BALTIMORE, Jan. 17 — The U.S. Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorney’s office for Maryland issued the following press release:

U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson sentenced John Bermudez, Jr., age 31, of Brooklyn, Maryland today to 10 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for assault of a government official and sentenced his brother, Gregory Bermudez, age 28, of Millersville, Maryland to eight months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, on the same charge, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein. John Bermudez was convicted by a federal jury on August 2, 2007 after a three day trial and Gregory Bermudez pleaded guilty on July 26, 2007.

According to the guilty plea, testimony at trial and other court documents, Gregory Bermudez and John Bermudez, Jr., worked at the United States Postal Service Incoming Mail Facility (IMF) in Linthicum, Maryland. On February 8, 2006 at the IMF a supervisor instructed John Bermudez to stop playing cards and return to work. Both defendants argued with the supervisor, who sought the assistance of the manager of the work floor. When the manager responded he discovered the defendants in a heated argument with another employee. Unable to regain control of the work floor, the manager informed the defendants that he was calling the police and turned to walk away. The defendants followed the manager and, as the manager approached the phone, Gregory Bermudez struck him from behind with his fist. The victim fell to the ground and both defendants punched and kicked him as he lay on the ground. The defendants then left the facility through the loading dock area.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein thanked the U.S. Postal Inspection Service for their investigative work, and commended Assistant United States Attorneys Paul E. Budlow and Tamara L. Fine, who prosecuted the case.

US Postal Service employment statistics showed a continuing decline in the career workforce at the end of 2007. The USPS ended the year with 681,013 career employees, down 1.9% from the prior year. The decrease of 13,329 career jobs was more than made up for by 21,537 added casual workers, and 11,801 transitional employees.

By craft, clerks and nurses saw the largest decline, down 4.5%, for a loss of 9,515 jobs. City carriers were also down from the prior year, by 1.9%, or 4,367 employees. Rural carriers increased by 1.8%, and mail handlers were up 0.7%. Field supervisors and managers declined by 1.6%, or 533 jobs, while Headquarters added 103 positions, for an increase of 3.7%. Field support positions also increased, up 3.8%, or 276 additional career positions.

Recently we linked to a New York Times story about a change in strategy at Valassis, the company which last year took over ADVO, the direct advertising concern that is the US Postal Service’s biggest customer. The Times headline read: “Shifting Coupons, From Clip and Save to Point and Click”. A representative from Valassis used our comment feature to clarify the company’s intentions- here’s what he had to say:

There have been some misperceptions about Valassis’s new consumer facing brand, RedPlum, which I’d like to clarify. The RedPlum portal is not replacing our direct mail package, or for that matter, the inserts in newspapers or any of the many advertising vehicles we provide our clients. The purpose of our extension to the Internet is to provide an avenue to reach people who prefer to shop for values on-line. Our goal is to provide consumers with values how, when and where they want, whether that is online, in their mailbox, on their doorstep, with their newspaper or in their store. Valassis is USPS’s largest customer and we value that relationship.

We look forward to continuing our long-standing relationship with the United States Postal Service and appreciate your assistance in helping us to deliver savings and value opportunities to consumers.

Best regards.
Valassis Representative

The Postal Service doesn’t like the term “junk mail”, and for obvious reasons, neither do the people who use direct mailings to sell their products. So it might come as a surprise to find that the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) uses the term in advertisements for its “dmachoice.org” web site. One ad says “Postal service junk mail Choose Only The Catalogs You Want! Free Service Supported by the USPS”. Another reads “Stop Paper Junk Mail” Reduce Mailbox Clutter- Sign Up for DMA’s Mail Preference Service!”

Interestingly enough, the term “junk mail” doesn’t appear on the dmachoice site itself, although it is included in the keyword code for several pages. Keywords are embedded in the HTML code of web pages, and can be used by search engines, but aren’t visible to a person viewing the page.

Douglas Carlson, who has been a frequent intervenor in Postal Rate/Regulatory Commission proceedings, has filed a complaint with the PRC alleging that the Postal Service has illegally made it difficult, if not impossible, for individual customers to mail packages at the bound printed matter rate, which is lower than the standard media mail rate. Carlson cites instances where he attempted to mail a dictionary, only to be told by window clerks that the rate was no longer available, that the book did not qualify for the rate, or, bizarrely, that it could only be accepted if it already had postage on it when he brought it to the window.

Carlson also notes that the USPS web site’s rate calculator no longer mentions the rate, and that it is not available from the Automated Postal Centers in post office lobbies.

Carlson’s complaint alleges that “When a customer presents items for mailing at a retail window and asks for the least-expensive shipping method and the window clerk knows or should know that the item would qualify for a Bound Printed Matter rate, Postal Service policy prohibits the window clerk from offering or suggesting Bound Printed Matter service to the customer, even if Bound Printed Matter service might or would fulfill the customer’s shipping needs at the lowest price of any service.”

He says this policy “unduly and unreasonably discriminates against individual and small business mailers, in a manner not specifically authorized by title 39. Compared to large mailers, individual and small-business mailers are less likely to know about services that window clerks do not offer, that Automated Postal Centers do not offer, and that the Postage Rate Calculator at www.usps.gov does not mention.”

