Chicago Sun-Times:
Save our Postal Service

April 12, 2012 -- Chicago Branch 11 President Mack Julion's letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times was published April 10. He wrote that many people “already believe that email and other new technology are killing the Postal Service. That simply is not true. What is bankrupting the Postal Service is a 2006 law that requires them to ‘pre-fund’ retiree’s health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a 10-year window.”

April 11's "Marketplace" program on American Public Media featured an interview with NALC Chief of Staff Jim Sauber in a story about the April 12 Senate-office demonstrations against S. 1789.

Kearney, NE Branch 312 activist Ken Nickerson's letter to the editor of the Kearney Hub also was published April 10. “The U.S. Postal Service does not use any taxpayer money,” he wrote. “2006 postal reform mandated the USPS to pre-fund 70 years of future retirees’ health benefits in 10 years. This would be the same as paying off your 30-year mortgage in about seven years. Could you do it?”

David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, hits all the right notes about the manufactured financial crisis at the Postal Service in his April 8 op-ed piece for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "This manufactured financial crisis legitimized the privateers attack on the Postal Service," he writes. "Proposals include ending Saturday delivery, which would open the door to private companies; divesting half the service's physical infrastructure, and even ending door-to-door delivery...We need to demand that Congress end the manufactured financial crisis and cease forcing the transformation of the nation's oldest public institution into an increasingly private enterprise that looks to strengthen its internal balance sheet by weakening the balance sheets of hundreds of millions of Americans it serves."