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JORDAN TSDC POSTAL POLITICS

POSTAL REFORM DISADPOSTAL REFORM DISAD...............................................................................................................1USPS POLITICS 1NC SHELL........................................................................................................2***UNIQUENESS***......................................................................................................................6

Momentum Now.................................................................................................................................................7Yes, Momentum Now.........................................................................................................................................8USPS K2 Obama’s Agenda...............................................................................................................................9A2: Unions block the bill..................................................................................................................................10

***LINKS***...............................................................................................................................11Link: Latin American Aide.............................................................................................................................12Link Magnifier: Latin America Aide.............................................................................................................13Link: Cuba Engagement Unpopular..............................................................................................................14Link Magnifier: Cuba Lobby..........................................................................................................................15Link Magnifier: Cuba = big fights..................................................................................................................16Link: Cuban Energy Engagement..................................................................................................................17Link: Mexico.....................................................................................................................................................18

***INTERNALS***.......................................................................................................................19USPS Jobs bigger I/L to Econ than Deficit Spending...................................................................................20Now Key for saving USPS................................................................................................................................21A2: USPS Bad/Inefficient................................................................................................................................22

***IMPACTS***...........................................................................................................................23Democracy Impact...........................................................................................................................................24Santa Claus Impact..........................................................................................................................................26A2 santa bad......................................................................................................................................................28

***AFF STUFF***.......................................................................................................................29Reform won’t pass (unions).............................................................................................................................30Postal Service Bad............................................................................................................................................31

Going Postal 1


USPS POLITICS 1NC SHELLUNIQUENESS: POSTAL REFORM IS COMING NOW BUT ABSOLUTE LEGISLATIVE FOCUS IS KEY

REIN JUNE 13TH

House leader proposes new postal reform plan By Lisa Rein, Published: June 13 http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-leader-proposes-new-postal-reform-plan/2013/06/13/8833d452-d464-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_print.html

The chief House architect of a Postal Service overhaul that failed to gain traction in the last Congress is back with new draft legislation that would allow the financially ailing agency to move to five-day delivery and ban it from entering no-layoff agreements with employees. To broaden support for a bill criticized by Democrats as too

partisan and anti-labor, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is attempting to soften opposition with his new proposal, released Thursday. It would allow the Postal Service to scrap an annual $6 billion payment to pre-fund health costs for future retirees, a major concession that is likely to help the bill’s chances in the Senate . The pre-funding requirement and plummeting mail volume pushed the mail agency into a $15.9 billion deficit in the past year alone, and postal officials have warned

that they will default on a third pre-funding payment this year. But Issa’s new draft also keeps proposals that have divided lawmakers. Democrats are likely to oppose any language allowing layoffs, and members of both parties who represent rural districts have pushed back against five-day delivery. An immediate switch to five-day service, for example, was not in legislation the Senate approved last year. Issa’s bill did not receive a vote on the House floor. The legislation also would require the Postal Service to move aggressively to halt curbside delivery of the mail in favor of post office boxes or clustered

boxes on street corners, a change that Issa says could save at least $4 billion annually but that unions oppose. “Right now the Postal Service is hurtling toward complete insolvency,” says a fact sheet on the draft bill. “If USPS cannot pay its bills, the American taxpayers will almost certainly

be asked to pick up the tab. “This plan will give the Postal Service new tools to cut costs and restructure its finances, while ensuring it has the capital necessary to do so .” The National Association of Letter Carriers said the bill contains “many of the damaging and fundamental flaws” in Issa’s previous bill. The letter carriers and other postal unions say eliminating a day of mail delivery would slash jobs, and they oppose a provision to shrink curbside service as a threat to mail security. “The NALC is disappointed that Chairman Issa did not take a fresher approach to postal reform with this discussion draft,” the union’s president, Fredric V. Rolando, said in a statement. As before, the legislation would create a panel modeled on the D.C. Financial Control Board to oversee postal operations, with a broad mandate to reduce costs and bring the agency back to financial solvency. It would replace the current Board of Governors until postal finances are in the black. The new plan scraps a system modeled after the military’s Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission — and opposed by postal officials — that would have allowed a separate board to decide which post offices and mail-sorting hubs should close. The agency has moved to downsize on its own in the past year, shortening hours at thousands of local post offices and consolidating sorting hubs across the country. Issa’s Postal Reform Act of

2013 will not be formally introduced for months, congressional aides say. By circulating a long-awaited draft, they say, Issa hopes to work with labor, rural lawmakers and groups that opposed his effort in the last Congress. The draft comes on the heels of a failed attempt by Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe to drop Saturday mail delivery without congressional approval. Donahoe said he was acting in desperation because Congress has not approved a restructuring plan. But Donahoe was forced to back down after lawmakers objected. Issa would allow him to move forward with five-day delivery of letters and second- and third-class mail but continue delivering packages six days for at least five years. Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer said officials are reviewing the proposal. In the past, Donahoe agreed with some provisions in Issa’s bill; he and his predecessors proposed for years eliminating Saturday delivery. But

Donahoe has opposed regulation by a new entity. Issa and other key lawmakers on postal issues, including Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), chairman of

the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), ranking Democrat on Issa’s panel — have pledged to reach agreement on a restructuring plan in this Congress. Carper applauded Issa for releasing a proposal but acknowledged that the lawmakers still have differences. “While we differ in our approach in some areas, Chairman Issa and I, and the rest of our colleagues, are united in our effort to restore the Postal Service to solvency and give it the tools it needs to thrive in the years to come,” Carper said in a statement.

Going Postal 2


<INSERT SPECIFIC LINK HERE>

Going Postal 3


INTERNAL LINK: THE COLLAPSE OF THE POSTAL SERVICE IN THE CURRENT FINANCIAL CLIMATE WOULD LEAD TO A LOSS OF GOOD JOBS THAT WON’T BE MADE UP BY PRIVATE COMPANIES AND WOULD REMOVE A SERVICE KEY TO BUSINESSES THAT PRIVATE ACTORS CAN’T DO ALONE

RUBIO 11

Why we need the Postal Service - CNN.com By Philip F. Rubio, Special to CNN updated 12:18 PM EDT, Mon September 12, 2011 CNN.com Editor's note: Philip F. Rubio is assistant professor of history at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and the author of "There's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality" (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

(CNN) -- What would we lose if we lost 220,000 postal jobs (120,000 proposed through layoffs, 100,000 through attrition), 3,700 post offices, 300 mail processing plants, or even the post office itself? With millions of jobs and businesses lost to the recent recession, these may seem like just more numbers, or more seemingly inevitable "facts" -- that in the electronic age we now rely on the private sector to deliver public services. But postal

workers are people we depend on and post offices are places we want to know will always be there. Downsizing the U.S Postal Service - -which is so low on money, it's in imminent danger

of default -- may seem like a ripple in this troubled economy, but it promises to be a social tsunami if action isn't taken soon to save it.

For one thing, the postal service has been a huge employer. Before I became a history professor I carried mail for the Postal Service for 20 years. As with many government jobs, you're hired for this one based on achieving a high score on a competitive exam. Veterans, roughly 20% of today's postal workforce (though once well over 50%) earn extra points on this exam, thus giving them a head start and a job to come home to after military service. Who were my co-workers? Just everyday people who, like me in 1980, were attracted to a job that had good benefits, job security, and started at $8.10 an hour. This was as a result of the 1970 nationwide postal wildcat strike that began in New York after postal workers declared they were tired of earning $2.95 an hour and having to work a second job or collect food stamps to make ends meet.

New 'village' post office In collecting oral histories for a book I later wrote on the postal service, I interviewed those who had worked before 1970, including those who struck. The postal worker's job could include processing mail as clerks and mail handlers, delivering it as letter carriers, driving it as truck drivers, and as maintenance workers keeping up the vehicles, buildings, and grounds. Above all, postal workers were proud of having a career serving the public. The job allowed many to move into the ranks of middle-class wage earners, where they were able to buy homes and send their children to college. But they were also members

of extended families and community networks. Many started small businesses on the side, adopted foster children, were active in civic organizations, or enrolled in college classes . Their jobs mattered to communities. Postal jobs have especially played a key role in black community development. The post office has long been one of the largest employers of African-Americans. Even as they faced discrimination at other jobs, many found work there with college degrees or military service under their belts. By 1970, they had become twice as likely as

whites to work for the post office, and even before the wage bump that year, the job had afforded them a middle-class status and the ability to accumulate wealth. Today the nation relies on a vast mailing industry that operates primarily for profit. But that network is underpinned by the U.S. Postal Service -- a self-supporting quasi-corporate government agency that remains committed to universal service by constitutional and congressional mandate. Many Americans may not realize that it was the Post Office

that pioneered parcel post in 1916 in response to the overpriced, poor, and inconsistent service disaster that was private package delivery. Or that the USPS came up with the concept of overnight mail and zip codes that UPS and FedEx rely on so heavily in their business. Many don't make the connection that e-commerce not only competes with but also generates U.S. mail. Or that during the turn of this century -- the Postal Service's peak years of revenue and mail handling -- it was common to hear competitors and political ideologues calling for the agency's privatization, while at the same time blocking USPS innovations like the proposed 1997 Global Postal Link program to help expedite parcels through customs. Or that the post office is the victim of an artificial deficit created by the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, signed by President George W. Bush, which forces the Postal Service to pre-fund its retiree health benefits 75 years into the future over the next 10 years. What should have been annual revenue surpluses for the Postal Service over the last decade have instead contributed to nightmare annual deficits as it is forced to pay $5.5 billion a year out of operating funds to satisfy

this unnecessary and devastating mandate. We lose more than numbers when we lose postal jobs and post offices, or even the existence of a universal

postal service. We lose more than just people committed to providing service, but also people engaged with their communities. People able to consume goods that others produce to help drive local economies. We would also lose the promise of jobs in the future that provide what has become a more dependable service over two centuries since the founding of this country (the post office was started in 1775). An alternative to this loss? People could demand that Congress treat the Postal Service as a venerable American institution worthy of fulfilling its enduring mandate, for which it has recruited generations of skilled and dedicated professional government employees.

