US Postal Service: Not Just Constitutionally Required But Also Capable Of Enabling Radical Social Changes

Since the implementation of the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act (which was a direct response to a labor strike of the previous year) the United States Post Office has been essentially spun-off as independent quasi-public corporation having zero operational funds coming from the federal taxpayer (at least after the transitional period ending with the 1984 fiscal year) and entirely dependent on the fees from services provided. Despite being cleaved from any additional revenues from the government while obligated to continue providing service to rural parts of the country that are not self sufficient, the postal rate for 1st class mail has remained so remarkably low that it has been a deterrent to for-profit enterprises to enter the market to compete; UPS and FedEx do offer letter delivery starting at $8.61 and $7.32 respectively compared to USPS' 49 cent stamp and an additional 2 days for the USPS to deliver. Currently the USPS's operational losses can be exclusively attributed to Postal Accountability & Enhancement Act of 2006 passed by the the lame duck Republican Congress that imposed a 75 year pension liability; meaning that before future USPS employees are even born, their first decade of pension has already been paid for, a financial herculean task that no enterprise (governmental or for-profit) should ever be expected to accomplish. And yet the USPS with shrinking their own headcount through attrition and possibly stopping personal mail service on Saturdays (while initiating Sunday package delivery for Amazon in a few metropolitan areas) has been successful to be on a trajectory to fully fund the 75 year pension liability in the coming decade. Imagine if the USPS was allowed to return to a normal 30-40 year pension liability they would be left with billions of dollars in excess and no longer have impending budgetary sword of damocles hanging over their head.

Let me bring your attention to following verbiage from the Postal Reorganization Act:

Sec 101
(a) The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress and supported by the People. The Postal Service shall have its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people.
(d) Postal rates shall be established to apportion the costs of all postal operations to all users of the mail on a fair and equitable basis

The combination of both of these parts to the Section 101 of the explanatory intentions of the Act, that the USPS operational budget shall come from postage fees alone and that it is obligated to "provide personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people", we could solve the issue of Net Neutrality and spark a new economic revolution akin to the Industrial Revolution. I would propose to take the billions of that which has been sequestered to fund the ridiculous 75 year pension to be freed up and allowed to build the infrastructure needed for the USPS to begin offering internet service wirelessly as a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP). Having the USPS operating as a WISP would be aligned with the intentions of the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act, as the correspondence is the intended purpose of the USPS and though contemporaneously was exclusive to the physical paper-centric correspondence, the USPS is not shackled to that limited definition of communication which is the bedrock of an informed electorate within a democracy. What I am envisioning is a municipal wifi except on a national level, that unlike the municipal wifi projects would be paid for by the end users instead of through ad revenue and local government taxes.

While providing competition to traditional internet service providers (ISP) that are currently biting at the bit to impose slow lanes to their customers, having the USPS entering the market would create a floor as far as maintaining net neutrality and allowing their users to freely browse the web without being slowed down when interacting with private ISPs non-preferential content (think of Comcast slowing their customers' traffic whenever they browsed other than subsidiary NBC/Universal content on the web). With the pseudo government agency, the USPS, operating the WISP the private providers would still retain the market differentiator of having their users' privacy as a priority possibly baking into their service end-to-end encryption and faster speeds of hard lines and fiber to the curb than the USPS' WISP. The freeform nature of the Internet would be retained with a critical mass of consumers guaranteed access to all of the internet, and have the positive effect of either forcing the hand of the for-profit ISPS to continue net-neutrality policy or possibly that the slow-lanes be so cheap that people would possibly patronize both services.

Good retirement if you can get it!

Recently it has been reported that SEC head Mary Jo White will be receiving lifetime retirement payments of $42,000 a month or $500,000 a year from her most immediate private sector employer Debevoise & Plimpton LLP a law firm that defends some the biggest Wall Street banks from SEC prosecutions. Though I am disgusted by the obvious conflict of interest, I actually want to bring attention to how very generous this retirement is structured compared to vital public servants pensions.

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP retirement fund is entirely unfunded, which means if the law firm has a fiscal quarter in the red Mary Jo White won't get 3 payments or $128,000 (don't cry for Ms. White since in a bizarre attempt to avoid an appearance of conflict of interest, she requested that she get paid upfront for the 4 years that she would be the top prosecutor of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP's clients). The retirement payments are pending on the continuation of the profitability of the firm due to the retirement plan is not pre-funded and is not a participant of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) a Federal program that is the pension equivalent to the FDIC and deposit accounts within retail banks. Well Debevoise & Plimpton LLP is a private company and is free to structure their compensation however they want, I would prefer that they didn't compensate exactly the person in charge of enforcement of laws that affect their clients, but c'est la vie.

Now compare and contrast with the retirement fund for your local mail carrier: with passage of HR 6407 December 20th, 2006 that restructured the USPS's pension fund and retiree healthcare so that it would be future funded for 75 years. Unlike every other department of the federal government; unlike every private company with a future funded pension regulated by PBGC; unlike the retirement plan of the SEC head-- USPS has to plan and pay for the retirement of their current and future employees some of whom have yet to be born, not to mention worked a day for the entirely postage dependent Postal Service. What is the benefit to extending out the self sufficient service's liabilities a couple of generations into the future? What happens when the USPS permanently closes up shop (an unfathomable circumstance for our founder fathers whom assumed the postal service was essential service for our government)?

The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 was the legislation that broke asunder the fiscal relationship between Federal Government and the United States Postal Service, no longer would the USPS be reliant on the tax payer to provide a government service. Self sufficiency was adequate enough for 36 years, other than a destruction of a public good, what possible rationale could be given for the 2006 reform that passed in a lame duck congress (a month and a half after Democrats took back both House & Senate)? If it was so necessary to reform the pension of the US Postal Service then why wasn't the same reform implemented in the Pension Protection Act Of 2006 that was signed August 17th 2006 a mere four months and three days prior to signing of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act?

It is a continual push for free market austerity for the masses, and free market coddling for the economic elite; defined cost retirement benefits or 401ks is the norm for masses, and defined benefits or golden parachutes is the expected for the corporate titans; individuals who have little or no control over their golden years are told by the dynastic wealthy that should take investing in their own hands while at the same time cashing guaranteed retirement checks. Retirement policies should be standard and fair across the socioeconomic strata, with the goal to avoid what Thomas Paine described:

"It is painful to see old age working itself to death, in what are called civilised countries, for daily bread"
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

H.R. 6407 (109th): Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act

Mary Jo White’s Latest Conflict of Interest

The Pension Protection Act Of 2006

http://www.ushistory.org/Paine/rights/c2-01.htm