Well, well, well, well fuckin well

[The Sponge]

Even i got conned a bit by the neo-con spiel about the postal service and how it is killing the country but now we get some facts about the situation and it is no wonder it is in trouble. First the big big big huge problem with the socialize postal service is that it is a big bad union. Something the Right wingers despises. First the false hoods. Not one dime of tax payer money goes to the postal service like DTB and the other assholes lead us to believe. Lets not forget DTB was recently trilled about the postal service laying off 120 thousand employees. What kind of douche bag would be happy with that news? Next in 06 a poison pill was put in a bill (yes 06 and we know who was in charge the) that has made it basically impossible for the postal service to be in the black. When the right likes to scream from the high heavens on how Gov't doesn't work and jackasses believe them, it is only because they are the reason it doesn't work. Undermining everything good for the American people just because they hate unions and unions can't stomach these no good con men. Here is a little of what im talking about. I wish it was the whole piece but i guess i will have to get that when it comes out. What a bunch of rotten no good cock suckers. What business has to fund healthcare with people that haven't even started on the job? Not one.

http://current.com/shows/countdown/...ion-to-the-u-s-postal-services-financial-woes

 

[Skulnik]

Sounds like your Liberal Video has it all figured out.

Liberals have all the answers.

PITY REALLY.

:facepalm:

 

[Duff Miver]

What a bunch of rotten no good cock suckers.

Yep. By the financial standards Republicans apply to business, the USPS is rolling in money. So....they make it impossible for the USPS to use that money by requiring deposits to pay benefits to people who haven't even been born yet.


Why do Repubs do that? Two reasons:

1. They want to bust another union.

2. They want to turn mail delivery over to private business which will pay them off with big cash contributions.

rotten no good cock suckers? Yep, you got them figured out, Sponge.:0074

 

[ssd]

Tax payers ARE on the hook for USPS

"The USPS expects to lose about $7 billion this year. The post office already has borrowed roughly $13 billion from Uncle Sam"

"USPS had $33.5 billion in outstanding liabilities and another $54.8 billion in unfunded retiree health and pension obligations"

Whatever her 'accounting tweaks" are - are they going to account for the $54B in unfunded pensions? Sounds kinda like the fuzzy math that Wall Street uses and I know how much you guys love the Wall Street guys - you want it stopped there but it's okay to fudge it for the USPS?

I'd like to know what her little accounting tweaks are - easy to point the finger at the R but she gives no real facts.

C;mon, Muff - you are my Joe Friday - all you want is facts.


Here's a few I found:

Roughly 80 percent of the agency?s costs go to its workforce of more than 700,000, which trails only Wal-Mart in numbers. Postal employees enjoy staffing levels and wages set by a politically potent union rather than productivity in a competitive marketplace. Union contracts bar or restrict outsourcing, layoffs, part-time and contract work, and employee assignment outside of narrowly defined crafts. Hence an estimated wage premium of 30 percent. The average USPS salary is $83,500, which makes postal employees among the highest paid semi-skilled workers around.

There are 36,500 post offices in America, more than the combined number of Starbucks, McDonald?s, and Walgreens. Yet the average number of weekly postal customer visits was 600, one-tenth the average at Walgreens. Consequently roughly 26,000 of the post offices lose money.

Yet mail demand appears to be locked in a permanent decline. America?s population continues to rise, but the number of pieces of mail delivered was down 17 percent from 213 billion in 2006 to 177 billion in 2009. That number is expected to drop to 167 billion this year, the lowest since 1992, and 150 billion by 2020.

WOW:
In short, warned a recent Government Accountability Office report: ?USPS?s business model is not viable.?


USPS as it is, is an antiquated, bloated dinosaur and needs to be fixed or taken out to the back 40 and shot.

 

[Duff Miver]

Tax payers ARE on the hook for USPS


C;mon, Muff - you are my Joe Friday - all you want is facts.

Taxpayer subsidies to the USPS were phased out between 1971, when they covered 23 percent of costs, and 1983. Today, an appropriation to the Postal Service proportional to that paid in 1971 would cost nearly $16 billion annually. The USPS is authorized to receive compensation of $460 million per year for operating unprofitable post offices, but has not requested or received this ?public service? subsidy in more than 18 years. The direct savings to taxpayers: $13 billion through 2007.

http://www.nalc.org/postal/perform/productivity.html


Jeez, I'm sorry, ssd, that facts don't fit your agenda. That's often the case, isn't it?