Going Postal 4


IMPACT: DOUBLE DIP US RECESSION NOW WOULD CAUSE MULTIPLE NUCLEAR WARS AND TRIGGER EVERY MAJOR EXTINCTION SCENARIO

DUNCAN 12

Duncan, chief economist Blackhorse Asset Management former IMF consultant and financial sector specialist for the World Bank, 12 [Richard, The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy, 2012, ebook]bg

The political battle over America’s future would be bitter, and quite possibly bloody. It cannot be guaranteed that the U.S. Constitution would survive. Foreign affairs would also confront the United States with enormous challenges. During the Great Depression, the United States did not have a global empire. Now it does. The United States maintains hundreds of military bases across dozens of countries around the world. Added to this is a

fleet of 11 aircraft carriers and 18 nuclear-armed submarines. The country spends more than $650 billion a year on its military. If the U.S. economy collapses into a New Great Depression,

the United States could not afford to maintain its worldwide military presence or to continue in its role as global peacekeeper. Or, at least, it could not finance its military in the same way it does at present. Therefore, either the United States would have to find an alternative funding method for its global military presence or else it would have to radically scale it back. Historically, empires were financed with plunder and territorial expropriation. The estates of the vanquished ruling classes were given to the conquering generals, while the rest of the population was forced to pay imperial taxes. The U.S. model of empire has been unique. It has financed its global military presence by issuing government debt, thereby taxing future generations of Americans to pay for this generation’s global supremacy. That would no longer be possible if the economy collapsed. Cost–benefit analysis would quickly reveal that much of America’s global presence was simply no longer affordable. Many—or even most—of the outposts that did not pay for themselves would have to be abandoned. Priority would be given to those places that were of vital economic interests to the United States. The Middle East oil fields would be

at the top of that list. The United States would have to maintain control over them whatever the price. In this global depression scenario, the price of oil could collapse to $3 per barrel. Oil consumption would fall by half and there would be no speculators left to manipulate prices higher. Oil at that level would impoverish the oil-producing nations, with extremely destabilizing political consequences. Maintaining control over the Middle East oil fields would become much more difficult for the United States. It would require a much larger military presence than it does now. On the one hand, it might become necessary for the United States to reinstate the draft (which would possibly meet with violent resistance from draftees, as it did during the Vietnam War). On the other hand, America’s all-volunteer army might find it had more than enough volunteers with the national unemployment rate in excess of 20 percent. The army might have to be employed to keep order at home, given that mass unemployment would inevitably lead to a sharp spike in crime. Only after the Middle East oil was secured would the country know how much more of its global military presence it could afford to maintain. If international trade had broken down, would there be any reason for the United States to keep a military presence in Asia when there was no obvious way to finance that presence? In a global depression,

the United States’ allies in Asia would most likely be unwilling or unable to finance America’s military bases there or to pay for the upkeep of the U.S. Pacific fleet. Nor would the United States have the strength to force them to pay for U.S. protection. Retreat from Asia might become unavoidable. And Europe? What would a cost–benefit analysis conclude about the wisdom of the United States maintaining military bases there? What valued added does Europe provide to the United States? Necessity may mean

Europe will have to defend itself. Should a New Great Depression put an end to the Pax Americana, the world would become a much more dangerous place. When the Great Depression began, Japan was the rising industrial power in Asia. It invaded Manchuria in 1931 and conquered much of the rest of Asia in the early 1940s. Would China, Asia’s new rising power, behave the same way in the event of a new global economic collapse? Possibly. China is the only nuclear power in Asia east of India (other than North Korea, which is largely a

Chinese satellite state). However, in this disaster scenario, it is not certain that China would survive in its current configuration. Its economy would be in ruins. Most of its factories and

banks would be closed. Unemployment could exceed 30 percent. There would most likely be starvation both in the cities and in the countryside . The Communist Party could lose its grip on power, in which case the country could break apart, as it has numerous times in the past. It was less than 100 years ago that China’s provinces, ruled by warlords, were at war with one another. United or divided, China’s nuclear arsenal would make it Asia’s undisputed superpower if the United States were to withdraw from the region. From Korea and Japan in the North to New Zealand in the South to Burma in the West, all of Asia

would be at China’s mercy. And hunger among China’s population of 1.3 billion people could necessitate territorial expansion into Southeast Asia. In fact, the central government might not be able to prevent mass migration southward, even if it wanted to. In Europe, severe economic hardship would revive the centuries-old struggle between the left and the right. During the 1930s, the Fascists movement arose and imposed a police state on most of Western Europe. In the East, the Soviet Union had become a communist police state even earlier. The far right and the far left of the political spectrum converge in totalitarianism. It is difficult to judge whether Europe’s democratic institutions would hold up better this time that they did last time. England had an empire during the Great Depression. Now it only has banks. In a severe worldwide depression, the country—or, at least London—could become ungovernable. Frustration over poverty and a lack of jobs would erupt into anti-immigration riots not only in the United Kingdom

but also across most of Europe. The extent to which Russia would menace its European neighbors is unclear. On the one hand, Russia would be impoverished by the collapse in oil prices and might be too preoccupied with internal unrest to threaten anyone. On the other hand, it could provoke a war with the goal of maintaining internal order through emergency wartime powers. Germany is very nearly demilitarized today when compared with the late 1930s. Lacking a nuclear deterrent of its own, it could be subject to Russian intimidation. While Germany could appeal for protection from England and France, who do have nuclear capabilities, it is uncertain that would buy Germany enough time to remilitarize before it became a victim of Eastern aggression. As for the rest of the world, its prospects in this

disaster scenario can be summed up in only a couple of sentences. Global economic output could fall by as much as half, from $60 trillion to $30 trillion. Not all of the world’s seven billion people

would survive in a $30 trillion global economy. Starvation would be widespread. Food riots would provoke political upheaval and myriad big and small conflicts around the world. It would be a humanitarian catastrophe so extreme as to be unimaginable for the current generation, who, at least in the industrialized world, has known only prosperity. Nor would there be reason to hope that the New Great Depression would end quickly. The Great Depression was only ended by an even more calamitous global war that killed approximately 60 million people.

Going Postal 5


***UNIQUENESS***

Going Postal 6


MOMENTUM NOW

CONDON 13

By Stephanie Condon, CBS new writer “Congress up in arms over Postal Service delivery cuts” http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57567976/congress-up-in-arms-over-postal-service-delivery-cuts/

Patrick R. Donahoe, postmaster general and CEO of the Postal Service, said today that the quasi-governmental agency is in no financial position to keep Saturday service. The Postal Service must finance its own operations, without receiving tax dollars, but it must also follow budget mandates passed by Congress. Last year, it reported an annual loss of a record $15.9 billion and forecast more red ink in 2013. Given the circumstances, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., released a letter in support of the plan. "This common-sense reform would save the Postal Service more than two billion annually," they wrote. As the top Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, respectively -- the committees that oversee the postal service -- their support is key. Other congressmen on those committees, however, had negative reactions to the plan. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement he was "disappointed" with the decision but found it hard to blame the Postal Service. "I have long argued that Congress should reduce the number of service mandates it places on the Postal Service so that the Postmaster General and his team can more easily adjust operations to reflect the changing demand for the products and services they offer," he said. "While I welcome the Postal Service's intention to preserve Saturday package delivery under the proposal announced today, I would

much prefer that any effort to move to a five-day mail delivery schedule occur in an orderly manner similar to the process the Senate approved last year." Carper last year co-authored bipartisan legislation that would have required the Postal Service to take other, aggressive cost-cutting measures for two years before resorting to five-day mail delivery. The bill passed in the Senate, but the House did not vote on it. Carper said one of his top priorities this year is reviving negotiations over the postal reform legislation. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., a senior Republican on the committee on who co-authored last year's Postal Service legislation, was more critical. Cutting service, she said in a statement, should "be the last resort, not the Postal Service's first choice. The Postal Service's decision to eliminate Saturday delivery is inconsistent with current law and threatens to further jeopardize its customer base." Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, another committee member, called the move "bad news for Alaskans and small business owners who rely on timely delivery to rural areas." "The Postal

Service should have allowed Congress to address this issue through the legislative process," he said. "We wouldn't be in this situation if the House had done its job and passed a bill." Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., another committee member, similarly said, "Due to the House's inaction, the Postal Service is now facing crippling deficits. While I agree the Postal Service needs to cut costs, their plan to end Saturday delivery cannot move forward without Congressional approval."

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government -- another committee with Postal Service jurisdiction -- said there should be real "comprehensive reform" rather than piecemeal efforts. "It is unfortunate that the U.S. Postal Service has made a unilateral decision to move to five-day delivery in a matter of months when serious questions remain as to whether piecemeal efforts like this one will do anything to secure the Postal Service's long-term viability," he said. "Furthermore, this move circumvents the clear will of Congress as expressed in the law over three decades." Rep. Janice Hahn, D-Calif., meanwhile, said she was "deeply troubled" by the way the cutback in service may impact her constituents, particularly seniors. "There are a lot of people in my community who depend on six-day delivery for important time-sensitive mail," she said. "I am particularly disturbed by what effects this decision might have on our seniors. While I understand the current budgetary challenges of this decision, these cuts cannot be made at the expense of our most vulnerable." House

Speaker John Boehner today expressed sympathy for the Postal Service's dilemma without saying whether he supported the plan. "They're charged with

running the post office," he said. "But yet the Congress in its wisdom has tied their hands every which way in order for them to actually run the post office in a revenue neutral way. And so Congress needs to act. There's no question about that. And I hope that we'll act soon."

