Interesting piece from Fortune on the history of cubicles, the bane of my postal life. (Yes, I’m one of those ‘overhead’ employees who doesn’t touch the mail, and is stored in a cubicle during my workday).

And I liked this quote on telecommuting from Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA): “There is nothing magic in strapping ourselves into a metal box every day only to drive to an office where we sit behind a desk working on a computer.” Amen. Especially when the “office” is a cubicle. (Hey- you think Wolf could get telecommuting added to the Postal Reform bill?)

Cubicles: The great mistake

From Wonkette- Claude Allen has an evil twin! Plus: check out Claude’s appearance on ‘Ask the White House’ while it’s still there.

Claude A. Allen hosts Ask the White House

From the Wall Street Journal via Hacking Netflix.com- online liquidator Overstock.com will begin offering a Netflix-style rental service for videogames.

Overstock.com to Rent Games by Mail

When I first saw the headline on today’s Sioux City Journal story, “Lawmakers stress openness in postal decision”, I thought, yeah, right, let’s hear another politician tell us again how you can’t possibly cancel mail 50 miles away from where it was sent, and expect it to be delivered on time! As if the mail was transported on mule trains or something.

But then I read the article, and it occurred to me that the politicians’ proposals weren’t all that unreasonable. What they’re saying is, “we don’t understand why you need to move these jobs out of Sioux City- show us the numbers, and give us the opportunity to make a counter-proposal”. 

That is not unreasonable. Now I don’t for a minute think that the politicians, or their constitutents, understand the full complexity of moving the mail, or the costs and other implications of processing it in Sioux City as opposed to Sioux Falls, or anywhere else. But that’s not their job. It’s the job of the Postal Service. And that means it is also the job of the Postal Service to educate the politicians, and more importantly, the people, about all those nasty details. We haven’t done that.

So here’s a suggestion- invite all the interested parties along on a field trip to see how mail is processed now, and how it would be processed under the AMP proposal.

Then ask the opponents to submit their counter-proposal under exactly the same conditions as the USPS AMP proposal was submitted- machine productivity targets, non-personnel costs, service, etc…

And then- yes, determine which proposal makes the most economic sense.

Understand what that means though- much of the politicians arguments have to do with the impact on the local economy if jobs move elsewhere. That’s a reasonable political consideration, but it has nothing to do with moving the mail. If Tom Harkin, or the APWU want to prop up the local economy with postal jobs, they need to either show why those positions make economic sense for the USPS, or they need to come up with the money to pay for them from somewhere else (and admit that it’s a political subsidy).

That, folks, is openness.

Funny comment from New York Nerd on the New York magazine story about postal workers who route Netflix discs through their own DVD player before delivering them.

I haven’t experienced the missing disc problem on the receiving end, although I’ve had a few discs go missing for a couple of days on the way back. That actually makes sense in a way, since a disc coming back from a subscriber has to go through a facer-canceller, which it doesn’t on the way out. One more high-speed collection of belts and rollers means one more chance for that flimsy envelope to get shredded. So the disc ends up dressed only in it’s sleeve, and takes a while longer to get back to Netflix and logged in.

As far as discs arriving open but on time, the real explanation is probably benign- most of the discs on the outbound trip still have to go through at least one sorting machine. It really doesn’t take much to tear the Netflix mailers, but as long as the to: address part is still attached, the piece gets delivered as is.

That’s my theory anyway. Then again, I did notice that my rural carrier’s Subaru does have one of those little DVD screens in it…

Sharing Netflix With Your Mailman | The New York Nerd

Postcom.org notes that George Bush was questioned about postal reform legislation at yesterday’s National Newspaper Association. His response:

“Frankly, this issue hadn’t made it to my desk prior to me arriving at this meeting. I’m mindful of the bill. I need to know more about the particulars before I make you a commitment one way or the other.”

Now, given that the guy threatened to make the bill as passed by the Senate the target of his first veto, you’d think it might have rung a bell?

