35 thoughts on “Issa schedules hearing for “Options to Bring the Postal Service Back from Insolvency””

1. Oh joy, Issa will certainly get to the bottom of this (yea right). What could this guy possibly know about fixing the usps…he stole somebody else’s livelihood to make his fortune.

2. It’s about time to privatize USPS, yeahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

3. Just thought I’d mention this to “myc carrier”. April 17 is on Wednesday, not Tues. and yes, I am planning on watching a real joke of a hearing. Just another dog and pony show with nothing accomplished!!

4. The only way to “get rid” of Issa is to put the GOP back in the minority in the House of Representatives where they belong. He can’t chair the House Oversight and Reform committee when he and his party are out if power.

5. Can’t wait for tues 4/17. Should start to hear talk of buyouts for carriers! FINALLY! WE’RE OUT

6. Can anyone say that the USPS is well managed? Your collective anger being expressed by ad hominem attacks is childish and not helpful. My solution is to privatise management. UPS workers have near comparable benefits and wages and is well run. Universal delivery must be guaranteed and the Federal Government needs to subsidize delivery to rural areas. In years past, the urban customers have subsidized our rural ones via higher rates. Was that fair? Also we need to open the union contracts to overhaul 50 year old work rules. And to allow the lazy-ass no-shows to be fired. Get the fat out of managment and realign the wage scales so we don’t have to pay people $25 an hour to sweep up or pay what is essentially a retail worker even more. It costs us 40 cents just to sell a dollars worth of postage. That is not sustainable. What also would help would be to get out of the Obama economy. If we had an effective leader the could effect a typical recovery, at least a third of our problems would evaporate.

7. nevermind, I am blaming Postal management and not FedEx or UPS.

   But try to realize that these particular “innocent helpers” were very recently, especially FedEx, nothing when compared to the Postal Service.

   They now, thanks to many dubious decisions, have huge mail processing plants of their own and plan eventually to absorb the entire multibillion dollar parcel business which is being handed to them duplicitously.

   Potter had said it was not going to cost the USPS “any more” when the FedEx arrangements were made.

   The only cost, of course, was the future. Every single player in the mail business knew the age of letter mail was ending.

   The prefunding, of course, is absurd and part of the “weaken, dismantle and privatize” plan.

   Note. Transit Agreements are coming up for renewal soon, but will probably be falsely negotiated, without honest bidding, so that the plunder continues.

8. Congress and the Board of Governors (appointed for 6 years terms) need to deal with reality. The demand for services provided by the USPS have decreased which is reflected in loss of revenue and the inability to create new revenue based on the present services provided which creates a built in negative cost factor which can only be offset by taking necessary action to reduce cost factors. 6 day street delivery is a wasted cost: small suburban (once rural 50 years ago-within 7-8 mile radius are no longer needed.) Americans 99%+ QUESTION WHY 6 day street delivery is provided and WHY more suburban post offices than McDonalds and pay postmasters $63,000-$72,000 to sell stamps and box mail or maybe have 1-3 rural routes in suburban areas due to changing demographics. Need to consolidate or close; postage stamps can be purchased at national grocery and drug stores.
   Cost must be reduced or tax payer foot the bill for a service
   that the public no longer has need as the use has decreased
   as demonstrated by decline in first class mail and loss of revenue. Parcel and shipping market has increased; efforts should be DIRECTED TO INCREASE MARKET SHARE as in recent developments with Amazon. UPS and FED X have positive bottom
   lines with positive earnings. USPS should create public service action plan to reduce debt in order to breakeven as was mandated in 1972 when present corporate structure was mandated. Politics, parties and pressure groups has created a slot machine loosing service that must be restructured or crumble under massive debt load.

9. I suppose congress’ mandate that the Postal Service not make a profit and also mandate that they come up with $5.5 billion a year ($55 billion in ten years)to put into a gov’t account toward the health care of employees who will retire in 2080 has nothing to do with this?

   Simply put Congress says the USPS owes $55 billion and whether or not they can afford to pay it, it goes on the books as income for congress to spend under the guise of being revenue neutral and to appear to be cutting the national debt.

   It’s a stamp tax. Congress extorts the USPS and the public blames the USPS. Nice

10. Issa was my old boyfriend, time to get back with him and persuade to get moving on postal reform before it’s too late.

11. Executive bonuses and defered compensation along with their free health care adds up to 1 billion dollars a year. How come execs do not contribute to health care? How do you give out bonuses to execs when the USPS is losing money?

12. Scott, you sound an awful lot like a union official. When someone says that 5 day will cause job loss, when NO ONE except the union has this opinion, well, your neutrality comes into question….

13. who the hell voted for that jack ass i mean wtf did they have a clue

14. In response to Billy B. – no my last name is not Cleaver. However, I like to back up my opinions with as much fact as possible and have a journalism background. If you don’t like my posts, then don’t read them. I won’t be held accountable for short attention spans. It’s the 1st Amendment I respect, and if I want to write, I’ll do it whenever I damn well please, and I’ll write as long as I damn well please. Thanks to Twitter and computer language, less and less people can think in anything but sentence fragments. That is not my problem.

