Post office's demise need not happen

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August 3, 2012

Post office's demise need not happen

Anonymous Gloucester Daily Times The Gloucester Daily Times Fri Aug 03, 2012, 12:00 AM EDT

To the editor:

As a 28-year veteran of the postal service, I would like to inform the public of the misinformation and trickery being used to destroy your postal system.

In 2006, George Bush and his cronies enacted the Postal Accountability Law before they left office. This law requires the postal service to pre-fund the next 75 years of postal retirees health benefits in a 10-year period.

This is not a misprint. We have to pay retirees benefits for people who have not even been born yet.

That means the postal service must pay $5.5 billion to the treasury every year for 10 years. The postal service is the only company in the world that must do this by a law enacted by the Republican Party.

The General Accounting Office, which is a part of the government, has audited these payments and concluded that the postal service has overpaid their obligation by more than $70 billion. However, this audit has been ignored by House Republicans.

In fact, Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, has proposed a bill, H.R. 2309, that would require the postal service to close hundreds of plants, shut tens of thousands of rural post offices, end Saturday delivery, and set up a financial control board to tear up union contracts.

This would destroy your post office. This bill is so bad Republicans have put off voting on it until after this year’s elections for fear of reprisal. This is pure cowardice on their part.

What company wouldn’t be running a deficit under these circumstances. The media, which runs stories about Internet use and other nonsense ruining the postal service, are run by these powerful politicians and their friends.

Just ask yourself what it will cost you to buy postal services from the new companies they have planned to replace your postal service. How much to forward or hold your mail and will it be safe-guarded as it is now?

Contact your senators and representatives and ask why the postal service has to pre-fund retirees who haven’t been born yet and why they are not addressing that problem.

You are entitled to an answer; it’s your postal service.

David P. White

Mount Vernon Street, Gloucester