Thanks to Postcom too for pointing out that Bush’s point man on postal reform, former Domestic Policy Advisor Claude Allen, was arrested yesterday in an alleged department store refund scam.

HackingNetflix.com linked to my story about Netflix intervening in the Plant Consolidation case before the PRC, and judging by the comments, there’s more than a little confusion about what’s at stake for Netflix and its subscribers.

In a nutshell, the potential problem is that subscribers who currently enjoy overnight service to and from their Netflix service center might find themselves with 2 day service. If you’re the kind of Netflix subscriber who typically watches the DVD the day you get it, and sends it back the next day, you’re going to have a longer wait between movies. Read the rest of this entry »

Not a big surprise, considering their business- Netflix has filed as an intervenor in N2006-1, the Postal Rate Commission case where the Postal Service is requesting an advisory opinion on the potential service standard changes that could take place as the USPS proceeds with a realignment of its processing network.

Netflix is one of the few companies whose entire business model is based on first class mail. As they say in their letter of intervention:

Intervenor is an online DVD rental service providing more than 4 million members access to DVD movies. Members select movies to rent at the Netflix website (www.netflix.com) and receive delivery of their movies via First Class Mail. These rented DVDs are then returned to Netflix using First Class Mail. Intervenor’s service could be impacted by the changes described in this proceeding. 

That’s putting it mildly!

Speaking of Netflix, the ‘Hacking Netflix’ blog has a link to an interesting article about the inner workings of a Netflix shipping center in North Carolina.

ABC’s Good Morning America has a rip ‘n’ read style story on “junk mail”- a couple of un-referenced statistics (”Every American receives 17 trees worth of junk mail per year”), and telephone numbers to call to get on do not mail lists.

The irony is that to read the story online, you have to get past a pop-up ad for a restaurant. Once you get to the story, there are six separate ads on the page, two of them animated, all competing with the photo of correspondent Elisabeth Leamy doing her best naughty Mona Lisa pose. I guess I should give them credit for the absence of those annoying Flash pop-ups.

But if advertising arriving in my mailbox is ‘junk’, what does she call the ads that arrive with her story? And maybe more importantly, what about the 16 minutes or more of ads every hour on ABC Television?

Could that be part of the reason that network television viewership is dropping even faster than say, first class mail volume?

ABC News: Don’t Let Junk Mail Weigh You Down

Beyond his cameo role in the Bush 2000 ‘election’ saga, USPS Board of Governors nominee Mickey Barnett is best known in New Mexico as a lobbyist and GOP power broker. One of his big clients has been the payday loan industry, which hired him to oppose regulations that could have limited such abusive practices as triple-digit interest rates. Another client is an Indian tribe (sound familiar?) which he helped in its fight against a union organizing effort. He also works for Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison operator. Barnett led the list of lobbyists in an Albuquerque Journal story in January 2005 entitled “Gambling Industry Is N.M.’s 800-Pound Gorilla“. To be fair, it should be noted that Barnett’s influence peddling has not been entirely ideological. He was quite happy to take money from organizations that favored legalizing marijuana until GOP big wigs suggested it was just a little bit embarrassing for an RNC member to be seen shilling for dope smokers.

Barnett’s lobbying may have cost him as post as GOP National Committee member from New Mexico in 2004. According to a story in the Albuquerque Journal, George Buffet, the small businessman who defeated him, “…campaigned, in part, by criticizing Barnett’s lobbying work… Buffett says the national committeeman should not be involved in lobbying because it creates a conflict of interest… ‘fundamentally, people don’t believe politics should be for sale.’”

Prior to being ousted from his RNC seat, Barnett was described by former New Mexico GOP chair Ramsay Gorham as “ruthlessly vindictive against any legislator who votes against his drug or gambling clients.” Gorham also suggested that in New Mexico, “The Republicans will never become the majority party as long as Mickey Barnett is in office”.