15. @jamescadieux..your post is full of inaccurate information. apparently you are looking for a scapegoat for the problems that the usps is experiencing and for some strange reason you want to blame fedex and ups. the post office has used ‘for profit’ rail, and airlines to move the mail for many, many years. the post office pays federal express a ton of money every year to fly mail. whose fault is that? is it possible that the usps is wasting money and
    paying fedex to move mail that they could move cheaper? could very well be. but this is a problem with incompetence in the management of the united states postal service. so if you are looking to blame someone or something for all the ills of the usps, postal management would be the choice. the truth is, the post office has had incompetent management for decades. the problem was less obvious for 20 years because revenue was increasing or they just raised rates and life went on. postal employees were among the few who always knew the levels of incompetence, fraud, waste, and corruption. now, the usps has serious financial issues due to the ‘prepay’ health care funding and other factors. now, the usps really needs competent folks to manage and the sad truth is they just don’t have knowledgeable, competent management in place. no matter what bill congress eventually puts in place, this ends very badly unless the problem of
    the united states postal service having totally incompetent management is addressed
    and somehow corrected.

16. Issa…. Get me saturdays off. ! You the man! To hell with the rest of them…. I’m goin surfing.

17. Its all about FedEx and UPS and the “money”. Read between the lies.

    Transit agreements made with these to “for profit corporations” in the face of obviously declining letter mail and the obvious growth of parcel mail was an act of deliberate sabotage. Potter and Donahoe abdicated their sworn oaths to protect the Postal Service and should probably be prosecuted for criminal and deliberate mismanagement.

    Check out the History of FedEx. They did not even exist until recently and yet today, after much slight of hand, we work for them and they rake in all our parcel mail billions.

    The unions should have united years ago to block these transit agreements, but they have always been very poorly led and easily outmatched by smarter, greedier and much more devious players.

    The concerted long range strategy of FedEx, UPS, Issa and his ilk, and Donahoe and his stacked Postal Board of Governors can only be fought one way: through the close scrutiny of the impact of all past, present and future transit agreements made with for profit corporations such as Fed Ex and UPS

18. im not saying i know this im saying why do carriers automatically seem to think they wont be

19. @barryb- and you know this how?

20. why do carriers thing that only subs will be delivering packages on saturday. I wouldnt couldnt on a mon-fri job. carriers will still be working saturdays

21. Issa is a BUM! Who would elect such an incompetent,republican horses asshole?

22. I thought I had something to say , but ISSA waste !

23. Issa is giving his benefactors a lot of show for their dough.

    #1 in donations from PSI (Pitney Bowes)

24. “The proof is in the pudding!!” as they say. Can’t wait to watch the “horse and pony show” April 17 on this website!!Say Isaa is to model his Postal Reform Bill after last year’s Senate bill that passed. That is going to be interesting. Doubt if any progress will be made. Congress is full of incompetent people!! Only their self interest prevails!!Can they really decide on anything along with our so-called President?? What a joke!!!!!!!!!!

25. If the post office has to give the public 6 months notice that they are going to five day delivery, now that it has been put on hold, would they be required to give them another 6 months notice, before going to five day delivery?

26. I think I lost my widget in a Disqus

27. Where’s my FedEx like buyout ya fat ass?

28. billy b, who are you to talk??
    every one has the right to their opinion.
    even you.
    the slacker that you were and are.
    good thing you retired.
    sooner or later they would have fired you.

29. Issa is not only pissed, he is a liar and not too smart. He doesn’t mention the Postal Regulatory Commission stating cutting Saturday delivery would only save $46 million. I do not think any substantial bill will come out of his committee, mainly because he controls it. Issa and Donahoe are actually very incompetent if they think cutting service will save anything. If a carrier has to deliver packages only on Saturdays and each block on his/her route has a package, I don’t see much savings except maybe a little on gas. But what would be the loss in customers? The problem is no one is growing the business, we just had a rate increase and what does Obama propose? Another increase, I think Obama too wants the USPS to go down the drain or maybe he is just like Issa and not too smart. The Post Office department needs to be brought back and the USPS placed on the regular government rolls, then Congress can use all the income generated.

30. Wow! In poker you call that witness list a “stacked deck”

31. Scott, thanks for the lecture. Is your last name Cleaver?

32. Issa wants to ruin the Post Office and is pissed nobody buys his bull. He is doing everything he can to bring the Postal Service down.

33. Issa is pissed off. REAL pissed off. His puppet Donahoe didn’t come through with the BOG, and with six day delivery still intact, it makes it harder for those vultures who want to dismantle the Service and make it a private company with starvation wages and no doubt horrible service that will kill it dead to get their greedy wish.
    Five day delivery is still on the back burner and it will one day be implemented. I will admit I was wrong and surprised that the BOG agreed to postpone five day delivery. I had figured the fix was in, and I may not be totally wrong on that account, either. Nonetheless, I’m glad we will retain six day delivery, at least for the time being. Tens of thousands of postal workers are breathing easier, too, hoping their jobs will be spared.
    For all the advantages of a weekend off, I could not enjoy it as much as others do knowing many people lost their jobs. For those who were supporting five day just to get Saturday off and think no farther than football, shame on you and your selfishness. If it was your job on the line, maybe you’d think differently, but far too many people out there are totally unwilling or incapable of putting themselves in another person’s shoes. It’s all about them, even above the needs of their own families. I know far too many people like that. Drug user parents who can’t hold down jobs because they would have to take a drug test. Or they work for some outfit that doesn’t offer insurance or livable pay because they refuse to stop their drug habits. Not all selfish people are druggies, far from it. But selfishness hurts everybody who has to be around it. Especially family members who don’t get the best they deserve because one or both parents wastes money and other responsibilities looking after Number 1 first.
    Five day will eventually arrive. Let’s hope attrition takes care of the risk of folks becoming unemployed.

34. Issa is a jerkoff

35. Get rid of Issa problem solved!

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