Going Postal 7

http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2013-02-06-DEI-to-Congressional-Leadership-re-USPS.pdf


YES, MOMENTUM NOW

KEANE 12

Kicking Can on Postal Service No Option as Financial Chasm Looms By Angela Greiling Keane political reporter for Bloomberg business week on November 14, 2012 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-14/kicking-can-on-postal-service-no-option-as-financial-chasm-looms

Overshadowed by a political battle over year-end tax increases and spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff, the U.S. Postal Service could run out of money to deliver mail next year unless President Barack Obama and Congress act. The service, whose 530,000 employees are more than at any U.S.-based publicly traded company other than Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), has exhausted its borrowing authority, defaulted on more than $11 billion of

payments to the U.S. Treasury and is operating on cash it generates from selling stamps and package- delivery services. After streamlining delivery routes and cutting work hours, it’s running out of money-saving tricks it can use without congressional approval. House and Senate proposals differ on whether to let the service eliminate one day of mail delivery and on how easy it should

be to shut post offices and plants. “The bottom line is that something will be done because the Postal Service can’t survive without getting some

help,” said Art Sackler, coordinator of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, whose members include some of the country’s biggest postal customers, such as Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and EBay Inc. (EBAY) “It’s very near the edge financially.” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has said the service may have lost a record $15 billion during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. It’s scheduled to report its annual results tomorrow. In the first three quarters, it lost $11.7 billion. Shrinking Surplus The service reached its $15 billion borrowing limit Sept. 28. It had said it would temporarily run out of cash in October before rebounding for an unspecified length of time. Chief Financial Officer Joseph Corbett will update projections on available cash tomorrow, David Partenheimer, a spokesman, said. “Our liquidity remains a major concern into 2013, especially as we get into the second half of the fiscal year,” Partenheimer said. The service’s outlook worsened yesterday, when the U.S. Office of Personnel Management said the service’s projected surplus in a government-worker

retirement account has fallen to $2.6 billion, less than one-quarter of the previous year’s estimate, due to lower interest rates. The service has proposed tapping that surplus to help cover its losses. As Congress returns for a post-election session, the post office will find it hard to get attention while the White House and lawmakers seek agreements before a Jan. 1 deadline on expiring tax cuts and the automatic spending reductions known as sequestration, said Roger Kodat, who was a Treasury official working on postal issues during President George W. Bush’s administration. Immediate Crises “I don’t see the Postal Service as the one that’s going to catch” Congress’s attention, Kodat, now principal at the Kodat Group LLC consulting firm, said in an interview. “I would imagine it’s difficult to make it a top-burner issue. It’s always been a tough slog.” The post office’s challenge may take a back seat to immediate crises because it’s in what’s typically its best quarter of the year. Campaign mailings boosted volume before the Nov. 6 U.S. election, and the agency said last week said it expects to handle a record 365 million packages during the Christmas holiday season, a 20 percent

increase from 2011. “House and Senate leaders recognize the importance of taking action to help put the Postal Service on a solid

financial path,” Partenheimer said in an e-mail. “We continue to take actions to cut expenses and grow revenue but cannot return to long-term financial stability without passage of the comprehensive legislation identified in our five-year business plan.” Saturday Delivery The Senate measure would make it more difficult for the service to close facilities or end Saturday delivery, and would install a chief innovation officer to help seek new revenue sources. The House bill would create a commission to oversee facilities closings, on the notion that would be easier if lawmakers were removed from the process. It would create a control board to oversee operations. Both chambers would give the service more time to fund future retirees’ health benefits, which would cut the amount the Postal Service must pay into that account each year. ‘Dangerous Situation’ The Postal Service, without any consequences so far, skipped two payments totaling $11.2 billion due to the Treasury this year toward those benefits. While spreading those costs out would buy the Postal Service time, that wouldn’t be enough by itself to make the agency profitable. “Any adverse circumstances that would cause its volumes to drop beneath their projections

and we could have a dangerous situation,” Sackler said in an interview. Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has urged Obama to press for postal legislation before the year ends. The committee earlier this year backed a bill sponsored by Issa, a California Republican, and Representative Dennis Ross, a Florida

Republican. “USPS is in a severe cash crunch primarily due to its mismanaged response to the diminished demand for paper-based communication,” Issa wrote in a Sept. 7 letter to Obama. “Regardless of the cause, it is unacceptable for a federal agency to be in default to the federal government.” Ali Ahmad, an Issa spokesman, said the letter was the most recent action from the congressman on the postal measure. The full House hasn’t considered the bill. The Senate, with bipartisan support from lawmakers who are leaving Congress in January, passed a postal service bill that’s

languished, awaiting House action. Seeking Action Delaware Democratic Senator Tom Carper, a sponsor of the Senate bill, “remains hopeful that, now that the elections are over, the House Republicans will pass postal reform legislation so that a final bill can be approved by Congress and signed into law by the end of the year , ” said Emily

Spain, a spokeswoman for Carper. Like the Postal Service, the National Association of Letter Carriers, whose members deliver mail in cities, is pushing Congress to act before mail can’t be delivered and there’s not enough money to pay workers . “This can’t wait forever,” said Jim

Sauber, chief of staff at the Washington-based union. “Once next spring or the early summer of next year when the volumes are lower, that could be a cash crisis and they could have to make operational cuts so they can pay bills. There’s a lot at stake.”

Going Postal 8


USPS K2 OBAMA’S AGENDA

NICHOLS 12

An Easy Task for Congress: Save the Post Office John Nichols a political writer for the nation on November 16, 2012 - 9:55 AM ET http://www.thenation.com/blog/171301/easy-task-congress-save-post-office#

Yes, those rural Republicans are conservative on a host of issues. But a collapse of the USPS would do the most severe damage to rural regions, particularly in the West. Is it crazy to imagine such a coalition? Actually, some Western members of Congress who have been harsh critics of the president and the Democrats on other issues are reasonably sympathetic when it comes to the future of post offices. At the second presidential debate, I spent a good deal of time talking with Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz

talking about the USPS. We both knew that the issue would not come up in the narrowly constructed debate; but we also recognized that it should be on the agenda. Chaffetz is one of Obama’s toughest critics, but as the ranking Republican ranking member on the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia, he understands at least some of the absurdity to the demands that have been placed on the postal service. And he is not alone in this regard. Take a look at the election maps of the United States and you will see a fascinating dynamic: There are dozens of rural counties across the United States that voted for Barack Obama for president and for Republicans in US House and Senate races. Voters still split tickets. They are

not naïve. They know it is hard to get Democrats and Republicans working together these days. But they expect at least a measure of cooperation on issues that are essential to the small towns where

they live: like passing a farm bill and saving a postal service. Advocates for the postal service might even remind some of our “constitutional conservative” friends that the USPS is one of the few American institutions referenced in the founding document . “Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7 of the US Constitution gives Congress the responsibility to establish and ensure operation of the Postal Service…” notes Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. “Congress is presiding over the disestablishment of the Postal Service. Today a manufactured default created by Congressional legislation is pushing the Postal Service to the brink.” Kucinich is right. This postal “crisis” was manufactured by Congress. The same Congress—perhaps with a prod from a president who has a mandate to get things done—can during this lame-duck session manufacture a socially necessary and fiscally responsible repair to the system. The USPS is not “broke.” It was broken by Congress. And it should be fixed by Congress.

Going Postal 9


A2: UNIONS BLOCK THE BILL

BECKER 12

Unions cool to Senate postal bill, but give to its backers By Bernie Becker political writer for “the hill” 11/05/12 05:03 PM ET http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/1007-other/266007-unions-cool-to-senate-postal-bill-but-give-to-its-backers

Postal unions have given heavily this campaign season to Democrats who voted this spring for a Senate bill that labor groups have found lacking. The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) both contributed thousands of dollars to more than a dozen Democratic senators in the 2012 cycle, while giving nothing to any GOP Senate candidates. But of those incumbent Democrats, all but a few voted for a bill that could allow the U.S. Postal Service to scrap Saturday delivery in the coming years, as well as other provisions that led NALC’s president to dub the measure “flawed.” The postal unions’ contributions

suggests that the back-and-forth on Capitol Hill over how to overhaul the cash-strapped Postal Service, which is looking to cut $22.5 billion in annual expenses by 2016, is not being fought on turf favorable to labor. Influential lawmakers in both chambers and both parties are hopeful that Congress can enact a postal reform bill in the upcoming lame-duck session, though most of Washington will be focused on avoiding the "fiscal cliff ." Unions have sounded lukewarm about the Senate postal bill, a bipartisan measure passed in April that also would make required prepayments for retiree healthcare more manageable and allow USPS new revenue opportunities. Sixty-two senators voted for that postal bill, with 13 Republicans supporting it and four Democrats in opposition.

