The McClatchy newspapers ran a very interesting story the other day about the controversy surrounding a number of murals in a former Washington DC post office that now houses the Environmental Protection Agency. The story cites as the most controversial item a painting entitled “Dangers of the Mail”, painted in 1937 by Frank Mechau, which “depicts Indians brutally scalping and murdering white settlers. All the women are naked, including one who’s on all fours as a male Indian stands behind her, seizing her hair.” Like, I said, a very interesting story.

(The story repeatedly refers to “political correctness”, a cliche I thought had gone out of fashion some time ago. It always puzzled me that “political correctness” was such a one sided term. I never heard it used to refer to, for example, former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s neurotic draping of nude statues in the Justice Department. Or Dick Cheney’s doctrine that anyone who disagrees with him is aiding al Qaeda. I guess political correctness has its own politically correct usage rules.)

For more on the murals, check out the GSA web site.

Murals in federal building spark debate over censorship
McClatchy Newspapers

A columnist for the Spokane Spokesman-Review tells the story of an Idaho sculptor who claims the postal service is reneging on its obligation to reimburse him for a sculpture that was damaged in the mail. And what is the “brick wall” the USPS has supposedly put in the customer’s path? It’s asking for an “independent cost estimate”. That’s a “brick wall”?

I’ve been lucky enough to have avoided having to file many insurance claims in my life, but on those few occasions when I’ve had to, I’ve always had to get an estimate to justify my claim. Suppose the sculpture had been stolen from the sculptor’s house? Would our columnist be upset with the insurance company when it asked for proof that the item had been stolen, and that it was actually worth $5,000?

Post Office Gives Vet Bad Break

From USPS News Link: 

Net deficiency of $594.5 million posted after escrow allocation

USPS revenues for June were $27 million, or 0.4% under plan and 5.6% more than June 2005. Expenses for the month were $39 million, or 0.7% under plan and 4.4% more than June 2005. The result is a net loss of $11.9 million before the escrow allocation. The net deficiency after escrow allocation is $261.9 million. 

Year-to-date (YTD) revenue through June is 3.9% higher than the same period last year (SPLY) and is $386 million above plan.  YTD expenses are 4.2% higher than SPLY and $222 million over plan. YTD total mail volume is 0.9% above SPLY.

YTD, net income before escrow allocation is $1.66 billion. However, our net deficiency after the escrow allocation is $594.5 million.

Contributing to the YTD performance was the new postage rate structure implemented Jan. 8, which provided a 5.4% revenue increase needed to fulfill the requirement of Public Law 108-18, The Postal Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) Funding Act, enacted in 2003. This law requires the Postal Service to hold $3 billion in an escrow account by Sept. 30, 2006, to cover the difference between the CSRS retirement costs before and after the implementation of this law. We are allocating $250 million per month for purposes of assessing our financial position. Read the rest of this entry »

Connecticut voters rejected Joe Lieberman’s re-election bid last night, as expected. And also as expected, Lieberman insisted he will continue running as an Independent. The Associated Press quotes his spokesman as saying “This is bigger than the party now”, referring, one assumes, to the candidate’s ego. 

Although postal unions supported Lieberman, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of Lieberman’s financial support came from corporate interests, and eighty percent of it came from outside Connecticut, according to opensecrets.org.

The following commentary is by Clint Burleson, President of the Olympia, Washington local of the American Postal Workers Union:

There are plenty of problems with the Postal Service decision to move the cancellation, postmark and sorting of the outgoing mail from Olympia to Tacoma.  But now the Postal Service has admitted that they have possible plans to sort the outgoing Olympia and Tacoma mail in Seattle, which will further increase the problems.   Read the rest of this entry »

From Joe Monahan’s New Mexico Politics blog:

Mickey Barnett proved far less controversial to the U.S. Senate than he has to some fellow NM Republicans. His nomination to the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors was approved by the senate before it broke for the August recess. Barnett’s nomination came under fire from ex-State Reps Earlene Roberts and Ron Godbey who wrote letters to senators urging a rejection. But Barnett, a former legislative aide to NM senior GOP senator Pete Domenici, had Pete’s muscle and that was more than enough to insure his confirmation.

Roberts and Godbey cited Barnett’s support of drug decriminalization and his spearheading of the movement to put up candidates against fellow Republicans in the 2004 primary–including them–as reasons he should be rejected.

The attorney-lobbyist and former NM GOP national committeeman was most recently in the blog headlines when it was revealed that he helped give birth, along with Domenici Chief-of-Staff Steve Bell, to the GOP Governor candidacy of John Dendahl because they wanted stronger attacks against Big Bill than initial GOP nominee J.R. Damron was willing to deliver. Bell has denied playing midwife, but Washington sources insist otherwise. Sources close to Governor Big Bill reacted to that news by warning that Senator Domenici could face a Richardson recruited foe in 2008.

Barnett, along with John Dendahl, led the movement to oust Ramsay Gorham from the state GOP chairmanship two years ago, a move that symbolized the divisions in the state’s minority party.

(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2006
Not for reproduction without permission of the author

George Bush finally got around to filling one of the Democratic vacancies on the USPS Board of Governors last week, nominating former Democratic Congressman James H. Bilbray of Nevada to the seat formerly held by John Walsh, who resigned last year amid charges he misused postal funds.

Bilbray, a Las Vegas native, was elected to Congress in 1986, and served four terms until losing the seat in the 1996 election.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta last month upheld a lower court ruling that held that the USPS didn’t infringe the trademark of the International Stamp Art Company when it sold items depicting postage stamps. ISA had not claimed ownership of the stamp designs, but of the perforations surrounding them.

According to the National Law Journal, the court “found no evidence that the Postal Service intended to benefit from the good will associated with International Stamp’s mark. The court noted that the design was used only to identify images on the card as postage stamps and not to confuse consumers as to the source of the stamp art cards. As for the company’s claim that its idea had been stolen, the court said, ‘trademark law does not protect against misappropriation of business concepts.’”

The LA Daily News story about lengthy delays in processing mail in Los Angeles is a serious matter by itself (see Congressman Waxman’s letter requesting a full investigation by the OIG). But it should also serve as yet another reminder to the USPS that the public, the media and the politicians have a very different view of what service means than we sometimes do.

In discussing proposed consolidations, USPS spokespersons have focused on overnight delivery standards, while the APWU has raised a host of other issues, from collection box cutoff times to delivery times. That has allowed the union to argue that all it’s concerned about is the welfare of our customers, not the convenience of its members. Regardless of how you feel about that, you can’t deny that it worked in Rockford.

If Rockford and the other AMP controversies demonstrated a broadened view of ’service’, the LA case show that one piece of paper can drastically narrow the focus. Henry Waxman doesn’t care what LA’s overnight EXFC score was in Quarter 3- he wants to know why there was six day old first class mail in the inventory on May 4, 2006.

A lot has been written the lasy year or so about ‘web 2.0′, ‘the long tail’, and the changes in the ways people interact with what they see online. What does that have to do with advertising mailers? Quite a bit, according to this series on Marigold Technologies’ Direct Marketing blog:

Direct mail meets Web 2.0