---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Romi Elnagar <bluesapphire48@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:38 AM
Subject: [bangla-vision] Fw: Don't Kill the Post Office
To:
Don't Kill the Post Office
* 492 Rallies Tell Congress: Don't Kill the Post Office
(Evan Rohar in Labor Notes)
* 'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government' (John Nichols in The Nation)
==========
492 Rallies Tell Congress: Don't Kill the Post Office
by Evan Rohar
LaborNotes
September 28, 2011
http://labornotes.org/2011/09/postal-unions-492-rallies-tell-congress-dont-kill-post-office
The nation's four postal unions organized events at 492
locations across the country Tuesday in support of federal
legislation that would relieve the burdensome requirement
that postal employees pre-fund decades worth of retirees'
benefits.
The bill (HB 1351) currently has 216 cosponsors in the
House, but President Obama's latest position would grant the
Postal Service only a two-year reprieve. Obama also
recommended killing Saturday delivery, which postal
unionists say would create a "death spiral" for the service.
The Postal Service is proposing to close 3,500 post offices
and lay off 120,000 workers, breaking its new contract with
the Postal Workers union.
Chanting, "One - Three - Five - One, Congress get the job
done," and "We don't want a bail out, we just want the mail
out," postal workers in southeast Michigan withstood a rainy
afternoon to demand Congressional action.
"True to form, rain or shine, well be here," said Cornell
Fears, a member of Letter Carriers Branch 1 in Detroit.
Some of the largest protests were reported in Buffalo, New
York; Journal Square, New Jersey; and Eugene, Oregon, where
hundreds gathered.
North of Detroit, 200 pressured Republican Representative
Candice Miller to sign on to the bill.
Letter Carriers Branch 3126 member John Dick was encouraged
by the rally of 60 he attended in Troy, Michigan.
"There was a lot of new faces I' d never seen before," said
Dick, referring to his co-workers. "It was the first rally
they 'd ever been to. They've been awakened as to what's
going on."
Dick said the events educated the public about the real
reason the Postal Service is in the red: not a surplus of
workers or post offices but a 2006 law that requires it to
put away enough money, over 10 years, to fund 75 years of
retiree health benefits - about $5.5 billion each year.
"It's not an easy thing to wrap your fingers around," he
said, but "more and more people are getting it."
The AFL-CIO is planning a national week of action October
10-16 as part of its "America Wants to Work - Good Jobs Now"
initiative. The week will focus on creating new jobs and
preserving the good jobs we have - including those in the
postal service and at Verizon and Hyatt, where unions are
fighting for good contracts and organizing rights.
Find a local rally here. http://local.we-r-1.org/weareone
==========
'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government'
by John Nichols
TheNation.com Blog
September 27, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163650/save-post-office-movement-defends-human-side-government
When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was
completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill.
The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he
was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than
fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born
only a little more than a century after the Constitution was
adopted.
Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution
and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-
building that focused on the affirmative role of government
and the necessary role of the extension of the federal
government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet
and urban neighborhood: the post office.
Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that
Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the
Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential
project of the federal endeavor.
Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the
local facility, be it a frame building at a country
crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of
the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of
packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more
even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.
The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and
honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem
distant and, at times, ominous.
As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer,
Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role
that government could play in the lives and communities of
Americans had better make the defense of the post office a
high priority.
"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down," he
said. "When the human side of government closes its doors,
we're all in trouble."
Randolph spoke the faith of the small-"d" democrat with
those words-and, at least in his time, that of the large-"D"
Democrat.
But, now, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are
entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the
American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we
know it."
There are proposals afoot to close as many as 3,700 post
offices nationwide-most of them in rural communities and
inner cities, where there services (and the employment they
provide) are most needed.
There are proposals to end Saturday delivery, and perhaps to
make even more extensive cutbacks-moves that would drive
more business away from the US Postal Service and toward
private-sector competitors that will not match its standard
of universal service to all Americans.
There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of
thousands of postal workers and gut the service.
Why? Because of bad policies forced upon the USPS, policies
that could be reversed as quickly as they were implemented.
Those bad policies have created what is called a "financial
crisis." This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a
"political" crisis.
