Congressman Dennis Ross, chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the US Postal Service, says that the Office of Management and Budget is “refusing ” to testify at the hearing scheduled for Wednesday:

Ross’s tweet links to the February 17 Daily Caller story headlined “USPS gets short-term relief from Obama’s 2012 budget, but some call it a bailout”. The Daily Caller never identifies who the “some” are, and the only source quoted in the story says emphatically that the budget provision is not a bailout. That didn’t stop Fox News from blaring its infamous and totally fictitious “Obama’s $4 Billion Taxpayer Bailout of the Postal Service” headline.

Update: Alan Robinson notes “The loss of OMB as a witness eliminates the possibility of putting the Obama administration on the record on postal policy. The reference to the Daily Caller article raises concerns that the focus of the committee may be on the “bailout” and not the future of the future of the Postal market.”

APWU President Cliff Guffey has declined an invitation to take part in a “march and rally” in Washington DC during the APWU’s National Presidents Conference next week. The invitation was extended by St Cloud MN Area Local President Michael P. Kaehler, who told Guffey he was writing to him as a rank and file member. Guffey declined the invitation, saying that while “a march and rally in the nation’s capital may be appropriate at some point in the future, at the present time, however I do not believe it would be the most effective use of our resources.”

Despite Guffey’s refusal, some APWU members have gone ahead and acquired a permit to demonstrate at the White House. The demonstration is scheduled for Monday, March 7 from 1:30 to 3:30 in the afternoon.

White House Protest Flyer

Letter To Guffey

Guffey Reply

Rep Dennis Ross, the new chair of the House subcommittee that oversees the US Postal Service has made no secret of his contempt for public sector workers and their unions, so it came as no surprise to see this tweet from the Congressman this morning:

The link leads to an article published on the ultra-libertarian, paleo-conservative website, LewRockwell.com. The author is Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. The article is nothing new- the usual “market-good/government-bad” diatribe you might expect. What caught my eye while reading the essay though, were the Amazon ads dotted around it, for titles like “Lincoln Unmasked” and “The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War”.

The books were written by DiLorenzo, and expound his belief that the real villain of the Civil War was none other than Abraham Lincoln! (DiLorenzo, by the way, prefers to call it the “War to Prevent Southern Independence”. ) Yes, the Congressman’s economics expert thinks the South was right, and that Abraham Lincoln, still officially regarded as a hero by the Republican Party, and the man whom Americans have named as their most admired President more often than any other over the years, was a fraud and a tyrant.

The professor has also been associated with the neo-Confederate “League of the South”, considered by some to be a white supremacist hate group. He has already been called as an “expert” witness by Ron Paul’s Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee. His appearance prompted a sharp reaction from the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, William Lacy Clay (Mo.), according to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank:

DiLorenzo, the congressman told the committee, had called Lincoln “the first dictator” and a “mass murderer” and decreed that “Hitler was a Lincolnite.” Worse, Clay charged, “you worked for a Southern nationalist organization.” “The League of the South is a neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second southern secession and a society dominated by European Americans.”

No word yet on whether DiLorenzo will be invited to share his insights with Congressman Ross’s subcommittee.

Golly- why do people think the Republican right is out of step with mainstream America?

Greenbelt, Maryland – A federal jury convicted Warren Christopher Bradford, age 41, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, late yesterday of destroying mail he was entrusted to deliver as a Postal Service letter carrier.

The conviction was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Joanne Yarbrough of the U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General; and Interim Chief Mark Magaw of the Prince George’s County Police Department.

According to Joanne Yarbrough, Special Agent in Charge of the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General, “The overwhelming majority of postal employees work very conscientiously to move the nation’s mail – approximately 171 billion pieces of mail each year – to its proper destination. It is a responsibility they take very seriously. Unfortunately, there are a few postal employees, very few, who abuse the public trust placed in them, but successful prosecutions are a significant victory against offenders. I appreciate the work and partnership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office with these investigations. The American public should remain confident that the majority of the employees of the Postal Service are hard-working and continue to maintain the trust and integrity of the Postal Service.”

According to evidence presented during the three day trial, Bradford was a 15-year employee of the U.S. Postal Service assigned as a letter carrier to the Capitol Heights Post Office in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The evidence showed that beginning in June 2009, customers living along Bradford’s postal route began reporting that they were not receiving mail for days at a time. On September 21, 2009, a citizen called 911 after witnessing a Postal Service employee unloading several trays full of mail from a Postal Service vehicle and discarding them at a secluded location in Capitol Heights. The Prince George’s County Police Officer who responded to the call discovered the three trays of undelivered mail the caller had seen the carrier unload as well as a large amount of burned mail spread across the wooded lot. That officer notified a local Post Office, whose supervisory employees responded to the scene along with agents of the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General. There, postal officials recovered mail from Bradford’s route bearing postmarks dating back to June 2009. Postal officials located Bradford at approximately 3:00 p.m. when he returned to the burn site in his postal truck, which still carried nearly all of his route’s mail for that day.

Bradford faces a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams, Jr., has scheduled sentencing for May 25, 2011 at 9 a.m.

Here are the minutes of last week’s Mailers Technical Advisory Committee meeting- the document contains links to the presentations given during the session:

Feb 2011 MTAC Meeting Minutes

Pushing the Envelope: The Looming Crisis at USPS
Date: Wednesday March 2nd, 2011

Start Time: 1:30 p.m.

Location: 2154 Rayburn House Office Building

Description: The hearing will examine the fiscal situation of the Postal Service and potential areas for postal reform.

Witnesses

Panel 1

• The Honorable Patrick R. Donahoe
Postmaster General of the United States

• The Honorable Jacob J. Lew (invited)
Director, Office of Management and Budget

• Ms. Ruth Goldway
Chairman, Postal Regulatory Commission

• Mr. Phil Herr
Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues at the Government Accountability Office

Panel 2

• Mr. Jim Sampey
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Valpak

• Mr. Arthur Sackler
Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service

• Mr. Fredric Rolando
President, National Association of Letter Carriers

The US Postal Service posted a net operating loss of $451 million dollars in January after taking a charge of $458 million for the future retiree health benefit trust fund created by the 2006 PAEA law. The “loss” brings the year to date USPS deficit to $781 million. If it weren’t for the PAEA charges and the paper revaluing of USPS workers comp liabilities, the USPS would be showing a year to date profit of $248 million. Total mail volume for January was down 1.3% compared with the prior year. Year to date mail volume is up 0.9% compared with the same period last year (SPLY). Workhours were down by 3.3% for the month, or about 4 million fewer employee hours. Year to date workhours are down by 2.4%, or about 9 million hours compared with SPLY.

USPS Preliminary Financial Information (Unaudited) January 2011