 

[Trench]

The USPS is authorized to receive compensation of $460 million per year for operating unprofitable post offices, but has not requested or received this ?public service? subsidy in more than 18 years. The direct savings to taxpayers: $13 billion through 2007.

Tea-Bagger (who happens to live in a sparsely populated western state): "If a postoffice isn't profitable, shut it down!!!"

Regional Postmaster: "Your postoffice isn't profitable. In fact the nearest profitable postoffice to you is more than a 100 mile drive.

Tea-Bagger: "Keep your Gubmint hands off my postoffice!!!"

:142smilie :142smilie :142smilie

 

[ssd]

If the govt has loaned the USPS $13B, then the taxpayer is on the hook for $13B.

Sorry to break it to you guys but government "money" is just taxes or borrowed money.

Either way, the taxpayer is responsible for it.

Those are the facts, Duff.

As for the accounting loopholes that this 'lady' wants to tweak - if done so, then the taxpayer would be on the hook for all the unfunded retiree pensions and healthcare.

 

[Duff Miver]

Tea-Bagger (who happens to live in a sparsely populated western state): "If a postoffice isn't profitable, shut it down!!!"

Regional Postmaster: "Your postoffice isn't profitable. In fact the nearest profitable postoffice to you is more than a 100 mile drive.

Tea-Bagger: "Keep your Gubmint hands off my postoffice!!!"

:142smilie :142smilie :142smilie

LOL!! :toast:

 

[Trench]

USPS as it is, is an antiquated, bloated dinosaur and needs to be fixed or taken out to the back 40 and shot.

SSD, I'll assume you're just being farcical again.

I'm sure you know that millions of Americans in rural areas and millions of senior citizens rely on the postal service and would be in a bind without it.

 

[Trampled Underfoot]

Tea-Bagger (who happens to live in a sparsely populated western state): "If a postoffice isn't profitable, shut it down!!!"

Regional Postmaster: "Your postoffice isn't profitable. In fact the nearest profitable postoffice to you is more than a 100 mile drive.

Tea-Bagger: "Keep your Gubmint hands off my postoffice!!!"

:142smilie :142smilie :142smilie

That is so true. :mj07:

 

[Trench]

That is so true. :mj07:

I wonder when the usual suspects will be along to tell us how the USPS should be privatized so greedy corporations can charge exhorbitant "subscriber" fees to senior citizens on fixed incomes who have the audacity to expect their government to deliver mail to their home free of charge.

Then they'll tell us how if not for the greedy postal workers unions, first class stamps wouldn't be so expensive... :142smilie

 

[ssd]

Trench:
Businesses go bankrupt all the time because costs are too high compared to income.

USPS should be no different. They have over $100B B in liabilities. Tells me something that they are doing is NOT working.

I'm sure the people who rely on the post office will be able to get their mail, one way or another.

Many countries have removed the monopoly on mail service.

Muff loves to list US rankings on things compared to the world. Here's another:
The U.S. rates near the bottom of the Consumer Postal Union?s 23-country "Index of Postal Freedom."

Germany's postal service is 70% privately owned.
Netherlands = 100%

And OMFG - we want to follow Europe's lead on nationalized healthcare right? Well, in 2013, the EU will officially end the national monopoly on mail for all member states. Guess they are only right on some things, when it is convenient.

and, lastly:
Former Postmaster General William J. Henderson (1998?2001) stated in a Washington Post op-ed following his retirement that "what the Postal Service needs now is nothing short of privatization." Henderson noted that while privatizing the USPS might sound radical, "it?s a concept the rest of the world has been taking seriously for years."

 

[Duff Miver]

And OMFG - we want to follow Europe's lead on nationalized healthcare right?

Make up your feeble mind - do you want to learn from the Europeans or not?" One day you say they've got it all wrong, then turn around and say we should do it their way. You're more of a flip-flopper than Mit Romney.

The European system won't work here because we have so many remote postal deliveries, whereas their population density is much higher.

Do you think private industry is going to pick up and deliver in Slope County, ND (population density 0.63 per square mile) for $.42?

The USPS is running a deficit because the LAW requires universal service. Most post offices are profitable, but many are not.
Thus far Congress refuses to let the USPS close even the most remote and underused offices. USPS has proposed closing unprofitable offices, but, well....Trench has explained why that isn't being done: more teabagger whining.

In addition the USPS is required, by LAW to fully fund retirement and future medical costs at a level which is not required of any other g'mint agency, and which is not done by any private business. If the USPS were allowed to fund retirement and future medical costs the same as private industry does, there would be plenty of money.