A year and a half after resigning in disgrace as the Vice President for Public Affairs for the US Postal Service, Azeezaly Jaffer is hanging out his shingle as a PR expert. Jaffer’s performance as a USPS spokesman moved the Federal Times to write:

“[Postmaster General] Potter and the leadership of the Postal Service have a choice to make now. The IG report documents a strong case, depicting a public official who ran amok with his official credit card, sexually harassed fellow employees and abused his trusted position. If Potter doesn’t think that merits criminal or other punitive action, perhaps it is time for a new leadership team to take charge of the U.S. Postal Service.

Details of the Jaffer scandal are available in the OIG report that prompted his sudden resignation. In September 2006, the Washington Post summarized the findings:

The June IG report accuses Jaffer, who managed a staff of 160 and a $20 million budget, of, among other things: drinking at a work function until he passed out; running up $8,000 in extra hotel room charges so he could qualify for a suite with a bathtub for two; and following a female colleague into her hotel room, propositioning her, then passing out.

Jaffer was not held responsible for over forty six thousand dollars in alcohol, expensive hotel suites and dinners for friends and families, and it turned out that even months after he “resigned”, he was still on the USPS payroll. As the Post put it:

All summer, federal-dom has been abuzz over a steamy U.S. Postal Service Inspector General’s report accusing the agency’s former public affairs chief of heavy drinking, expense account chicanery and sexual harassment. But who knew that the subject of the report, Azeezaly S. Jaffer, has spent the season on vacation, courtesy of the Postal Service? Jaffer’s taxpayers’ holiday bears witness, a Postal Service spokesman said, “to how hardworking he is.”

So what does Jaffer want to do for you and your company? Well, according to his LinkedIn page, he has experience and expertise in such things as “crisis communications”, “talent relations”, “executive coaching”, etc. He also claims to be the person who “Aggressively increased annual revenues 400 percent” for the USPS by “conducting innovative promotion and publicity campaigns”.

The LinkedIn page says Jaffer started his PR company, “globalPRpros LLC” in August 2007. (The page doesn’t account for the year that had elapsed since his postal resignation/sabbatical.) The company is described as “A full service communications company specializing in media relations”. Although Jaffer registered the company’s domain name in August of last year, four months later, its web site still consists of a generic “parked domain” page currently offering custom searches on “Umbilical Stem Cells, Equipment, Cheap Advertising, Global Overpopulation, and Tee Times”. Surprisingly, for someone supposedly skilled in corporate relations, is Jaffer’s email address: globalprpros@yahoo.com. Free anonymous email accounts aren’t generally seen as “professional”, especially when they’re used as the main point of contact for a firm. For a “full service” firm, Jaffer’s seems quite small- it’s listed on LinkedIn as having “1-10″ employees, and so may actually consist of Jaffer himself.

A couple of weeks ago we linked to a column in the Reading, Pennsylvania Eagle entitled “The claim is in the mail“, which told the story of how the writer, Beth Nauss, had trudged down to the PO to file an insurance claim, only to be thwarted by lazy postal workers. Beth is billed as the Eagle’s “humor” columnist- here’s an example of the “humor” from that column:

The system works like this. Buy a wonderful gift that’s worth more than 10 cents for someone who lives far away from you. Wrap it carefully in a crush-proof container. Then, while under the influence of prescribed medications, decide sending the gift through the U.S. mail is a better idea then soaking it in meat juice before tossing it to a pack of hungry lions.

You get the idea.

After the column was linked to by this and other web sites frequented by postal workers, Beth apparently started getting comments that were less than appreciative of her sense of humor. She responded on Sunday with more of her trademark wit:

I stand corrected on several key points. First, the USPS does not soak packages in meat juice. Then they do not throw them to a pack of hungry lions. The USPS, in fact, does not really have any lions at your local post office. The lions are at the zoo. The postal service no longer has any lions because it switched to elephants in a cost saving measure adopted in 1978. The USPS discovered that elephants are much more efficient at processing fragile packages, and besides, they’re willing to work for peanuts.

And so on. If you really feel like suffering, you can read the whole sorry mess here.

In Beth’s defense, though, I’d like to vouch for the fact that Beth can be funny: here’s the email Beth sent to our feedback address after we linked to her article:

From Beth Nauss
to feedback10@postalnews.com,
date Dec 18, 2007 1:14 AM

12/18/07

Hello!

I doscovered that you reproduced material on your website to which I hold the copyright and you did so without my permission. Please delete the link and the material immediately and contact me.

Thank you.
Beth Nauss

Apparently Beth hadn’t realized that when she clicked on the headline at postalnews.com, she was taken to the Reading Eagle web site. (You’d think the big logo and even bigger picture of herself might have been a tipoff, but apparently not.)

And then it dawned on me: Beth was just cracking another of her wonderful jokes! It was that trademark “humor”!

So I played along, “humorously” pointing out to Beth that I didn’t own the Reading Eagle web site, and that if she really didn’t want people to read her columns, she really needed to the people who kept posting them on the Reading Eagle web site!

Beth must have laughed until she cried at that one! And maybe that’s why I haven’t heard back from her?