Postal unions have said the Senate bill does not do enough to ease the sting of the healthcare prepayment, which caused USPS to default on roughly $11 billion worth

of scheduled payments this year. And labor is against any attempt to roll back six-day delivery and has said that the Senate bill could do more to allow USPS to grow new revenue streams. But at the same time, labor strongly opposes a Republican-sponsored bill in the House, and APWU has said the Senate bill is “far better.” The House bill would allow USPS to move more quickly to five day-delivery and opens the door for a control board to take over for postal management, if necessary. The House has yet to consider the GOP bill, from Reps. Darrell Issa (Calif.) and Dennis Ross (Fla.), with some in the party acknowledging that party leadership did not want to force its rank and file to cast a tough vote on the measure before Tuesday’s elections. Fredric Rolando, NALC’s president, acknowledged to The Hill that the union was disappointed that most of the senators it contributed to voted for the chamber's postal bill. But Rolando said that NALC backed candidates for a variety of reasons, including their support for collective bargaining and efforts to protect federal pensions and entitlement programs. “We never treat one vote as disqualifying,” Rolando told The Hill in a statement. A spokeswoman for APWU did not respond to a request for comment on the union’s political contributions. Cliff Guffey, APWU’s president, has said that the Senate bill, while in need of improvements, should be the starting point for postal reform negotiations. In all, APWU and NALC have given $1 million or more to lawmakers or candidates for federal office this cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Democrats have received more than 95 percent of the unions' contributions, and most of the donations went to candidates who were on the ballot this election cycle. APWU gave $80,000 to members of the Senate Democratic caucus who voted for the chamber’s postal bill, a figure that includes a $10,000 donation to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). The union gave $2,000 to Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), one of the four Democrats who voted against the postal bill. NALC, meanwhile, gave more than $70,000 to senators who voted for the postal bill, which includes a contribution to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who is not running for reelection. NALC gave to Menendez and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who voted against the Senate postal bill as well. Neither union gave to Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee that oversees USPS and a sponsor of the Senate bill. The National Postal Mail Handlers Union and National Rural Letter Carriers Association also have given to candidates this cycle, though not nearly as much as APWU and NALC. As Rolando noted, postal unions have given to candidates who helped change the Senate bill for the better, at least in labor’s view. NALC gave to senators who pushed for changes on delivery standards, and to give USPS opportunities to expand its business model. Ross and Issa have suggested that union leaders have

stood in the way of the sort of changes they want. “ The members we supported voted for amendments that are in the Postal Service’s best interests and are strong advocates for the Postal Service,” Rolando said. “We hope they will succeed in crafting better legislation next year.”

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***LINKS***

Going Postal 11


LINK: LATIN AMERICAN AIDE

MEYER AND SULLIVAN 12

[Peter J. Meyer - Analyst in Latin American Affairs and Mark P. Sullivan - Specialist in Latin American Affairs, “U.S. Foreign Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean: Recent Trends and FY2013 Appropriations”, June 26th, 2012, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42582.pdf, Chetan]

At this juncture it is uncertain if Congress will approve a stand-alone FY2013 foreign aid appropriations measure, or whether such legislation will be rolled into an

omnibus appropriations measure that combines several appropriations bills. With increasing frequency, Congress has included the language of appropriations bills that have not first received House or Senate floor action in omnibus appropriations measures. In these cases, the lack of floor action on the individual bills has reduced the opportunities for Members to consider and amend regular appropriations measures. For example, for FY2012 foreign aid appropriations, neither chamber approved individual State Department, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs appropriations bills before such appropriations were include in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012 (P.L. 112-74). If similar action is taken for FY2013, it would continue the pattern of reduced opportunities for Members that are not on the Appropriations Committees to consider and debate foreign aid legislation, including assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean. To

date in the FY2013 foreign aid appropriations process, the Administration has requested a 9% reduction in foreign aid to Latin America and the Caribbean while House and Senate Appropriations Committees have approved bills that would likely further reduce U.S. assistance going to the region, although by how much is unclear. The House bill, H.R. 5857, would reduce the Administration’s worldwide foreign aid request by almost 12% while the Senate bill, S. 3241, would reduce overall foreign aid by almost 5%. Potential automatic spending cuts stemming from the implementation of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (P.L. 112-25) could result in further cuts in worldwide foreign

assistance, including aid to Latin America and the Caribbean. Further reductions in assistance to the region beyond the Administration’s FY2013 request would force the Administration to make even more difficult choices about where to prioritize assistance and scale back some of its foreign aid programs in a critical neighboring region where the United States has extensive ties and diverse economic, political, and security interests.

Going Postal 12


LINK MAGNIFIER: LATIN AMERICA AIDE

MEYER AND SULLIVAN 12

[Peter J. Meyer - Analyst in Latin American Affairs and Mark P. Sullivan - Specialist in Latin American Affairs, “U.S. Foreign Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean: Recent Trends and FY2013 Appropriations”, June 26th, 2012, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42582.pdf, Chetan]

When considering foreign assistance levels for Latin American and Caribbean nations, Congress might examine the issues of political will and program sustainability. According to the State Department’s first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), the United States should “assess and monitor host nations’ political will to make the reforms necessary to make effective use of U.S. assistance to ensure our assistance is being targeted where it can have the most impact.”76 Unless partner nations are willing to implement complementary reforms and take ownership and sustain programs as aid is reduced and withdrawn, the results of U.S. assistance will likely be limited and short-lived. The nations of Latin America and the Caribbean have a mixed record in terms of demonstrating political will and ensuring program sustainability. The Colombian government, which has benefitted from high levels of U.S. assistance for more than a decade, has undertaken numerous reforms and raised revenue. As a result, the United States is able to carry out a managed transition of its assistance programs in the country in which aid is slowly reduced as Colombia takes over financial and technical responsibility.77 Similarly, USAID is closing its mission in Panama, and closing out its voluntary family planning programs in a number of other Latin American countries because partner nations have developed the

capacity to manage and fund the programs on their own.78 Despite these successes, numerous GAO reports over the past decade indicate that political will has often been lacking in the region, especially with regard to raising sufficient government revenue to sustain efforts initiated with U.S. support. A 2003 study of U.S. democracy programs in six Latin American nations found “cases in which U.S.-funded training programs, computer systems, and police equipment had languished for lack of resources after U.S. support ended.”79 Likewise, a 2010 study of counter-narcotics programs found that several countries in the region were unable to use U.S.-provided boats for patrol or interdiction operations due to a lack of funding for fuel and maintenance.80 Even MCC-funded projects, in which assistance is contingent on partner nation actions, have run into problems with program sustainability. A July 2011 study of the MCC compact in Honduras found that the lifespan of roads built to improve small farmers’ access to markets may be relatively limited as the municipalities where they were constructed lack the equipment, expertise, and funding for road maintenance.81

Going Postal 13


LINK: CUBA ENGAGEMENT UNPOPULAR

NYT 10

NY Times 10 [“U.S. Said to Plan Easing Rules for Travel to Cuba”, August 16th, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/world/americas/17cuba.html?_r=3&hp&, Chetan]

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is planning to expand opportunities for Americans to travel to Cuba, the latest step aimed at encouraging more contact between people in both countries, while leaving intact the decades-old embargo against the island’s Communist government, according to Congressional and administration officials. The officials, who asked not to be identified because they had not been authorized to discuss the policy before it was announced, said it was meant to loosen restrictions on academic, religious and cultural groups that were adopted under President George W. Bush, and return to the “people to people” policies followed under President Bill Clinton. Those policies, officials said, fostered robust exchanges between the United States and Cuba, allowing groups — including universities, sports teams, museums and chambers of commerce — to share expertise as well as life experiences. Policy analysts said the intended changes would mark

a significant shift in Cuba policy. In early 2009, President Obama lifted restrictions on travel and remittances only for Americans with relatives on the island. Congressional aides cautioned that some administration officials still saw the proposals as too politically volatile to announce until after the coming midterm elections, and they said revisions could still be made. But others said the policy, which does not need legislative approval, would be announced before Congress returned from its

break in mid-September, partly to avoid a political backlash from outspoken groups within the Cuban American lobby — backed by Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey — that oppose any softening in Washington’s position toward Havana. Those favoring the change said that with a growing number of polls showing that Cuban-Americans’ attitudes toward Cuba had softened as well, the administration did not expect much of a backlash. “They have made the calculation that if you put a smarter Cuba policy on the table, it will not harm us in the election cycle,” said one Democratic Congressional aide who has been working with the administration on the policy. “That, I think, is what animates this.” Mr.

Menendez, in a statement, objected to the anticipated changes. “This is not the time to ease pressure on the Castro regime,” he said, referring to President Raúl Castro of Cuba, who took office in 2006 after his brother, Fidel, fell ill. Mr. Menendez added that promoting travel would give Havana a “much needed infusion of dollars that will only allow the Castro brothers to extend their reign of oppression.”

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LINK MAGNIFIER: CUBA LOBBY

REGISTER 13

The Register 4-21 [“The Cuban chill”, April 21st, 2013, http://www.registerguard.com/rg/opinion/29740770-78/cuba-lobby-policy-china-political.html.csp, Chetan]

Policy toward Cuba is frozen in place by a domestic political lobby with roots in the electorally pivotal state of Florida. The Cuba Lobby combines the carrot of political money with the stick of political denunciation to keep wavering Congress members, government bureaucrats, and even presidents in line behind a policy that, as President Obama himself admits, has failed for half a century and is supported by virtually no other countries. (The last time it came to a vote in the U.N. General Assembly, only Israel and the Pacific island of Palau sided with the United States.) Of course, the news at this point is not that a Cuba Lobby exists, but that it astonishingly lives on — even

during the presidency of Obama, who publicly vowed to pursue a new approach to Cuba, but whose policy has been stymied thus far. Like the China Lobby, the Cuba Lobby isn’t one organization but a loose-knit conglomerate of exiles, sympathetic members of Congress and nongovernmental organizations, some of which comprise a self-interested industry nourished by the flow of “democracy promotion” money from the U.S. Agency for International Development. And like its Sino-obsessed predecessor, the Cuba Lobby was launched at the instigation of conservative Republicans in government who needed outside backers to advance their partisan policy aims. In the 1950s, they were Republican members of Congress battling New Dealers in the Truman administration over Asia policy. In the 1980s, they were officials in Ronald Reagan’s administration battling congressional Democrats over Central America policy. At the Cuba Lobby’s request, Reagan created Radio Martí, modeled on Radio Free Europe, to broadcast propaganda to Cuba. He named Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Cuban American National Foundation, to lead the radio’s oversight board. President George H.W. Bush followed with TV Martí. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., authored the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, writing the economic embargo into law so no president could change it without congressional approval. Founded at the suggestion of Richard Allen, Reagan’s first national security adviser, CANF was the linchpin of the Cuba Lobby until Mas Canosa’s death in 1997. “No individual had more influence over United States policies toward Cuba over the past two decades than Jorge Mas Canosa,” The New York Times editorialized. In Washington, CANF built its reputation by spreading campaign contributions to bolster friends and punish enemies. In 1988, CANF money helped Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman defeat incumbent

Sen. Lowell Weicker, whom Lieberman accused of being soft on Castro because he visited Cuba and advocated better relations. Weicker’s defeat sent a chilling message to other members of Congress: challenge the Cuba Lobby at your peril. In 1992, according to Peter Stone’s reporting

in National Journal, New Jersey Democrat Sen. Robert Torricelli, seduced by the Cuba Lobby’s political money, reversed his position on Havana and wrote the Cuban Democracy Act, tightening the embargo. Today, the political action arm of the Cuba Lobby is the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which hands out more campaign dollars than CANF’s political action arm did even at its height — more than $3 million since 1996. In Miami, conservative Cuban--Americans long have presumed to be the sole authentic voice of the community, silencing dissent by threats and, occasionally, violence. In the 1970s, anti-Castro terrorist groups such as Omega 7 and Alpha 66 set off dozens of bombs in Miami and assassinated two Cuban-Americans who advocated dialogue with Castro. Reports by Human Rights Watch in the 1990s documented the climate of fear in Miami and the role that elements of the Cuba Lobby, including CANF, played in creating it.

