Leid Stores - U.S. Postal Service ‘Reforms’ Have Big Money Behind Them - 03/13/14

The U.S. Postal Service for many years has been the poster child for what’s wrong with “big government.” Ever-increasing operational costs, loss of market share and revenue to electronic mail and the private mailing industry, and staggering deficits ($5 billion last year) haven’t helped the USPS any. Now powerful forces are behind a push in Congress to institute “reforms” that will have devastating impact on postal workers, consumers and communities across the nation.

The Senate’s Postal Reform Act of 2014, shepherded by Thomas Carper (D-Del.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) through the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and the Postal Reform Act of 2013 authored by Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, are the latest incarnations of a master plan to “right-size” the USPS. Union leaders and the rank and file, understanding what that means, are already in battle mode.

Leid Stories begins a series of discussions on the seamy undersides of the legislative “solutions” to USPS’s woes.

Investigative reporter Peter Byrne, author of Going Postal: Dianne Feinstein’s Husband Sells Post Offices to His Friends, Cheap, tackles the “solution” to shut down “unnecessary” post offices across the country. It’s a real estate bonanza, he says, and the politically connected have their feet in the door.

Retired letter carrier John Dennie, who two years ago attempted a citizen’s arrest of Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe for administrative crimes, contends that the government itself engineered USPS’s fiscal crisis.