Obama admin silent as USPS lays off 35,000 workers...with more layoffs to come [View all]

[brentspeak]

Last edited Sun Feb 26, 2012, 03:10 PM - Edit history (2)

Postmaster General, Patrick Donahoe, just announced the closing and consolidation of over 200 mail processing centers around the country.

More layoffs are in the works, as are closings of more post offices from around the nation.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-13/obama-urges-end-to-u-s-postal-service-saturday-mail-delivery.html

The Postal Service has proposed each of the changes Obama advanced as well as reducing its workforce by firing as many as 220,000 employees and closing post offices and mail-processing plants.

Obama’s budget didn’t address the facility closings or job cuts.

“It’s a political hot potato for them,” Del Polito said. “They don’t want to tick off a key Democratic constituency going into a national election.”

And then there is the inevitable economy-killing effects that always accompanies the loss of local post offices which serve as small towns' only real business hub. Not to mention that small businesses around the nation which rely on speedy, low-cost USPS package delivery to stay competitive will be severely harmed by the almost-certain delays of a weakened postal service. Saturday delivery, too, might be eliminated (Obama has specifically requested this).

The major issue facing the USPS, of course, is the onerous pre-funding requirement that is eating the Service alive. This was a provision inserted into the 2006 Postal Reform Act legislation by Susan Collins (R-Maine). However, while Obama paid some lip-service to this all-important issue when he issued his call for Saturday delivery elimination the other week, he's also dawdled and been silent on it for the past three years, despite long-ongoing House Democratic-led efforts to remedy it -- probably purposefully, considering his past kabuki theater actions. It might be too late, which was likely the plan: Postmaster General Donohoe just delivered the first axe-blow at the exact same time as Obama submitted his own postal reform recommendations within a proposed federal budget plan, and once the closings are complete, there's no undoing them.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/164991/postal-service-plots-its-own-demise

John Nichols on December 6, 2011 - 11:28 AM ET

There are many appropriate targets for Occupy Wall Street protests. But the OWS protesters hit a bull’s-eye when they invaded a National Press Club briefing where Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe—who likes to make like a corporate executive and refer to himself as “Chief Operating Officer of the US Postal Service”—was giving a speech about the need to close local post offices, layoff workers and, though this was unspoken, take the steps that will lead to the privatization of the one of the country’s greatest public assets.

snip

“Stop closing post offices,” chanted the activists who occupied the press club. “Don’t privatize the post office. It’s a public service. It’s not a profit center for FedEx and UPS to rip off the people.”

Postmasters general do not usually become the targets of passionate opposition. But the protesters were chanting: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donahoe has got to go.”

And rightly so...

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/197187-house-dem-calls-for-firing-of-postmaster-general-blames-obama-gop-congress

House Dem calls for firing postmaster general; blames Obama, GOP Congress
By Pete Kasperowicz - 12/05/11 12:25 PM ET

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) on Monday afternoon called on the the Obama administration to fire Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe in light of Donahoe's announced plan for drastic service reductions at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).

"This guy, this so-called postmaster general, should be fired because of a lack of any imagination or initiative," an angry DeFazio said on the House floor. "He's proposing the death knell for the great United States Postal Service."

Donahoe announced the closure of more than 250 mail processing centers around the country and plans to slow the delivery of first class mail in order to help bring the USPS out of the red. DeFazio blamed the Obama administration for failing to help find a way out of the USPS's fiscal woes, and said Donahoe needs more help from the White House.

"The White House continues to be totally silent, absent from this debate," he said.