Jaffer responds to ‘war stamp tax’ story
Azeez Jaffer has responded to an article posted on the Online Journal blog that charged the Bush Administration with ‘raiding’ USPS funds to pay for Bush’s war against Iraq.
Jaffer points out the obvious inaccuracies in the blog article, but fails to mention that the most recent increase was, in fact, the direct result of Bush’s insistence on “revenue neutrality” in any postal reform bill. That has forced the USPS to raise rates in order to fund a $3 billion payment to the Treasury this year. The money is supposed to be held in trust, but regardless of whether the money goes to fund the war, the bottom line is that it reduces Bush’s budget deficit by $3 billion.
Jaffer concludes with this rather odd statement: ”Mr. Masden also implies that the war funding is possible because the Postal Rate Commission is full of Bush Administration appointees who have authority over postage rates. Wrong again. Although the Postal Rate Commission plays an important role in the development of postage rates, it’s the Governors of the Postal Service who have the final say.”
True as far as it goes, but aren’t the Governors also appointed by the President?
More from Flickr- a postal oddity in Delphos, OH
Another way to use the APC
USPS Confidential?
The postal service published an article on information security in its Link employee newsletter on Friday, apparently in response to the Veterans Affairs Department case we mentioned here Thursday. The Link article reminds employees that they should avoid downloading sensitive information, and if they need to download it for legitimate purposes, they shouldn’t store it carelessly, or bring it home with them.
It’s all good advice. The only problem is that the VA told its employees the same things.
Keep in mind that the VA case became public because of the amount of information that was compromised, and the fact that it involved the theft of an expensive laptop computer. The same information on every postal employee would fit comfortably on a USB drive- something easily lost or stolen. An employee whose laptop is stolen is going to have to tell his boss, and the police. An employee who misplaces a twenty-five dollar USB drive is probably going to buy a replacement and hope for the best.
Remember also that the VA employee was simply careless- suppose he had actually been unscrupulous? When you’ve got personal data on 26 million veterans (or 700 thousand postal employees), you don’t need to unload it all at once- you might just sell, or use, a little of the information at a time.
One postal employee who responded to Thursday’s article told us he had been the victim of identity thieves who ran up $17,000 in bogus charges on credit card accounts opened in his name. There’s no proof that the information came from the postal service database, but everything the crooks used, including Social Security number, date of birth, etc., is in there, and can be downloaded by anyone with the right access.
Reminders like the Link article are good first steps, but until employee’s Social Security numbers and other personal data is securely locked down, what happened at the VA could happen at the USPS- and for all we know, already has.
ID Theft: Are your records safe?
The recent scandal involving the theft of personal information on 26.5 million veterans from a VA employee’s laptop should be a wake up call for the Postal Service and other agencies which have similar holes in their computer security practices.
The most glaring problem is the continued use of Social Security numbers as identifiers in employee files that are accessible to large numbers of agency employees. While agencies may have policies prohibiting downloading the type of data involved in the VA case, most don’t have the kind of safeguards that would actually prevent someone from doing just that.
FederalNewsRadio - WFED: VA Chief Vows Accountability for ID Theft
Newspaper logic: same day delivery should cost nine cents?
When I saw the headline, “USPS uses child’s ploy to ask for more and more”, I naturally assumed it was another Sam Ryan hatchet job. But I was mistaken- the editorial in the Marshfield, MO Mail was actually written by the publisher, Dave Berry. (You can tell he’s the publisher, and not the editor, by his style: “But nothing can make me like anything about the USPS asking for a 30 percent rate increase while counting on me to feel as if I’ve won if they eventually get half or even only a third of what they requested.” Can someone diagram that sentence?)
Dave’s problem with the USPS is twofold- he doesn’t like the new rates, and he doesn’t like the idea that the USPS wants to charge more for items that need to be sorted by hand- like, well, newspapers.
Dave specifically finds fault with the increase in rates for “In-County” periodicals, which he says will go up as much as thirty percent under the proposed rates. What Dave doesn’t mention is exactly what the current price is. If you take a look at the most recent USPS RPW report, you’ll find that so far this year the US Postal Service has handled 373 million pieces of In-County Periodical mail. For the same period, the USPS has taken in 34.8 million dollars in revenue for that mail. Do the math- the average postage on an In County paper is 9.3 cents! A thirty percent increase would boost that to a positively astronomical twelve cents!!