The postal service is running the deficits that so concern
conservative politicians and pundits not because it is
inefficient, and not even because it faces new forms of
digital competition. It is running deficits because it was
forced to pre-pay seventy-five years of retiree health
benefits in ten years, and because it overpaid federal
pension funds by more than $80 billion.
The crisis is, as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates
argue, "manufactured."
Across the country Tuesday, tens of thousands of postal
workers, union allies and community advocates rallied to
defend the United States Postal Service and to argue for
responsible Congressional action to renew and strengthen a
precious public asset. Backed by five major postal unions
and worker groups - the American Postal Workers Union, the
National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal
Mailhandlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers'
Association and the National Association of Postal
Supervisors - the rallies took place at close to 500
locations (post offices, congressional offices, state
capitols) nationwide, in one of the broadest displays of
support for public services the nation has seen in many
years.
Jennings Randolph (who passed in 1998) isn't around to cheer
them on. But if he were, he would celebrate the fact that
there are still great masses of Americans who recognize that
"when the human side of government closes its doors, we're
all in trouble."
==========
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.
Submit via email: portside@portside.org
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe
Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate
Buffalo, New
York; Journal Square, New Jersey; and Eugene, Oregon, where
hundreds gathered.
North of Detroit, 200 pressured Republican Representative
Candice Miller to sign on to the bill.
Letter Carriers Branch 3126 member John Dick was encouraged
by the rally of 60 he attended in Troy, Michigan.
"There was a lot of new faces I' d never seen before," said
Dick, referring to his co-workers. "It was the first rally
they 'd ever been to. They've been awakened as to what's
going on."
Dick said the events educated the public about the real
reason the Postal Service is in the red: not a surplus of
workers or post offices but a 2006 law that requires it to
put away enough money, over 10 years, to fund 75 years of
retiree health benefits - about $5.5 billion each year.
"It's not an easy thing to wrap your fingers around," he
said, but "more and more people are getting it."
The AFL-CIO is planning a national week of action October
10-16 as part of its "America Wants to Work - Good Jobs Now"
initiative. The week will focus on creating new jobs and
preserving the good jobs we have - including those in the
postal service and at Verizon and Hyatt, where unions are
fighting for good contracts and organizing rights.
Find a local rally here. http://local.we-r-1.org/weareone
==========
'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government'
by John Nichols
TheNation.com Blog
September 27, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163650/save-post-office-movement-defends-human-side-government
When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was
completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill.
The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he
was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than
fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born
only a little more than a century after the Constitution was
adopted.
Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution
and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-
building that focused on the affirmative role of government
and the necessary role of the extension of the federal
government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet
and urban neighborhood: the post office.
Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that
Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the
Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential
project of the federal endeavor.
Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the
local facility, be it a frame building at a country
crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of
the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of
packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more
even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.
The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and
honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem
distant and, at times, ominous.
As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer,
Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role
that government could play in the lives and communities of
Americans had better make the defense of the post office a
high priority.
"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down," he
said. "When the human side of government closes its doors,
we're all in trouble."
Randolph spoke the faith of the small-"d" democrat with
those words-and, at least in his time, that of the large-"D"
Democrat.
But, now, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are
entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the
American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we
know it."
There are proposals afoot to close as many as 3,700 post
offices nationwide-most of them in rural communities and
inner cities, where there services (and the employment they
provide) are most needed.
There are proposals to end Saturday delivery, and perhaps to
make even more extensive cutbacks-moves that would drive
more business away from the US Postal Service and toward
private-sector competitors that will not match its standard
of universal service to all Americans.
There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of
thousands of postal workers and gut the service.
Why? Because of bad policies forced upon the USPS, policies
that could be reversed as quickly as they were implemented.
Those bad policies have created what is called a "financial
crisis." This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a
"political" crisis.
The postal service is running the deficits that so concern
conservative politicians and pundits not because it is
inefficient, and not even because it faces new forms of
digital competition. It is running deficits because it was
forced to pre-pay seventy-five years of retiree health
benefits in ten years, and because it overpaid federal
pension funds by more than $80 billion.
The crisis is, as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates
argue, "manufactured."
Across the country Tuesday, tens of thousands of postal
workers, union allies and community advocates rallied to
defend the United States Postal Service and to argue for
responsible Congressional action to renew and strengthen a
precious public asset. Backed by five major postal unions
and worker groups - the American Postal Workers Union, the
National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal
Mailhandlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers'
Association and the National Association of Postal
Supervisors - the rallies took place at close to 500
locations (post offices, congressional offices, state
capitols) nationwide, in one of the broadest displays of
support for public services the nation has seen in many
years.
