about the vital need for reform in the Postal Service. Obviously, some fat must be trimmed.

But allowing the closing of post offices just because they are not turning a profit seems hasty. Is this a demand we make for any other agency? Can we really count on the beaurcarats to rearrange their delivery logistics without massive disruptions in service? Seems unfair to those of us who are living in rural areas. Already post is delivered to my town less often then the posted schedule would imply. I've had family members in the postal service so this decline in service over the past few years saddens me.

The postal service was designed to operate in another kind of economy. It needs restructuring badly. But there is a compelling interest in continued and undisrupted service, exspecilly for rural economies. Moving to a profit based model at the office level is dangerous. Perhaps at the regional or state-wide level?

I was hoping* that disgruntled postal workers had found their way into the House and shot up the place.  That would have been exciting.

* I am NOT** advocating violence against members of congress.  It's just that August is a slow news month.

** Well, maybe if Tom DeLay got grazed I wouldn't mind so much.

I haven't added anyone to The Pile.  Today might be a good day to start.

Corph, multiple editors tell me you've been warned before.  Excellent.  Thanks for the opportunity to add you to The Pile.

I've been reading this post for a while and I've been getting more and more agitated -- agitated enough to actually post my first comment on this site.

Whatever happened to the old American idea of everybody paying their own way? Yes, it would cost more to mail a letter in rural America. So? Everybody take 5 minutes and think about that. So?

Some things are more expensive in urban areas. Think housing, taxes, food, parking... the list goes on and on. Some things are (should) be more expensive in rural areas. Postal service is certainy on the list. Telephone service? Yup. Oh, wait a minute...we have a subsidy scheme in place to lower the cost of phone service in rural America too. What about electric power? Same deal.

I think everybody in America would be better off if everybody just paid their way, without regard to whether they're in rural, suburban, exurban or rural America. If you CHOOSE to live in any one of those place, or on the moon someday, there are plusses and minuses to the CHOICE you make.

I'm tired of how whiny Americans have become...they want all the plusses of whatever choice they make, but they want everybody else to subsidize away the minuses they've been "victimized" with.

I know...I know.  Rural folk offer lots of outrageous subsidies to urbanites too. Somebody in rural America who is subsidizing through their taxes some urban nitwit's subway fare, while that same nitwit postures about how enviromentally friendly they are by not driving a car deserves our scorn and ridicule too.

But I think that actually proves, rather than refutes, the point. If we all got rid of all the silly cross-subsidies out there engineered by some well-intentioned (grrrr) politican/bureaucrat, none of us would mind actually paying our own way.