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LINK MAGNIFIER: CUBA = BIG FIGHTS

THINK PROGRESS 13

[“How the GOP Response to Beyoncé’s Cuba Trip Highlights Broken Policy”, April 9th, 2013, http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/04/09/1838661/rubio-beyonce-cuba/, Chetan]

Experts at CAP and the Cato Institute alike agree that the policy has been an abject failure at achieving the goals the United States set out. On taking office, President Obama sought to roll-back some of the harsher restrictions the previous administration placed on Cuba, including removing a ban on remittances from Cubans in the

U.S. to their families back home and reducing travel restrictions on Americans with immediate family in Cuba. Every step towards reforming Cuba policy, however, has been met with kicking and screaming, mostly from the GOP with some Democrats joining in. While the human rights violations the Cuban regime continues to perpetrate are most certainly a concern, campaign funding may play a strong role in the perpetuation of U.S. policies. A 2009 report from Public Campaign highlighted the nearly $11 million the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, along with a “network of hard-line Cuban American donors,” spent on political campaigns since 2004. In the report, those candidates who received funding displayed a shift in voting patterns on Cuba policy in the aftermath of the gift

Going Postal 16


LINK: CUBAN ENERGY ENGAGEMENT

NERURKAR AND SULLIVAN 11

[Neelesh Nerurkar - Specialist in Energy Policy and Mark P. Sullivan - Specialist in Latin American Affairs, “Cuba’s Offshore Oil Development: Background and U.S. Policy Considerations”, November 28th, 2011, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41522.pdf, Chetan]

On the opposite side of the policy debate, a number of policy groups and Members of Congress oppose engagement with Cuba, including U.S. investment in Cuba’s offshore energy development. A legislative initiative introduced in the 111th Congress, H.R. 5620, would have gone further by imposing visa restrictions and economic sanctions on foreign companies and their executives who help facilitate the development of Cuba’s petroleum resources. The bill asserted that offshore drilling by or under the authorization of the Cuban government poses a “serious economic

and environmental threat to the United States” because of the damage that an oil spill could cause. Opponents of U.S. support for Cuba’s offshore oil development also argue that such involvement would provide an economic lifeline to the Cuban government and thus prolong the continuation of the communist regime. They maintain that if Cuba reaped substantial economic benefits from offshore oil development, it could reduce societal pressure on Cuba to enact market-oriented economic reforms. Some who oppose U.S. involvement in Cuba’s energy development contend that while Cuba might have substantial amounts of oil offshore, it will take years to develop. They maintain that the Cuban government is using the enticement of potential oil profits to break down the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba.78

Going Postal 17


LINK: MEXICONYT 13

May 4, 2013 In Latin America, U.S. Focus Shifts From Drug War to Economy By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, writing for the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/americas/in-latin-america-us-shifts-focus-from-drug-war-to-economy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&&pagewanted=print

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica — In February 2009, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. declared that international drug trafficking posed “a sustained, serious threat” to Americans. Two months later, President Obama, in his first

visit as president to Mexico, made it clear that no issue dominated relations between the two countries more, saying drug cartels there were “sowing chaos in our communities.” Last week, Mr. Obama returned to capitals in Latin America with a vastly different message . Relationships with countries racked by drug violence and organized crime should focus more on economic development and less on the endless battles against drug traffickers and organized crime capos that have left few clear victors. The countries, Mexico in particular, need to set their own course on security, with the United States playing more of a backing role. That approach runs the risk of being seen as kowtowing to governments more concerned about their public image than the underlying problems tarnishing it. Mexico, which is eager to play up its economic growth, has mounted an aggressive effort to play down its crime problems, going as far as to encourage the news media to avoid certain slang words in reports. “The problem will not just go away,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-

American Dialogue. “It needs to be tackled head-on, with a comprehensive strategy that includes but goes beyond stimulating economic growth and alleviating poverty. “Obama becomes vulnerable to the charge of downplaying the region’s overriding issue, and the chief obstacle to economic progress,” he added. “It is fine to change the narrative from security to economics as long as the reality on the ground reflects and fits with the new story line.” Administration officials insist that Mr. Obama remains cleareyed about the security challenges, but the new emphasis corresponds with a change in focus by the Mexican government. The new Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office in December vowing to reduce the violence that exploded under the militarized approach to the drug war adopted by his predecessor, Felipe Calderón. That effort left about 60,000 Mexicans dead and appears not to have significantly damaged the drug-trafficking industry. In addition to a focus on reducing violence,

which some critics have interpreted as taking a softer line on the drug gangs, Mr. Peña Nieto has also moved to reduce American involvement in law enforcement south of the border. With friction and mistrust between American and Mexican law enforcement agencies growing, Mr. Obama suggested that the United States would no longer seek to dominate the security agenda. “It is obviously up to the Mexican people to determine their security structures and how it engages with other nations, including the United States,” he said, standing next to Mr. Peña Nieto on Thursday in Mexico City. “But the main point I made to the president is that we support the Mexican government’s focus on reducing violence, and we look forward to continuing our good cooperation in any way that the Mexican government deems appropriate.” In some ways, conceding leadership of the drug fight to Mexico hews to a guiding principle of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, in which American supremacy is played down, at least publicly, in favor of a

multilateral approach. But that philosophy could collide with the concerns of lawmakers in Washington, who have expressed frustration with what they see as a lack of clarity in Mexico’s security plans. And security analysts say the entrenched corruption in Mexican law enforcement has long clouded the partnership with their American counterparts. Putting Mexico in the driver’s seat on security marks a shift in a balance of power that has always tipped to the United States and, analysts said, will carry political risk as Congress negotiates an immigration bill that is expected to include provisions for tighter border security. “If there is a perception in the U.S. Congress that security cooperation is weakening, that could play into the hands of those who oppose immigration reform , ” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a counternarcotics expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Realistically, the border is as tight as could be and there have been few spillovers of the violence from Mexico into the U.S.,” she added, but perceptions count in Washington “and can be easily distorted.” “Drugs today are not very important to the U.S. public over all,” she added, “but they are important to committed drug warriors who are politically powerful.” Representative Michael T. McCaul, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has warned against the danger of drug cartels forming alliances with terrorist groups. “While these threats exist, you would be surprised to find that the administration thinks its work here is done,” he wrote in an opinion article for Roll Call last month, pressing for more border controls in the bill. The Obama administration has said any evidence of such cooperation is very thin, but even without terrorist connections, drug gangs pose threats to peace and security. Human rights advocates said they feared the United States would ease pressure on Mexico to investigate disappearances and other abuses at the hands of the police and military, who have received substantial American support. The shift in approach “suggests that the Obama administration either doesn’t object to these abusive practices or is only willing to raise such concerns when it’s politically convenient,” said José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas division. Still, administration officials have said there may have been an overemphasis on the bellicose language and high-profile hunts for cartel leaders while the real problem of lawlessness worsens. American antidrug aid is shifting more toward training police and shoring up judicial systems that have allowed criminals to kill with impunity in Mexico and Central America. United States officials said Mr. Obama remains well aware of the region’s problems with security, even as he is determined that they not overshadow the economic opportunities. It is clear Mr. Obama, whatever his words four years ago, now believes there has been too much security talk. In a speech to Mexican students on Friday, Mr. Obama urged people in the two countries to look beyond a one-dimensional focus on what he called real security concerns, saying it is “time for us to put the old mind-sets aside.” And he repeated the theme later in the day in Costa Rica, lamenting that when it comes to the United States and Central America, “so much of the focus ends up being on security.” “We also have to recognize that problems like narco-trafficking arise in part when a country is vulnerable because of poverty, because of institutions that are not working for the people, because young people don’t see a brighter future ahead,” Mr. Obama said in a news conference with Laura Chinchilla, the president of Costa Rica.

