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President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Moderator1, Nov 12, 2016.

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  1. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    Is there a deal on this planet as good as Amazon Prime?
     
    bigpern23 and Inky_Wretch like this.
  2. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    The USPS loses money. It's a shitshow -- even with Amazon's business.

    This idea that the USPS should be revenue-neutral, or better, is a scam. It's a government service, one I think works pretty dam well. If it has to be subsidized ti insure a high standard of performance across the country, so be it. Far better to spend money doing that, and to get some actual bang from our taxes, than nation-building in the Middle East or some of the other nonsense we spend billions on.
     
  3. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    What is a scam? What you posted is wrong. There is nothing in the U.S. government's budget for the USPS (the way there is for actual government agencies which depend on funding from taxpayers for their funding. The USPS was always sold as a self-sufficient INDEPENDENT agency. It is supposed to run on a P&L basis and pay for itself -- even earn a profit. The fact that it is unable to do that doesn't change how it was actually set up. And in fact, when it had to tap the U.S. Treasury within recent times, they were very careful to call it a loan and cap how much money they could "borrow" (in quotation marks, because we all know that money is gone like a fart in the wind and will never be paid back -- the losses have just kept piling up since, actually).
     
  4. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    The USPS is not an agency on paper, but it still must comply with what Congress decrees, which is why it never initiates possible cost control measures like canceling Saturday delivery or closing smaller, superfluous post offices (in one town on Cape Cod I visit, there are five separate post offices for a permanent population of 6000. In my Boston suburb, population 36,000, there's one office). It's measured like a business, but not allowed to be run like one. In any event, Amazon is one of its best customers, probably the best. Trump has been told this more than once, but in one ear out the other, since there's nothing in between to stop it.
     
  5. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Indeed. It is not operated like businesses that actually needs to compete in a fair marketplace. ... Among other things. ... It has a government-enforced monopoly on delivering letters and packages to mailboxes (which even the government admits is worth billions of dollars a year, although they underestimate the benefit, because they don't take into account the productivity gains it would be forced to realize if it had to compete).

    It is exempt from state, local property and real estate taxes, doesn't have to pay things like vehicle registration fees and parking tickets, etc. That is billions of dollars a year that FedEx or UPS, for example, is on the hook for. It pays its workers salaries and benefits that are far above what similar workers earn outside of the government (a major reason it destroyed itself).

    Oh, that "loan" I mentioned in the previous post? It has tapped more than $15 billion from the U.S. Treasury at a silly low interest rate -- the kind of subsidized loan I'd love to get for my businesses!

    Be real. Any notion you have that the USPS has been HAMPERED by Congress is ridiculous. It gets billions of dollars of benefit each year that none of us would get, which are of huge benefit. And that is still a hop, skip and a jump away now from the idea that the USPS is set up in a way that just makes it another line item in the Federal budget.
     
  6. cyclingwriter2

    cyclingwriter2 Well-Known Member

    What is the cause ratio of trump’s anti amazon tweets? 35 percent wash post article that morning, 40 percent Melania getting a pack of depends diapers delivered for him via amazon prime that morning, 10 percent not liking the amazon rain forest, 15 percent fox and friends?
     
  7. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    He doesn’t like it when people are richer and more successful than he is.
     
  8. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    All countries have postal services. They all lose money. They are government services. They're not supposed to be profitable. We don't expect the Agriculture (let alone Defense) Department to break even.
    Fun fact: The only postal service to be profitable on mail alone (some also have telecom monopolies attached) was that of the Confederate States of America.
     
  9. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    Actually Congress has a Constitutional mandate to fund the USPS. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 gives Congress the power and the responsibility: “To establish Post Offices and post Roads.” Doesn't sound like an independent agency to me. Sounds like the Founding Fathers felt it was a pretty important government agency that should be funded by taxpayer money.

    Yes, there probably are efficiencies that could be instituted. I'm not sure elimination of Saturday mail is a smart thing, especially since the PO is often closed for Monday holidays and going three days with no mail service would be inconvenient to many, and the fact there are still six POs in your Cape Cod neighborhood is probably attributable to the economic status and piolitical clout of those zip codes.

    Forcing the USPS to prefund its future healthcare benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years, another piece of W's brilliant legacy, is stupid.

    The USPS is one government agency that does a pretty darn good job. As Gee said, it's a service. Any money "loaned" to it to insure its survival is money well-spent, IMHO, and far preferable to wasting trillions and trillions of dollars, on Middle Eastern nation building that has already cost of thousands of lives and will cost us billions in future medical bills over the next 75 years.
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2018
  10. swingline

    swingline Well-Known Member

    I'm guessing Trump doesn't own any Amazon stock.
     
  11. Slacker

    Slacker Well-Known Member

    Today's Bible Study is from the Book of
    Revelations, chapter "People Got Conned" ...

    "It is obvious God changed his heart.
    He wants to be the most praying president ever."


    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2018
  12. justgladtobehere

    justgladtobehere Well-Known Member

    I am going to read Crying of Lot 49 again.
     
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