Jennings Randolph (who passed in 1998) isn't around to cheer
them on. But if he were, he would celebrate the fact that
there are still great masses of Americans who recognize that
"when the human side of government closes its doors, we're
all in trouble."
==========
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.
Submit via email: portside@portside.org
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe
Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate
Journal Square, New Jersey; and Eugene, Oregon, where
hundreds gathered.
North of Detroit, 200 pressured Republican Representative
Candice Miller to sign on to the bill.
Letter Carriers Branch 3126 member John Dick was encouraged
by the rally of 60 he attended in Troy, Michigan.
"There was a lot of new faces I' d never seen before," said
Dick, referring to his co-workers. "It was the first rally
they 'd ever been to. They've been awakened as to what's
going on."
Dick said the events educated the public about the real
reason the Postal Service is in the red: not a surplus of
workers or post offices but a 2006 law that requires it to
put away enough money, over 10 years, to fund 75 years of
retiree health benefits - about $5.5 billion each year.
"It's not an easy thing to wrap your fingers around," he
said, but "more and more people are getting it."
The AFL-CIO is planning a national week of action October
10-16 as part of its "America Wants to Work - Good Jobs Now"
initiative. The week will focus on creating new jobs and
preserving the good jobs we have - including those in the
postal service and at Verizon and Hyatt, where unions are
fighting for good contracts and organizing rights.
Find a local rally here. http://local.we-r-1.org/weareone
==========
'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government'
by John Nichols
TheNation.com Blog
September 27, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163650/save-post-office-movement-defends-human-side-government
When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was
completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill.
The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he
was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than
fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born
only a little more than a century after the Constitution was
adopted.
Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution
and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-
building that focused on the affirmative role of government
and the necessary role of the extension of the federal
government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet
and urban neighborhood: the post office.
Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that
Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the
Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential
project of the federal endeavor.
Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the
local facility, be it a frame building at a country
crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of
the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of
packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more
even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.
The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and
honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem
distant and, at times, ominous.
As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer,
Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role
that government could play in the lives and communities of
Americans had better make the defense of the post office a
high priority.
"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down," he
said. "When the human side of government closes its doors,
we're all in trouble."
Randolph spoke the faith of the small-"d" democrat with
those words-and, at least in his time, that of the large-"D"
Democrat.
But, now, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are
entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the
American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we
know it."
There are proposals afoot to close as many as 3,700 post
offices nationwide-most of them in rural communities and
inner cities, where there services (and the employment they
provide) are most needed.
There are proposals to end Saturday delivery, and perhaps to
make even more extensive cutbacks-moves that would drive
more business away from the US Postal Service and toward
private-sector competitors that will not match its standard
of universal service to all Americans.
There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of
thousands of postal workers and gut the service.
Why? Because of bad policies forced upon the USPS, policies
that could be reversed as quickly as they were implemented.
Those bad policies have created what is called a "financial
crisis." This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a
"political" crisis.
The postal service is running the deficits that so concern
conservative politicians and pundits not because it is
inefficient, and not even because it faces new forms of
digital competition. It is running deficits because it was
forced to pre-pay seventy-five years of retiree health
benefits in ten years, and because it overpaid federal
pension funds by more than $80 billion.
The crisis is, as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates
argue, "manufactured."
Across the country Tuesday, tens of thousands of postal
workers, union allies and community advocates rallied to
defend the United States Postal Service and to argue for
responsible Congressional action to renew and strengthen a
precious public asset. Backed by five major postal unions
and worker groups - the American Postal Workers Union, the
National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal
Mailhandlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers'
Association and the National Association of Postal
Supervisors - the rallies took place at close to 500
locations (post offices, congressional offices, state
capitols) nationwide, in one of the broadest displays of
support for public services the nation has seen in many
years.
Jennings Randolph (who passed in 1998) isn't around to cheer
them on. But if he were, he would celebrate the fact that
there are still great masses of Americans who recognize that
"when the human side of government closes its doors, we're
all in trouble."
==========
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.