I've thought you are brighter than the average Luddite, but you're changing my mind.

 

[ssd]

Whatever, Duff. I do not want a European system at all but you liberal guys think they are oh so smart across the pond with the healthcare system and vacation time, etc. Let's see who leads the global economy down the rabbit hole this time around.

(I'll give you a hint - Greece is small potatoes next to Italy and Spain. This weekend, Germany is using money that was supposed to goto the EFSF to shore up their own banks for a possible Greek default)
They've tried it all and it is not working - so, they are privatizing the mail system and now the UK is looking the privatize the NHS Let's see who leads the global economy down the rabbit hole this time around.

But, why don't we go down the same path they did - it'll work out better over here.

Same bullshit with our economy. Bernanke is running the same damn playbook that Japan used from 1990 - the Nikkei still hasn't gotten back to 1990 levels - they talk about a lost decade - how about 2. Amazingly enough, some of the banks FINALLY started to write down and off some of the bad debt and they are GROWING again.

holy crap - who have thunk it.

I really don't care if you think I am smart or not, Duff. I am confident in my own ability and that is all that matters to me.

 

[Duff Miver]

I am confident in my own ability and that is all that matters to me.

So have you finally figured out that the present recession is world wide?

The most capitalist of the developed countries, The USA, and the most socialist of the developed countries, Sweden, are both in recession, and to about the same degree.

The standard of living is about the same in the USA and Sweden.

However Swedes have universal health care and Americans do not.

And there's this -


The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have the highest percentage of full-time, low-paid employment, and also have some of the highest child poverty rates, while the opposite is the case with Finland, Belgium and Sweden, which lie at opposite ends of both measures.

In the USA, 22% of children live in poverty; In Sweden it's 2.6%.

And this -

Social mobility is the most constrained in the United States: ?American children are less likely to move out of the bottom of the income distribution than children elsewhere,

That must make you AynRandies proud.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

 

[ssd]

Ha! "finally figured it out"?


If you think that I have finally figured it out, you do not know me.


I saw the crap coming in 2007 and profited from it in 08-09.

I am currently short the SnP, the Russell, the Euro from this summer as well as buying physical gold for 2001-on.

 

[Duff Miver]

I am currently short the SnP, the Russell, the Euro from this summer as well as buying physical gold for 2001-on.

Ballsy positions, but probably sound until interest rates climb. Gold @ $1800+ scares me, but I'd like to be short Euros @ $1.45. Stay nimble and remember two sound pieces of advise.

What goes up can come down.

You'll never go broke taking a profit.

No, make that three.

Bulls make money, bears make money, and hogs get slaughtered.

I hope you get filthy rich and pay lots of taxes.:0074

 

[ssd]

Sound advice, Muff. I made money in 08-09 but outsmarted myself and went short again in June 09 - you know what happened after that - took a bit of a hit and learned an expensive lesson.

I have sold some gold and silver to raise cash so I have cash on hand if things go nutty. I have cash in several countries denominations.

Here is a link to one of the people I read.
Can be a difficult read but you may find it interesting, though I doubt you will like what he has to say.

Funny thing, I read this after posting about fixing the tax code. I guess I have been reading him long enough now to think along some of the same lines.

http://www.martinarmstrong.org/files/Bound%20to%20Past%2009-08-2011.pdf

no buy hold or sell recommendations but if you have a margin account, keep an eye on FAZ. Do some historical research on it, at least back to the credit crunch in 08. I'm sure there is a single beta version of it as well if you do not have a margin acct. Tricky with the 3x betas, have to have your timing right or the fees, etc can eat you up.

 

[Duff Miver]

AT this point in time, I'm not into stocks, currencies or commodities. I dumped my gold @ $1100-1200, happy to be out @ 200% profit (I held it a loooong time). My money is mostly in GNMA bonds, about as safe an investment as there is with abt 5% return, with a smaller amount in a balanced mutual fund, and in standing timber. (physical ownership, not contracts).

I still have one stock holding, ONTY, have been in it a long time. I'm looking for a 10 bagger with ONTY first quarter 2012. They appear set to complete a phase III trial then (partnered with Merck-Germany) which I expect to be the biggest news in cancer treatment ever, no shit.

If you've got some spare cash, you can take a look.

High risk, high reward.

I guarantee nothing. This suggestion is worth what you paid for it. Do your own due diligence.

 

[Trench]

Liberals have all the answers.

PITY REALLY.

:facepalm:

Actually, I think this guy has all the answers.