Mr. DeJoy must go and the current Board of Governors who oversaw these changes must stand down.
Preserve the People’s Post Office: Let Us Do Meaningful Postal Reform
Mark Jamison It is said the Postal Service is mired in debt, that it is unsustainable, a burden to the American people. This is the position of the current postmaster general, supported by the board of governors who hired him and by a treasury secretary who seems to be the chief architect of the current assault on a cherished national … Read More
The masquerade continues: Playing politics with the Postal Service’s unfunded liabilities
MARK JAMISON The House subcommittee on Federal Workforce, US Postal Service, & the Census held a hearing on Thursday, March 13, to receive testimony on the Postal Service’s $100 billion “unfunded liability.” Initially the hearing was billed as another Darrell Issa special. Issa is chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, under which this subcommittee serves, and the hearings he … Read More
Under same management: Some reservations about postal banking
MARK JAMISON A recent report by the USPS Office of Inspector General on offering financial services at the post office won immediate support from Senator Elizabeth Warren, and postal banking was thrust into the limelight. A big front-page story in Huffington Post entitled “Breaking the Banks” by Elizabeth Swanson offers polling data (and a poll of its own) that shows 44% of Americans favor letting the … Read More
Premature motion: PRC dismisses bid to view non-public Amazon docs
MARK JAMISON Almost three months ago, I filed a request with the Postal Regulatory Commission seeking access to documents filed under seal in the docket that dealt with the Postal Service’s deal with Amazon to deliver its parcels on Sundays. Last week, the PRC finally responded to the request. The Commission ruled that my motion was “dismissed without prejudice” as being “premature,” meaning I … Read More
The Senate puts the PRC in the backseat — or maybe not even in the car
BY MARK JAMISON On Thursday of this past week, the Senate held the second of two hearings to mark up the postal reform bill, a.k.a. the manager’s or substitute amendment, submitted by Senators Carper and Coburn. At the first session held the previous week, on January 29, a controversy arose over Section 301 of the proposed bill, which deals with … Read More
Can it get much worse? The Senate tries postal reform, again
BY MARK JAMISON The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs finally took up its postal reform bill at a markup session on Wednesday, January 29. The new S.1486 the committee took up is significantly different from the Carper-Coburn bill released last August. The current version, aka the substitute bill or the managers’ amendment, has introduced changes to the … Read More
The disappearing postal workforce: Counting up the losses
BY MARK JAMISON On the first Friday of each month, economists, policymakers, and professionals in the finance industry wait for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to release the current jobs report. The BLS report, which quantifies unemployment in the U.S., is widely seen as one of the primary economic indicators. While some folks may judge the health of the economy … Read More
The Privatization Ruse
BY MARK JAMISON Accusations that the PMG’s ultimate goal is to privatize the Postal Service are apparently starting to make some of the folks at L’Enfant Plaza a little touchy. On January 17, the Washington Post ran a story about the new postal counters in Staples that included a quote from Senator Jon Tester of Montana: Donahoe “can say whatever he wants … Read More