Not only that, but Dave contends that the new rate structure would “force our local papers to leave the local post office to be sorted elsewhere before coming back to the local post office for delivery. Gone would be same-day local delivery.”
Can you believe that? Not only will it cost twelve cents, but it might not be delivered the same day?
According to Dave, this is crazy, because he is positive the USPS is making a profit delivering his papers for nine cents apiece. Now at this point, you would think that Dave would just take his business elsewhere. After all, if it’s so obviously profitable to distribute newspapers for nine cents each, there must be tons of folks clamoring to get into the business. But no- Dave seems slavishly loyal to the good old post office. He says that “It’s going to cost our industry a lot of money to prove to postal officials that they are making a profit on the business we do with them”.
Hunh? If it’s obvious, it shouldn’t take much cash to prove it, right?
Unless of course, “proving it” means greasing enough lobbyist’s palms to get continued subsidies for in county papers written into postal reform legislation. But Dave couldn’t possibly mean that, could he?
Ozarks Newsstand - USPS uses child’s ploy to ask for more and more
(note- at the registration prompt use login:bugmenot password:bugmenot)
Brick wall hits brick wall
So much for the revenue potential of gun nuts and other assorted wing nuts sending bricks to Congress to build an American Berlin Wall along the Mexican border. It turns out that rather than a grass roots campaign to get individuals to actually mail a brick to their congressmen, the scheme uses a web site where you have to pay $11.95 to have a contractor ship your brick via UPS Freight to Washington. (Apparently even grass roots movements contract out these days.) That does seem a bit pricey for bricks- could the contractor be another Halliburton subsidiary?
Unfortunately for the brick senders, the Congressional Post Office (not part of the USPS) has so far declined to run down to the UPS depot to truck the bricks to the Capitol. At least not until someone pays $3.95 postage for each brick.
You can read more of the brick saga in the Atlanta Journal Constitution story linked below. The story also explains where the ‘grass roots’ group got its start- in a “chat room for a Web site dedicated to assault weapon aficionados”. It also points out that the groups co-founder, Kirsten Heffron, is a former worker for the anti-union National Right to Work Committee. Interestingly, the Send a Brick web site omits Kirsten’s anti-union past, referring only to a stint as ”Public Affairs Director for a 2-million-member national grassroots advocacy group”. Grassroots is certainly a popular (and flexible) word!
Another GOP Lobbyist Named to BOG
The White House press release somehow fails to mention the “L” word, but “Lobbyist” is exactly how Ellen Williams of Kentucky described herself when she contributed $500 to Rep. Anne Northrup in February. Williams apparently had second thoughts about that particular job title when, a week later, she sent $300 to the Kentucky GOP, describing herself instead as “Self-Employed/Government Relations”. (The change in occupation probably had nothing to do with the Jack Abramoff guilty plea that preceded it.)
Williams returned to lobbying after resigning from her job as Commissioner of the Governor’s Office for Local Development in Kentucky. According to the Louisville Courier Journal, the office ”housed [Republican Governor Ernie] Fletcher’s Local Initiatives for a New Kentucky office, his constituent services arm that prosecutors have called a ‘corrupt political machine’ that helped fill state jobs on the basis of politics.” Williams claimed not to know of any “political role” for the office.
Williams’ first announced lobbying client was Kentucky’s Turfway Park, which hired her to “to lobby for expanded gambling in the state”.
In addition to omitting the word “Lobbyist”, the White House press release also conspicuously fails to mention any postal knowledge or expertise on the part of Ms. Williams, whose entire work experience has been as a GOP operative, political appointee, or lobbyist.
Barnett loses in court, faces further defeats
From Joe Monahan’s blog: New Mexico lobbyist Mickey Barnett, nominated by George Bush for a seat on the USPS Board of Governors, suffered a major defeat in his home state last week. The New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously threw out a lawsuit Barnett filed seeking to block a primary challenge to one of his allies, State Rep Keith Gardner.
Now it appears that the Barnett faction, called an ”out-of-control cancer” by one opponent, may face a further, more important defeat, as anti-Barnett Roswell oilman Mark Murphy considers a run for state GOP chair.
The economics of the ‘forever’ stamp
The early news stories on last week’s rate case seemed to focus on what the mainstream press saw as the most novel feature- the ‘forever’ stamp. A lot of the comments on postalnews.com did the same thing, with not especially enlightening results.
Postcom.org links to a couple of articles that do shed some light on the economics of offering a stamp that’s always good for the one ounce letter rate.
The economics of forever stamps