Submit via email: portside@portside.org
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe
Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate
Oregon, where
hundreds gathered.
North of Detroit, 200 pressured Republican Representative
Candice Miller to sign on to the bill.
Letter Carriers Branch 3126 member John Dick was encouraged
by the rally of 60 he attended in Troy, Michigan.
"There was a lot of new faces I' d never seen before," said
Dick, referring to his co-workers. "It was the first rally
they 'd ever been to. They've been awakened as to what's
going on."
Dick said the events educated the public about the real
reason the Postal Service is in the red: not a surplus of
workers or post offices but a 2006 law that requires it to
put away enough money, over 10 years, to fund 75 years of
retiree health benefits - about $5.5 billion each year.
"It's not an easy thing to wrap your fingers around," he
said, but "more and more people are getting it."
The AFL-CIO is planning a national week of action October
10-16 as part of its "America Wants to Work - Good Jobs Now"
initiative. The week will focus on creating new jobs and
preserving the good jobs we have - including those in the
postal service and at Verizon and Hyatt, where unions are
fighting for good contracts and organizing rights.
Find a local rally here. http://local.we-r-1.org/weareone
==========
'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government'
by John Nichols
TheNation.com Blog
September 27, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163650/save-post-office-movement-defends-human-side-government
When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was
completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill.
The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he
was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than
fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born
only a little more than a century after the Constitution was
adopted.
Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution
and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-
building that focused on the affirmative role of government
and the necessary role of the extension of the federal
government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet
and urban neighborhood: the post office.
Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that
Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the
Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential
project of the federal endeavor.
Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the
local facility, be it a frame building at a country
crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of
the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of
packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more
even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.
The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and
honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem
distant and, at times, ominous.
As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer,
Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role
that government could play in the lives and communities of
Americans had better make the defense of the post office a
high priority.
"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down," he
said. "When the human side of government closes its doors,
we're all in trouble."
Randolph spoke the faith of the small-"d" democrat with
those words-and, at least in his time, that of the large-"D"
Democrat.
But, now, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are
entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the
American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we
know it."
There are proposals afoot to close as many as 3,700 post
offices nationwide-most of them in rural communities and
inner cities, where there services (and the employment they
provide) are most needed.
There are proposals to end Saturday delivery, and perhaps to
make even more extensive cutbacks-moves that would drive
more business away from the US Postal Service and toward
private-sector competitors that will not match its standard
of universal service to all Americans.
There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of
thousands of postal workers and gut the service.
Why? Because of bad policies forced upon the USPS, policies
that could be reversed as quickly as they were implemented.
Those bad policies have created what is called a "financial
crisis." This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a
"political" crisis.
The postal service is running the deficits that so concern
conservative politicians and pundits not because it is
inefficient, and not even because it faces new forms of
digital competition. It is running deficits because it was
forced to pre-pay seventy-five years of retiree health
benefits in ten years, and because it overpaid federal
pension funds by more than $80 billion.
The crisis is, as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates
argue, "manufactured."
Across the country Tuesday, tens of thousands of postal
workers, union allies and community advocates rallied to
defend the United States Postal Service and to argue for
responsible Congressional action to renew and strengthen a
precious public asset. Backed by five major postal unions
and worker groups - the American Postal Workers Union, the
National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal
Mailhandlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers'
Association and the National Association of Postal
Supervisors - the rallies took place at close to 500
locations (post offices, congressional offices, state
capitols) nationwide, in one of the broadest displays of
support for public services the nation has seen in many
years.
Jennings Randolph (who passed in 1998) isn't around to cheer
them on. But if he were, he would celebrate the fact that
there are still great masses of Americans who recognize that
"when the human side of government closes its doors, we're
all in trouble."
==========
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.
Submit via email: portside@portside.org
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate
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From: Romi Elnagar <bluesapphire48@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:38 AM
Subject: [bangla-vision] Fw: Don't Kill the Post Office
To:
Don't Kill the Post Office
* 492 Rallies Tell Congress: Don't Kill the Post Office
(Evan Rohar in Labor Notes)
* 'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government' (John Nichols in The Nation)
==========
492 Rallies Tell Congress: Don't Kill the Post Office
by Evan Rohar
LaborNotes
September 28, 2011
http://labornotes.org/2011/09/postal-unions-492-rallies-tell-congress-dont-kill-post-office
The nation's four postal unions organized events at 492
locations across the country Tuesday in support of federal
legislation that would relieve the burdensome requirement
that postal employees pre-fund decades worth of retirees'
benefits.