Going Postal 18


***INTERNALS***

Going Postal 19


USPS JOBS BIGGER I/L TO ECON THAN DEFICIT SPENDING

ELLISON 12

Column: Fiscal cliff means the rich need to step up by Keith Ellison on Nov. 18, 2012, under USA TODAY News Rep. Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat, co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Source: USA TODAY http://tucsoncitizen.com/usa-today-news/2012/11/18/column-fiscal-cliff-means-the-rich-need-to-step-up/

Last week, the American people voted for fairness. And with the “fiscal cliff” staring us all straight in the face, fairness must guide our decision-making as a nation. Fairness demands that the nation prioritize good jobs,

particularly after a decade of the most generous tax cuts for the well-to-do. Investing in jobs is not only the right thing to do, but it will place America on a path to sustainable economic growth. The best way to be fair to working people, grow the economy, and reduce our deficit is to create jobs. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has a Deal for All — one that puts Americans back to work. We can address our crumbling roads and bridges and promote education or we can choose to pass more tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of our seniors. We cannot afford the latter. Progressives can only accept a deal from Republicans in Congress that invests in jobs, calls on the wealthy to do more, calls on the military to do more, and protects the most vulnerable. Our country has a jobs crisis. The biggest risk of Congressional inaction is not that the deficit will increase, but that immediate budget cuts will hurt an already fragile economy, costing more American jobs. After the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression, our unemployment rate has finally fallen below 8%. But we still have a long way to go. Middle income jobs, in particular, have been slow to return and more than 12 million Americans are still unemployed. America’s public workers — teachers, police officers, and firefighters — have had a particularly difficult

time finding work. Local governments laid off 7,000 workers between August and September, and further cuts would mean more job losses. As Nobel Prize-winning Economist Peter Diamond said, “We have an unemployment crisis, in my view. The impacts, both on long-term unemployed and young people, are going to affect them for years and years…We have a debt problem. We don’t have a debt crisis.” Austerity would plunge the economy back into a recession. Cutting the U.S. Postal Service or local fire departments costs public workers their jobs and reduces private sector demand, causing even more layoffs. In Europe, rapid cuts in government spending have plunged the entire continent back into recession. Great Britain, a poster child for austerity, has seen real G.D.P. since the recession plummet to levels lower than after the Great Depression. Workers in Spain and Greece have had to pick through garbage because of forced government cuts. Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Ohio) prediction that we risk becoming Greece could be accurate if we enact his own proposals to cut services Americans need during economic recovery.

Going Postal 20


NOW KEY FOR SAVING USPS

NICHOLS 12


And now is the time to act. The unions that represent postal workers say so. The unions that represent postal workers say so. National Association of Letter Carriers president Fredric Rolando correctly notes that, with the rejection of the austerity agenda proposed by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, “The election offers the prospect that the financial problems facing the United States Postal Service can be

resolved in a fair and reasonable manner that benefits the public.” But it’s not just unions that are looking for a postal “fix.” The businesses that rely on the postal service are demanding action. “The Postal Service is facing a fiscal cliff of its own, and any unanticipated drop in mail volumes could send the agency over the edge,” says Art Sackler, who works with the business-

led Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, which has urged Congress to enact comprehensive postal legislation during its lame-duck session. “ If Congress fails to act, there could be postal slowdowns or shutdowns that would have catastrophic consequences for the eight million private-sector workers whose jobs depend on the mail.” The concerns of small businesses and mailers create an space for President Obama to make a call for congressional action to renew the Postal Service. Obama should speak up for the Postal Service now,

as the lame-duck session gets started. And he and his fellow Democrats should look to build a coalition for its future with rural Republicans.

Going Postal 21


A2: USPS BAD/INEFFICIENT

TURN: THE PERCEIVED FAILURES OF THE USPS HAVE BEEN CAUSED BY BAD FEDERAL POLICY PLACED UPON THE POST OFFICE, YOUR ARGUMENTS ARE OFFENSE FOR THE DISAD

NICHOLS 12


The US Postal Service is in the midst of a manufactured crisis. It is supposedly broke and headed toward a sort of fiscal cliff of its own. If it goes over, the likely result is privatization of its profitable enterprises and elimination of the commitment to universal service that has been the service's promise since the founding of the republic. But that does not have to happen. Congress undermined the financial stability of the postal service during a lame-duck session six years ago. It can repair the damage done during this session. The task is not difficult. The lift is not heavy. It is merely a matter of will . Friday’s New York Times noted that “the Postal Service on Thursday reported a record $15.9 billion net loss for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, bringing the financially troubled agency another step closer to insolvency.”

That’s the CliffsNotes version of the story. And if people read no further, they’ll think that the USPS is a mess. But it’s not. It’s merely in a financial mess created by Congress. Two-thirds of the $15.9 billion “loss” involved what the Times referred to as “ accounting expenses of $11.1 billion related to two payments that the agency was supposed to make into its future retiree health benefits fund.” Those accounting expenses were imposed not by necessity but by Congress. And the imposition can be lifted, along with restrictions on the ability of the service

to compete. In 2006, a Republican Congress—acting at the behest of the Bush-Cheney administration—enacted a law that required the postal service to “pre-fund” retiree health benefits seventy-five years into the future. No major private-sector corporation or public-sector agency could do that. It’s an untenable demand.

Going Postal 22


***IMPACTS***

Going Postal 23


DEMOCRACY IMPACTTHE POSTAL SERVICE IS KEY TO DEMOCRACY

SPHERE 12

MON AUG 13, 2012 AT 04:43 AM PDT The U.S. Postal Service is essential to our democracy and our economy byBobboSphere writer for the Daily Kos, multiple scholarly works cited in the references section of the article http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/13/1119528/-The-U-S-Postal-Service-is-essential-to-our-democracy-and-our-economy

The free exchange of ideas is critical to representative government and was one of the reasons why the US Postal Service (USPS) was created . At its founding the Postal Service had a deliberate policy of subsidizing the mailing of newspapers and other periodicals, precisely to encourage the communication of ideas. The importance of this was understood by President George Washington who signed the bill authorizing the US Postal Service in 1792. The idea of a postal service is enshrined in the US

Constitution. Despite its historic role in the free exchange of ideas, the U.S. Postal Service is under attack. Republicans in Congress have taken aim at the Postal Service. They have been aided and abetted by Democrats who have remained silent, or like the current Postmaster General, even cave in to some of their demands. Congressional Republicans have created a thoroughly artificial financial crisis within the Postal Service to push for rate hikes, massive cutbacks in service and the closure of many small town and neighborhood post offices. Their ultimate goal is to privatize the USPS. Critics of the Postal Service claim that if privatized its competitors like UPS and FedEx can take up the slack. This is ridiculous. The USPS is a universal service that goes everywhere, including many places that UPS and FedEd do not. Its package delivery is less expensive for small businesses and better for shipping internationally. FedEx even uses the Postal Service to deliver to customers not covered by its own fleet. Critics also maintain that the Post Service has been made by obsolete by the Internet. Yet as of 2011, 30% of the urban population and 40% of the rural population do not have broadband Internet. US broadband is also slower and less reliable compared with many other nations. But even if 100% of Americans had modern broadband Internet, this does not remove the need for the Postal Service. The Internet is largely private property where freedom of expression is not guaranteed. Facebook can suspend user accounts and pages. Twitter can censor tweets. YouTube can remove videos. Websites can be deleted by the private companies that host them. Internet content is delivered (or not) by huge corporate telcoms. Print is not

dead and has its own particular advantages Printed works are more portable than Internet-based communication and if printed properly, can last a very long

time. Many people prefer to read longer and more thoughtful writing on paper. Once you own a printed copy of something, it won’t disappear because a web server blew up, hackers wrecked it, a

government censored it or the website owner zapped it for their own reasons. Print makes it easier to have numerous backup copies. Both print and the electronic media have their advantages and disadvantages. Since we are in the middle of a media revolution, we don’t have the perspective to understand all of those advantages and disadvantages. At a time when people are concerned about Internet security and all forms of idea exchange are subject to interference, it’s best to have as many ways to communicate as possible. This is especially true in the USA where political literacy is low and the means of communication is being

concentrated in fewer and fewer corporate hands. Encouraging the free exchange of ideas is more important than making a profit . Over the years,

the USPS has been forced to raise the rates for mailing periodicals to the point where smaller publications have curtailed or even suspended operations. Smaller publications are where new and unpopular ideas are first tested out. If we are serious about democracy, then the USPS should be lowering postal rates for periodicals and books to encourage reading and the

exchange of ideas. It won’t make a profit, but so what? The Congressional Republicans are strangely quiet about how their efforts to strangle the Post Service will affect American democracy. This is especially odd considering their supposed reverence for the “Founding Fathers” who to one degree or another realized that the free exchange of ideas was critical to representative government, even if they were suspicious of actual democracy. We subsidize oil companies. Why not subsidize democracy? Attacks on the USPS did not begin with the present crop of Congressional Republicans There have been numerous times when the free exchange of ideas by mail has been attacked. One of the most egregious was directed against the USA‘s first known direct mail campaign. The mailing organizers were not hawking credit cards, insurance schemes, or political candidates. They were promoting freedom and democracy. Their shipment of direct mail arrived at the Charleston, South Carolina harbor on July 29, 1835. Not knowing exactly what to do with the many sacks of mail, Postmaster Alfred Huger set them aside. That evening a mob broke in, stole the mail and the next evening burned every piece in a mass demonstration that attracted a crowd of at least 2000 people. The mail consisted of unsolicited literature advocating the abolition of slavery, sent by the American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS). They were addressed to individuals whose names were a matter of public record. No one was ever prosecuted for this theft and destruction of US mail. A pro-slavery mob burning abolitionist mail The Postmaster General of the USA ignored the blatant violation of federal laws and ruled that in this case “states rights” prevailed. President Andrew Jackson, still celebrated by some as a great “man of the people”, introduced legislation that would have banned abolitionists from sending mail to the southern slave states, although Congress eventually decided it did not have the power to that. Throughout the South vigilance committees were established to monitor the mails for any possible abolitionist literature and punish anyone caught with it. Where the force of law failed, state sponsored terrorism was always available. Slave owners were the power behind racist mobs and politicians The term "totalitarian" is normally used to describe a dictatorial government that subordinates the individual to its power. But I believe it can also accurately describe individual economic enterprises and how they are organized. By this description, each southern plantation was its own unique totalitarian institution. Taken together, they were a vast gulag of slave labor camps and the most powerful economic enterprises of their time. As a result plantation owners put a totalitarian stamp on American politics for much of our early history. Their reliance on slavery was associated with institutional racism, white supremacy, massive human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing, environmental destruction, militarism and territorial imperialism. It eventually resulted in the Civil War, which cost upwards of 750,000 American lives. For the slave owners, tampering with the US mail to crush democracy was all in a day’s work. But of course abolitionists( a despised minority even in the North), continued to use the US mails where they could, until the time came when abolition of slavery finally became national policy. But even the slaveholders did not attempt to actually shut down the Postal Service when they went to war with it. The modern effort to destroy the Postal Service through deep cutbacks and eventual privatization is coming from a Congress molded by the power of corporate

wealth.The modern corporation that began to emerge after the Civil War was the successor to the slave plantation as the USA’s most dominant economic institution. Like the slave plantations before them, the power of today’s corporate wealth weakens our democracy The modern corporation is normally organized in a topdown totalitarian manner.The corporation is a place that even Bloomberg Businessweek says is “where free speech goes to die.” Most

