A Letter From A Former Letter Carrier

[Egalitarian Thug]

32. And some reading comprehension might allow you to reach rational conclusions.

I said quite clearly that it is my relative that works for them, today, right now. I also said very clearly that I did not doubt that you were an employee, that the service is absolutely rife with with short-sighted, Libertarian idiots that are too stupid to realize that they are enthusiastically supporting their own executions as well as the destruction of the best mail system on earth, although not quite that clearly. I have no way of knowing if this description fits you exactly, but the posts you have written on this topic indicate that you certainly lean that way.

I did write, quite clearly, that there are many places where improvements can be made, none of which involve degrading service or laying off the employees that actually do the work. Being an RCA is the worst job and that's where you start if you want to be a rural carrier. My relative did it for about 5 years before getting a route, and while it is not as good as it used to be, it is still better than what the contractors have and the service provided in those place where contractors are used is perfectly indicative of that.

You also paint a very misleading picture of the rural service. The post office is a Constitutionally mandated, formerly governmental, service and as such, is not meant to be a profitable enterprise. Yes, there are tiny offices with practically no customers scattered throughout the nation that get no service from FedEx or UPS and operate at what is, from a business standpoint, a loss. There are also places throughout the nation where it is not profitable to provide electricity and sanitary water, but that's one of the major reasons for government. A nation can't be a nation if the unprofitable citizens are left to their own devices. Would you have us abandon huge swaths of America because there are not enough people living there to make it profitable?

Beyond that however, there are major cities that are serviced by the rural system (about 70% of Scottsdale, AZ., for example). This is because the city/rural divisions were drawn up almost a century ago. Hardly any rural carriers use their own vehicles any longer. The Potter administration ended it when they noticed that carriers were able to pay for their personal vehicles under the old system and therefore deprive political contributors from some welfare. Carriers cannot schedule their days off, each route that has a day off (not all of them do except for Sunday), has it scheduled by the station or district supervisor. If the carrier wants to take Monday off, they have to spend a vacation day or take LWOP (leave without pay). Perhaps it is the idea of regular working people having paid vacation time that so upsets you?

USPS is the nation's largest employer of veterans, and the largest source of living wage jobs for those without connections and college degrees. But those are probably bad things in your book. Unless you're a political appointee, you're not going to get rich working for the post office, but you can raise a family, buy a house, and maybe send your kids to college in exchange for working your ass off for 40 years before you retire your broken-down body. OTOH, if you are politically connected, you can be paid in the top 2% of wage earners, destroy the organization that paid you and then get rich going to work for the corporate parasites that couldn't even exist if not for the USPS.

The current Postmaster General, Patrick Donahoe, is better than the last one, but is still grossly overpaid and apparently dedicated to protecting the executive class at the expense of productive employees. The one shrub put in, John E. Potter, spent 9 years utterly devastating the service and retiring with a package worth about $6M. The program of eliminating the best mail system in the world began under reagan (Big surprise there) and even after a quarter century of consistent attack, it remained self-sustaining. Even before reagan, the U.S. Congress has been using the USPS as it's personal slush fund to finance it's blatant graft for generations, yet I read nothing from you about addressing that.

The USPS has done an admirable job of adapting to the changing reality, remaining self sustaining with the rise of the world wide web and the constant attacks from Congressional lapdogs in the employ of private carriers and being forced to both subsidize them while being prohibited from competing with them. For 1/6 the price of a cup of coffee you can drop a letter to your mom in a box in LA and be assured that she will get it at her door in NY 2 or 3 days later. That level of service would cost you $8 with UPS today, and should people like you be successful in killing this modern marvel of efficiency, you can expect that to double.