going on just has it has for centuries. The only thing that has changed is that they are much more efficient and can move more quickly than was previously possible.

Those of us that have no power or control are always either ignorant of what is being done or marginalized until it it is too late to do anything about it.

On this thread there is mention of climate change, green energy, and media control. All of these are perceived as being among the current issues, but the reality is that it's too late to do anything about them now.

The cycle of global warming passed the tipping point five minutes after anyone outside the field cared anything about it. We had some of those people telling us what was going on 40 years ago, but they were ignored and marginalized because stopping it would hurt the energy interests. By the time Al Gore was writing his book and road show the cycle was irreversible and the best that could be done was immediate action on a global scale to slow it and alleviate some of the worst consequences. A decade later we're still talking about what might be done 20 years from now.

Green energy is part and parcel to the warming of our planet and the resulting changes in weather patterns, but again, the best we can do is to try to catch up with what we should and could have been doing for at least 30 years. This is not to say we shouldn't do anything, but I use it to point out the real flaw is our own submission to the "pragmatic" voices that dominate every conversation and the underlying instruction to comply with authority.

If we're going to change what is being done to us we have to look at what is coming, instead of focusing entirely on what has passed. If we are to make any difference. The major part of that is going to be to take back our power from those that hold it. Nationality or political party affiliation are irrelevant. Those in power don't care about them, they only care about gaining or holding power and will change their line or location in any way that helps them achieve those goals.

For those of us that knew what was going on in 2001 - 2002, don't waste the energy re-fighting a battle that has been over for a decade, look at what is happening now, at the preparations those with real power are making, and focus your energy there. For those of you that didn't get it then, perhaps you might want to give some credit to the people who were right and listen to what they're saying now, instead of ridiculing and marginalizing them because what they're telling you is uncomfortable or inconvenient to you.

The only real problems the USPS has are Congress and gross mismanagement.

I said quite clearly that it is my relative that works for them, today, right now. I also said very clearly that I did not doubt that you were an employee, that the service is absolutely rife with with short-sighted, Libertarian idiots that are too stupid to realize that they are enthusiastically supporting their own executions as well as the destruction of the best mail system on earth, although not quite that clearly. I have no way of knowing if this description fits you exactly, but the posts you have written on this topic indicate that you certainly lean that way.

I did write, quite clearly, that there are many places where improvements can be made, none of which involve degrading service or laying off the employees that actually do the work. Being an RCA is the worst job and that's where you start if you want to be a rural carrier. My relative did it for about 5 years before getting a route, and while it is not as good as it used to be, it is still better than what the contractors have and the service provided in those place where contractors are used is perfectly indicative of that.

You also paint a very misleading picture of the rural service. The post office is a Constitutionally mandated, formerly governmental, service and as such, is not meant to be a profitable enterprise. Yes, there are tiny offices with practically no customers scattered throughout the nation that get no service from FedEx or UPS and operate at what is, from a business standpoint, a loss. There are also places throughout the nation where it is not profitable to provide electricity and sanitary water, but that's one of the major reasons for government. A nation can't be a nation if the unprofitable citizens are left to their own devices. Would you have us abandon huge swaths of America because there are not enough people living there to make it profitable?

Beyond that however, there are major cities that are serviced by the rural system (about 70% of Scottsdale, AZ., for example). This is because the city/rural divisions were drawn up almost a century ago. Hardly any rural carriers use their own vehicles any longer. The Potter administration ended it when they noticed that carriers were able to pay for their personal vehicles under the old system and therefore deprive political contributors from some welfare. Carriers cannot schedule their days off, each route that has a day off (not all of them do except for Sunday), has it scheduled by the station or district supervisor. If the carrier wants to take Monday off, they have to spend a vacation day or take LWOP (leave without pay). Perhaps it is the idea of regular working people having paid vacation time that so upsets you?

USPS is the nation's largest employer of veterans, and the largest source of living wage jobs for those without connections and college degrees. But those are probably bad things in your book. Unless you're a political appointee, you're not going to get rich working for the post office, but you can raise a family, buy a house, and maybe send your kids to college in exchange for working your ass off for 40 years before you retire your broken-down body. OTOH, if you are politically connected, you can be paid in the top 2% of wage earners, destroy the organization that paid you and then get rich going to work for the corporate parasites that couldn't even exist if not for the USPS.

The current Postmaster General, Patrick Donahoe, is better than the last one, but is still grossly overpaid and apparently dedicated to protecting the executive class at the expense of productive employees. The one shrub put in, John E. Potter, spent 9 years utterly devastating the service and retiring with a package worth about $6M. The program of eliminating the best mail system in the world began under reagan (Big surprise there) and even after a quarter century of consistent attack, it remained self-sustaining. Even before reagan, the U.S. Congress has been using the USPS as it's personal slush fund to finance it's blatant graft for generations, yet I read nothing from you about addressing that.

The USPS has done an admirable job of adapting to the changing reality, remaining self sustaining with the rise of the world wide web and the constant attacks from Congressional lapdogs in the employ of private carriers and being forced to both subsidize them while being prohibited from competing with them. For 1/6 the price of a cup of coffee you can drop a letter to your mom in a box in LA and be assured that she will get it at her door in NY 2 or 3 days later. That level of service would cost you $8 with UPS today, and should people like you be successful in killing this modern marvel of efficiency, you can expect that to double.

Prior to the gutting of ERISA and flogging the alphanumeric soup of "individual retirement plans" on the public, the DJIA was really irrelevant to the average worker. It was a piece of trivia published in the WSJ and fretted over by executives and those with the means to invest, IOW people with knowledge, means, and interest in the topic.

Legalizing and rewarding the theft of the average person's earned equity (pre-seventies pensions as the primary example) and thereby forcing all of us into a market we have no control over and little if any knowledge of has captured and required us to root against their own interests. The worse things are for the average citizen, the better Wall Street likes it, so the higher the averages go.

One piece of evidence of this is the numerous "I've finally recovered my retirement account" statements here on this and the other threads.

You haven't, your equity was still stolen, you will never get that back. You've lost the interest you should have made over the intervening years, you will never get that back. You've lost the time and all the myriad effects that has had on your life, you will never get that back. You've lost the unimaginable amounts of money that you, as American taxpayers, are on the hook for in fueling this so-called recovery you will never get that back and your grandchildren will still be paying for that long after you're dead.

It is the illusion, the cynical manipulation of our collective perception that causes us to cheer our own losses to the exclusive benefit of those that stole what was ours that is so insidious. By making you feel better, you are motivated to participate in your own demise. All those losses listed above, and many more that would take hours to write, came from you and went to them and they don't even have the decency to thank you for it, nor do you have the understanding(?) to demand their gratitude and remuneration.

You're cheering your torturer for backing the thumbscrews off a quarter turn.