Americans simply accept this as without question because corporate property is “private” property. How much American political culture is molded by the habits of obedience formed by working within totalitarian corporations is something that deserves further study. There are corporations who are reasonably

benign and even supportive of democratic values, but there are others who have a dark association with extreme violence, white supremacy, environmental destruction, discrimination by race and gender, sweatshop labor, catastrophic financial fraud, war and other serious abuses. The corporate powered postal “reformers ” in the money-soaked company town of Washington DC want to avoid any discussion of the democratic values that the Postal Service is supposed to uphold. How committed are the most powerful US corporations to the free exchange of ideas that is so critical to a democracy? Not very committed if one measures the amount of support they give the US Postal Service in its funding crisis. Perhaps that is because corporate lobbying groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the American Petroleum Institute want to ensure that their propaganda messages dominate American thinking. That is consistent with the corporate drive to privatize education, dominate the mass media, crush what remains of the US labor movement and overwhelm their electoral opponents with the sheer force of money. There is another reason for the

hostility toward the USPS: The American postal worker American postal workers are diverse, a true face of the USA. They live in urban, rural and suburban areas. They include both men and women. They come from many different ethnic backgrounds and have had a variety of life experiences. They live in every state and US territory. They belong

to unions and make a decent living which includes benefits like retirement and vacation time. Through their unions they have a voice at the workplace and in the halls of political power. They

Going Postal 24


can go to a union meeting and discuss issues that affect their lives and take action with other postal workers. They represent the dream that all working class people should have a comfortable living standard and a powerful voice in public affairs. From the point of view of the corporate elites, US Postal Service employees with their living standards and their unions, set a bad example for the rest of the working class. Today’s corporate agenda for working class America seems to be low wages, temporary jobs, no benefits, no job security, no voice at work, a limited voice in public affairs and no unions.

This is very dangerous to democracy because it creates a society with a vast gap between rich and poor. This feeds the social desperation that grows anti-democratic totalitarian political movements. It is also is a major factor in creating economic crashes

such as this country had in 1929 and 2008, which also feed totalitarian movements of social desperation. Unions are an important part of modern democracies and the postal unions stand as living examples of that. Your local post office is an essential part of the infrastructure of our democracy . Perhaps it's time for us to recognize our local post office for what it is, an essential part of the infrastructure for democracy. Perhaps we need to thank our postal workers for being who they

really are: peaceful warriors for the democratic exchange of ideas. Perhaps it’s also time for us to reflect on how committed we are to democratic values and if we are willing to defend them. Defending your local post office would be a good place to begin.

THE IMPACT IS EXTINCTION DIAMOND 95 (Larry, Senior Fellow – Hoover Institution, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, December, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous,

democratic ones. N uclear, c hemical, and b iological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers

important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run

they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity

can be built.

Going Postal 25


SANTA CLAUS IMPACT

USPS K2 SANTA CLAUS

PNR 12

Is There Really a Santa Claus? Fri Nov 16, 2012 11:34am EST Is There Really a Santa Claus? PR Newswire WASHINGTON, Nov. 16, 2012 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/16/idUS162985+16-Nov-2012+PRN20121116

Kids Will Truly Believe When Santa Writes Back WASHINGTON , Nov. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Postal Service is helping keep the enchantment of Santa Claus alive with its "Letters From Santa" program. "Letters From Santa" allows a parent, grandparent or any person in a child's life to mail a letter to their child "From Santa," postmarked from the North Pole . Here's how "Letters From Santa" works: 1. Write a letter to your child from Santa Claus and sign it "From Santa." 2. Insert the letter into an envelope addressed to your child with the return address: SANTA, NORTH POLE. 3. Ensure a First-Class Mail stamp is affixed to the envelope. 4. Place the envelope into a larger envelope, with appropriate postage, and address the larger envelope to: NORTH POLE POSTMAR POSTMASTE 4141 POSTMARK D ANCHORAGE AK 99530-9998 5. Your letter "From Santa" will be mailed back to your child, postmarked from the North Pole. "Letters From Santa" must be mailed to the Anchorage, AK, postmaster no later than Dec. 10, 2012. Santa's helpers in Anchorage will take care of the rest. The personalized letters that parents send to their children via the

"Letters From Santa" program is different from the historical "Operation Santa" program. In "Operation Santa," the Postal Service facilitates the matching of customers with letters written to Santa from needy children. Participants in "Operation Santa" help fulfill a child's dream with a gift and a response letter from Santa. (Customers

are not provided the child's address in the "Operation Santa" program.) The "Letters From Santa" program helps parents fulfill the dreams of their own children. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation — 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office™ Boxes. The Postal Service™ receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage,

products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com®, the

Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world's mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service

would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, Oxford Strategic Consulting ranked the U.S. Postal Service number one in overall service performance of the posts in the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

Going Postal 26


AND, A BELIEF IN SANTA IS KEY TO HUMANITY

BKR 11

Why children need to believe in Santa Claus http://bekindrewrite.com/2011/12/23/why-children-need-to-believe-in-santa-claus/ 23 DEC 2011 Stephanie is an award-winning copy and public relations writer for the largest ad agency in Fort Worth. She managed to land this job without a college degree – which she blames on her years of experience writing fiction. She’s the author behind all posts attributed to bekindrewrite.

In 1897, a little girl wrote to the New York Sun asking if there was a Santa Claus. This was the reply. (Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait here with a box of tissues.) Some parents will no doubt think this is wrong–that telling their children stories about Santa Claus is lying. They’re afraid once their children find out the truth, they’ll have broken trust. But I’ve never actually seen this happen in real life. Kids are smart. More often, as they grow up, they start to better understand the difference between fairy tales and true stories. They get that one is for fun, and one is

for real. It’s a non-issue. No, the parents’ objections are all part of the ongoing war between fiction and non-fiction—the realists’ disdain for stories about people who never lived and events that never happened. But I’m not here to argue that fiction is safe to give your children. I’m here to tell you it’s necessary to humanity. Non-fiction is, of course, vastly important. But there are things it cannot do. Non-fiction is what was, or what is. Fiction is what if . Fiction is the genre of ideas. Of things that don’t exist yet. Fiction is the food of inventors. You think cell phones came out of the blue? Ha! Heinlein was writing about them in the 60s! But it’s not just the what if. An idea by itself rarely sticks to the human mind for long. It needs the vehicle of a story . A real-life (non-fiction!) example. Back in the 30s or 40s there was a magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. Professors or scientists would write pieces based on technical ideas they had, and editor John W. Campbell, Jr. would doctor them up a bit and publish them. But the articles were all about machines—not people. They were fiction only in that they were speculative; they weren’t really stories. And they weren’t selling. Stories are the packages that make ideas compelling to the average Joe, who doesn’t know a thing about quantum physics and whatnot. So the Street and Smith publishing company called in top adventure writers like L. Ron Hubbard and Arthur J. Burks to save the magazine. Hubbard talks about it in the introduction of Battlefield Earth: “At the beginning of that time, science fiction was regarded as a sort of awful stepchild in the world of literature. But worse than that, science itself was not getting the attention or the grants or the government expenditures it should have received. There has to be a lot of public interest and demand before politicians shell out the funding necessary to get a subject whizzing.Campbell’s crew of writers were pretty stellar. They included very top-liner names. They improved the literary quality of the genre. And they began the boom of its broader popularity. …In 1945 I attended a meeting of old scientist and science fiction friends. The meeting was at the home of my dear friend, the incomparable Bob Heinlein. And do you know what was their agenda? How to get man into space fast enough so that he would be distracted from further wars on Earth. And they were the lads who had the government ear and authority to do it! We are coming close to doing. The scientists got man into space and even had the Russians cooperating for awhile.” The result? Okay, so the space program hasn’t achieved world peace,

but we did get to the moon. Think about that for a second. We walked on the moon. Because of sci-fi stories . One or two hundred years ago, you can bet the “realists” were

scoffing at that idea. And it’s not only science fiction. Ali Baba’s “open sesame”? Voice-recognition technology! And really, how could airplanes ever have happened without Icarus? So don’t scoff at Santa Claus. Don’t be afraid of damaging your children with fantasy. How can they learn to think outside the box if you don’t even let them color outside the lines?