The bill (HB 1351) currently has 216 cosponsors in the
House, but President Obama's latest position would grant the
Postal Service only a two-year reprieve. Obama also
recommended killing Saturday delivery, which postal
unionists say would create a "death spiral" for the service.
The Postal Service is proposing to close 3,500 post offices
and lay off 120,000 workers, breaking its new contract with
the Postal Workers union.
Chanting, "One - Three - Five - One, Congress get the job
done," and "We don't want a bail out, we just want the mail
out," postal workers in southeast Michigan withstood a rainy
afternoon to demand Congressional action.
"True to form, rain or shine, well be here," said Cornell
Fears, a member of Letter Carriers Branch 1 in Detroit.
Some of the largest protests were reported in Buffalo, New
York; Journal Square, New Jersey; and Eugene, Oregon, where
hundreds gathered.
North of Detroit, 200 pressured Republican Representative
Candice Miller to sign on to the bill.
Letter Carriers Branch 3126 member John Dick was encouraged
by the rally of 60 he attended in Troy, Michigan.
"There was a lot of new faces I' d never seen before," said
Dick, referring to his co-workers. "It was the first rally
they 'd ever been to. They've been awakened as to what's
going on."
Dick said the events educated the public about the real
reason the Postal Service is in the red: not a surplus of
workers or post offices but a 2006 law that requires it to
put away enough money, over 10 years, to fund 75 years of
retiree health benefits - about $5.5 billion each year.
"It's not an easy thing to wrap your fingers around," he
said, but "more and more people are getting it."
The AFL-CIO is planning a national week of action October
10-16 as part of its "America Wants to Work - Good Jobs Now"
initiative. The week will focus on creating new jobs and
preserving the good jobs we have - including those in the
postal service and at Verizon and Hyatt, where unions are
fighting for good contracts and organizing rights.
Find a local rally here. http://local.we-r-1.org/weareone
==========
'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government'
by John Nichols
TheNation.com Blog
September 27, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163650/save-post-office-movement-defends-human-side-government
When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was
completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill.
The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he
was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than
fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born
only a little more than a century after the Constitution was
adopted.
Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution
and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-
building that focused on the affirmative role of government
and the necessary role of the extension of the federal
government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet
and urban neighborhood: the post office.
Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that
Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the
Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential
project of the federal endeavor.
Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the
local facility, be it a frame building at a country
crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of
the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of
packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more
even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.
The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and
honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem
distant and, at times, ominous.
As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer,
Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role
that government could play in the lives and communities of
Americans had better make the defense of the post office a
high priority.
"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down," he
said. "When the human side of government closes its doors,
we're all in trouble."
Randolph spoke the faith of the small-"d" democrat with
those words-and, at least in his time, that of the large-"D"
Democrat.
But, now, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are
entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the
American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we
know it."
There are proposals afoot to close as many as 3,700 post
offices nationwide-most of them in rural communities and
inner cities, where there services (and the employment they
provide) are most needed.
There are proposals to end Saturday delivery, and perhaps to
make even more extensive cutbacks-moves that would drive
more business away from the US Postal Service and toward
private-sector competitors that will not match its standard
of universal service to all Americans.
There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of
thousands of postal workers and gut the service.
Why? Because of bad policies forced upon the USPS, policies
that could be reversed as quickly as they were implemented.
Those bad policies have created what is called a "financial
crisis." This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a
"political" crisis.
The postal service is running the deficits that so concern
conservative politicians and pundits not because it is
inefficient, and not even because it faces new forms of
digital competition. It is running deficits because it was
forced to pre-pay seventy-five years of retiree health
benefits in ten years, and because it overpaid federal
pension funds by more than $80 billion.
The crisis is, as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates
argue, "manufactured."
Across the country Tuesday, tens of thousands of postal
workers, union allies and community advocates rallied to
defend the United States Postal Service and to argue for
responsible Congressional action to renew and strengthen a
precious public asset. Backed by five major postal unions
and worker groups - the American Postal Workers Union, the
National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal
Mailhandlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers'
Association and the National Association of Postal
Supervisors - the rallies took place at close to 500
locations (post offices, congressional offices, state
capitols) nationwide, in one of the broadest displays of
support for public services the nation has seen in many
years.
