Farewell, Merry Mailman!

Just 4 days after my sixth birthday, a TV show called "The Merry Mailman" made its debut on New York's local Channel 9.  The show featured an actor named Ray Heatherton, playing a friendly neighborhood mail carrier who sang songs, told stories, played games with the kids in the studio audience, and talked directly with us, the kids who were huddled around the small black-and-white TV screen at home.  He was a good and trusted friend.  Unfortunately, about 6 years later, he fell victim to the Communist witch hunt that gripped the nation during the 1950's, and his wonderful show was cancelled.  As a kid, I had no idea of the political maneuverings that were taking place behind the scenes - all I knew is that our Merry Mailman was gone.

Flash forward to the present.  I feel like my real merry mailman is about to disappear, and that most of the nation remains blissfully unaware of the political maneuverings that are causing the Postal Service's existence to be in serious jeopardy - to my mind, for no good reason.

In 2006, after the Democratic Party swept the midterm elections and took both the House and the Senate, the lame-duck Republican Congress passed a law requiring the Postal Service to prefund health care premiums for future retirees 75 years out.  This prefunding has to be accomplished within a 10-year period, ending in 2016.  The cost of the prefunding is about $5.5 billion per year - a total of 55 billion dollars over the 10-year period.  Yet, the Postal Service is singled out as the only governmental agency subject to this requirement.  And just imagine the reaction of stockholders if any private corporation were to fund retirement benefits for employees who have not yet even been hired, and start out every fiscal year billions of dollars in debt!

And now a quick quiz!  How much of your tax money goes to support the US Postal Service?  Answer:  none!  Ever since the Nixon administration, the Postal Service has been 99% financed by the sale of stamps and other services.  The remaining 1% comes from the government, but this is considered payment for the franking privileges (the right to send out informative mailings to constituents) extended to members of Congress, the free mail privileges extended to members of the military, and reduced rate privileges extended to non-profits such as churches and charities.

So even though the Postal Service has not been a tax-supported agency for over 40 years, the 2006 Congress has saddled it with this burden that has forced it to formulate plans to begin closing post offices and sorting facilities as soon as next month.  If you depend on the US Mail to get prescription medications or pension checks, they may take longer to get to you.  If you live in a small town, you may not be a zip code any more.  And forget mail on Saturdays.  Farewell, Merry Mailman!

So those are the facts.  But why has Congress done this to the Post Office?  I have my own theories, including:

• The closing of postal facilities will result in at least 200,000 jobs being lost by postal workers.  If your primary goal is to prevent a second Obama term, as Mitch McConnell has stated it is, wouldn't it be convenient to show negative job numbers right before the election?
• Postal workers have some of the strongest unions representing them.  If you are intent on dismantling labor unions, as tea party Republicans in states like Wisconsin have been doing, wouldn't it be great to see this long-standing bastion of unionized workers collapse and fail?
• If you were an official of a private corporation in direct competition with the Post Office (as UPS and FedEx are), wouldn't you strongly support organizations like ALEC (as UPS and FedEx do) who are now pushing for the privatization of the Postal service and/or diversion of Post Office business to private corporations?  And if you don't know anything about ALEC, read my previous blog post.

I for one think that it's downright amazing that for a mere 45 cents, I can have an envelope hand-delivered to a doorstep at the opposite end of the country in a matter of a few days.  I don't want to lose that privilege.  I intend to contact my Congressman and Senators, and urge them to repeal the prefunding provision of 2006.  It makes sense to me.  How about you?

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