Going Postal 27


A2 SANTA BAD

RUSSELL 12

Why Secular Parents Should Do the Santa Thing By Wendy Thomas Russell | she’s an author: Although I’ve worked for a variety of publications, I spent the longest stretch of my news career at the Long Beach Press-Telegram covering criminal justice and special projects. Since leaving newspapers in 2008, most of my work has focused on writing for and about children. I authored three books for the Girl Scouts of the USA – including MEdia and BLISS — which advocate media literacy while keying teenage girls into their own strengths and aspirations. The books were published in December 2010. My latest nonfiction project, Relax, It’s Just God, was borne out of my own experience as a nonreligious mom trying to introduce my daughter to religion in a healthy, open-minded and honest way. June 25, 2012 | no comments http://wendythomasrussell.com/why-secular-parents-should-do-the-santa-thing/

In his essay, titled “Santa Claus — The Ultimate Dry Run,” McGowan hits a home run in his defense of the Santa myth. He argues that “figuring out that Santa is not real” is a wonderful rite of passage for children, as long as parents tread lightly around the myth, and stay alert for the first hints of skepticism. When McGowan’s son, for example, began to ask pointed questions — How does Santa get to all those houses in one night? How can he make it down the chimney with his big belly? Why does he use the same wrapping paper as Mom? — McGowan didn’t try to answer the questions. He simply said: “Some people believe the sleigh is magic. Does that sound right to you?” and so on. “I avoided both lying and setting myself up as a godlike authority, determined as I was to let him sort this one out himself,” McGowan wrote in the essay. And then, when his son was 9 and finally asked him point-blank whether Santa was real, McGowan said, one last time, “What do you think?” “Well,” his son answered, smiling. “I think all the moms and dads are Santa. Am I right?” McGowan smiled back and told the truth. “So,” McGowan asked, “how do you feel about that?” His son shrugged. “That’s fine. Actually, it’s good. The world kind of… I don’t know… makes sense again.” How cool is that? Dale’s attitude, which I think is the perfect combination between smart and fun, is the one I’ve tried to adopt as my own. I’m totally down for giving Santa cookies and

looking for him out the window before we go to bed on Christmas Eve. But, as Maxine gets older and her critical thinking start kicking into high gear, my plan is to encourage her questioning while not ruining the surprise. If she asks me how Santa gets around the world in a night, I’ll say, “I have no idea. It seems almost impossible, doesn’t it?” If she asks me whether I believe in Santa, I’ll say: “You know how I am about believing in things I’ve never seen for myself. What do you think? Do you believe in Santa?” It’s not all that unlike how I deal with

the God questions, honestly. And McGowan makes very clear in his essay that this is part of the point. He writes: “Santa Claus, my secular friends, is the greatest gift a rational worldview ever had. Our culture has constructed a silly and temporary myth parallel to its silly and permanent one… By allowing our children to participate in the Santa myth and find their own way out of it through skeptical inquiry, we give them a priceless opportunity to see a mass cultural illusion first from the inside, then from the outside.”

Going Postal 28

http://wendythomasrussell.com/current-projects/relax-its-just-god/

http://wendythomasrussell.com/it%E2%80%99s-your-story-%E2%80%94-tell-it-bliss-live-it-give-it/

http://wendythomasrussell.com/its-your-story-%E2%80%94-tell-it-media/

http://wendythomasrussell.com/past-clips/#article

http://www.presstelegram.com/

http://www.presstelegram.com/


***AFF STUFF***

Going Postal 29


REFORM WON’T PASS (UNIONS)CORBIN 13

Postal Reform Bill Riles Unions, Reduces To-the-Door Delivery By Kenneth Corbin EcommerceBytes.com June 18, 2013 http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y13/m06/i18/s02

A new proposal in the House of Representatives to rejuvenate the U.S. Postal Service would authorize the cash-strapped agency to phase out Saturday delivery of regular mail, move away from delivery to doors toward clustered mailboxes and undertake major cost-cutting reforms. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight

and Government Reform, unveiled his proposal as a discussion draft, suggesting that he would consider modifications before formally introducing legislation. But the proposal, which revives many of the ideas

included in a postal reform bill that Issa backed in the last congress, sparked pointed criticism from unions representing postal workers. Cliff Guffey, the

president of the American Postal Workers Union, said the group is still reviewing Issa's proposal, but that at first look it found several provisions "deeply disturbing." "The draft bill would turn the USPS into a private, for-profit operation. It would do virtually nothing to strengthen the Postal Service's ability to serve the communications needs of our nation, " Guffey said in a statement. Frederic Rolando, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, similarly criticized the proposal for recycling some of the provisions unpopular with unions that Issa had included in his last framework for postal reform. "The NALC is disappointed that Chairman Issa did not take a fresher approach to postal reform with this discussion draft," Frederic Rolando, the union's president, said in a statement. "We are going to carefully go through this new draft in the coming days," Rolando said, "and we hope that we will be able to work with the chairman on legislation to provide alternative approaches to postal reform that seek to modernize and strengthen the Postal Service - an agency with roots in the U.S Constitution - rather than to destroy it brick by brick." Postal workers' unions have long criticized the plan to move to a five-day weekly delivery schedule, as the Postal Service itself has been advocating. Issa is proposing to allow the agency to move immediately to end Saturday delivery of regular mail, but to maintain Saturday package deliveries and shipments of prescription medicine. Issa estimates that the adjustments to Saturday service would save the agency at least $2 billion annually. Additionally, the legislation would seek to garner $4 billion in savings by moving away from delivery at the door. "The legislation will begin to standardize how mail is received around the nation by phasing out the expensive "to the door" delivery of mail, which only a quarter of addresses receive today, in favor of curbside and secure clusterbox delivery," according to a synopsis of the bill Issa released. Issa's discussion draft comes on the heels of the latest dire warning from USPS officials about the unsustainable financial position the agency is facing. Last month, the Postal Service reported its earnings for the second quarter of the fiscal year, announcing a $1.9 billion loss for the period as Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe reiterated his call for Congress to enact reform legislation that would give the agency new operating freedoms and provide some relief from its workforce-related costs. Amid a sustained and seemingly irreversible decline in First-Class mailing volumes, Issa is proposing that the Postal Service be authorized to sell new services, such as fishing licenses, and to be able to sell ad space on its vehicles and in its facilities. His bill would also bar political parties from using the non-profit mailing rate. The discussion draft also provides for a number of more structural reforms that would authorize the Postal Service to cut costs, including many associated with its labor force. For instance, the plan into which the Postal Service pays to prefund retiree health benefits would be restructured to reach full funding in 2056. The bill would also temporarily replace the Postal Service's board of governors with a panel of five full-time executives who would be tasked with overseeing the agency's turnaround and guiding it toward profitability. The board would be reconstituted once the Postal Service has achieved profitability and set a course for funding retiree benefits. Additionally, Issa's proposal would impose checks on the power of postal unions by barring clauses prohibiting layoffs in collective bargaining agreements, and holding employees to the same standards as other federal workers, including the reduction-in-force provisions in place at other agencies.

Going Postal 30


POSTAL SERVICE BAD

GARFINKLE 13

Goodbye Saturday Delivery, Goodbye USPS Adam Garfinkle http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/garfinkle/2013/02/13/goodbye-saturday-delivery-goodbye-usps/#sthash.L5pDa85y.dpuf

At first I dismissed this clipped comment as ignorant, snarky and libertarian-beyond-the pale. This guy, I said to myself, has never heard of the universal service obligation of the USPS—that all American citizens, no matter how off-the-beaten-path they may live, are entitled to certain basic benefits. This helps makes of us a nation, after all. (The same principle applied to telephone service for many, many years, which is why, if you’re old

enough to remember, you used to see lone telephone booths in the middle of nowhere in places like frozen North Dakota and desertified New Mexico.) So I began to exert myself thinking of other obvious reasons why we need a government, or, in the case of the USPS, a murkily semi-governmental postal service. Since all states have and have long had postal services, there must be good reasons why they have to exist. Well, I exerted and exerted, and I came up with pretty much nothing. For example, the U.S. government does have obligations under the Universal Postal Union, and getting stuff from and to other countries requires certain standard procedures for the sake of equity, efficiency and security. But it doesn’t really take a government organization to abide by these standards; it just requires government to license and inspect private jobbers doing that work, just as with UPS and FedEx international operations today. And how many Americans living in remote places would be deeply inconvenienced without the USPS? I suspect that the answer is vanishingly few at a time when UPS and FedEx and email with attachments can reach just about

everywhere, and, in the case of the commercial delivery services, for not a lot more money—and often less money—than the USPS charges . As for cities, there used to be private courier services in major cities and towns before the post office monopoly existed. Those private courier services can fill the void, and make good money by providing better service at less cost. How many people would miss all the advertising trash they get in huge volume most days? Not me, and not anyone I know. Some printers would suffer, true; too bad.

The USPS going under would hurt magazines that still depend on 2nd-class mail rates, but there’s no reason to think that, in the absence of the USPS, a niche opened would not in due course become a niche filled. If there’s money on the table, someone will find a way to claim it and, as with urban courier services, competition over the riches to be had may lead to lower costs for those magazines and other businesses, as well.In shor t, I have come to the

surprising (for me) conclusion that if the USPS either cannot or will not reform itself into a viable organization, it should be allowed to fail. How about the huge number of current USPS employees who’d be out of a job? Well, the follow-on commercial entities that replace USPS functions would be well advised to hire the best and most experienced of the lot. As for the significant numbers of parasitic professional slackers and HR-benefits “mining experts”, to hell with them. Now, as I said in my August 1 post, it need not come to that. Even without innovative new products and a dramatically better management framework, the USPS could soldier on as a much smaller organization, once again a part of the Federal government as it was before the 1971 “reform”, suited to a smaller clientele. I’d prefer that outcome from both a nostalgic Franklinian and philatelic perspective. But if it can’t even manage that, and ends up committing organizational suicide, my attitude now is, “so be it; rest in peace.”Of course, we can’t let the USPS go belly up too suddenly, not least because there are many millions of dollars worth of unused postage out there in the hands of private individuals, who bought it in good faith as a narrow-usage form of legal tender whose value is based on government guarantee. People need to be able to use that postage to pay whatever private entities replace the USPS to carry the mail (and the private entities can then redeem the used postage from the government at face value or at some agreed percentage of face value—say for ten years). Either that and/or people need to be able to redeem that postage at face value for cash from agencies of the Federal government. That’s only fair—just like when FDR called in all the gold coins in 1933 (except that people then would have been loads smarter to melt it or just keep it, which is not the case with most postage stamps out there today).So who needs Saturday delivery? Who really needs the USPS at all?

Going Postal 31

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