Jennings Randolph (who passed in 1998) isn't around to cheer
them on. But if he were, he would celebrate the fact that
there are still great masses of Americans who recognize that
"when the human side of government closes its doors, we're
all in trouble."
==========
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.
Submit via email: portside@portside.org
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe
Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate
Buffalo, New
York; Journal Square, New Jersey; and Eugene, Oregon, where
hundreds gathered.
North of Detroit, 200 pressured Republican Representative
Candice Miller to sign on to the bill.
Letter Carriers Branch 3126 member John Dick was encouraged
by the rally of 60 he attended in Troy, Michigan.
"There was a lot of new faces I' d never seen before," said
Dick, referring to his co-workers. "It was the first rally
they 'd ever been to. They've been awakened as to what's
going on."
Dick said the events educated the public about the real
reason the Postal Service is in the red: not a surplus of
workers or post offices but a 2006 law that requires it to
put away enough money, over 10 years, to fund 75 years of
retiree health benefits - about $5.5 billion each year.
"It's not an easy thing to wrap your fingers around," he
said, but "more and more people are getting it."
The AFL-CIO is planning a national week of action October
10-16 as part of its "America Wants to Work - Good Jobs Now"
initiative. The week will focus on creating new jobs and
preserving the good jobs we have - including those in the
postal service and at Verizon and Hyatt, where unions are
fighting for good contracts and organizing rights.
Find a local rally here. http://local.we-r-1.org/weareone
==========
'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government'
by John Nichols
TheNation.com Blog
September 27, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163650/save-post-office-movement-defends-human-side-government
When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was
completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill.
The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he
was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than
fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born
only a little more than a century after the Constitution was
adopted.
Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution
and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-
building that focused on the affirmative role of government
and the necessary role of the extension of the federal
government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet
and urban neighborhood: the post office.
Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that
Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the
Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential
project of the federal endeavor.
Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the
local facility, be it a frame building at a country
crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of
the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of
packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more
even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.
The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and
honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem
distant and, at times, ominous.
As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer,
Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role
that government could play in the lives and communities of
Americans had better make the defense of the post office a
high priority.
"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down," he
said. "When the human side of government closes its doors,
we're all in trouble."
Randolph spoke the faith of the small-"d" democrat with
those words-and, at least in his time, that of the large-"D"
Democrat.
But, now, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are
entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the
American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we
know it."
There are proposals afoot to close as many as 3,700 post
offices nationwide-most of them in rural communities and
inner cities, where there services (and the employment they
provide) are most needed.
There are proposals to end Saturday delivery, and perhaps to
make even more extensive cutbacks-moves that would drive
more business away from the US Postal Service and toward
private-sector competitors that will not match its standard
of universal service to all Americans.
There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of
thousands of postal workers and gut the service.
Why? Because of bad policies forced upon the USPS, policies
that could be reversed as quickly as they were implemented.
Those bad policies have created what is called a "financial
crisis." This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a
"political" crisis.
The postal service is running the deficits that so concern
conservative politicians and pundits not because it is
inefficient, and not even because it faces new forms of
digital competition. It is running deficits because it was
forced to pre-pay seventy-five years of retiree health
benefits in ten years, and because it overpaid federal
pension funds by more than $80 billion.
The crisis is, as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates
argue, "manufactured."
Across the country Tuesday, tens of thousands of postal
workers, union allies and community advocates rallied to
defend the United States Postal Service and to argue for
responsible Congressional action to renew and strengthen a
precious public asset. Backed by five major postal unions
and worker groups - the American Postal Workers Union, the
National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal
Mailhandlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers'
Association and the National Association of Postal
Supervisors - the rallies took place at close to 500
locations (post offices, congressional offices, state
capitols) nationwide, in one of the broadest displays of
support for public services the nation has seen in many
years.
Jennings Randolph (who passed in 1998) isn't around to cheer
them on. But if he were, he would celebrate the fact that
there are still great masses of Americans who recognize that
"when the human side of government closes its doors, we're
all in trouble."
==========
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.
Submit via email: portside@portside.org
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe
Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate
Journal Square, New Jersey; and Eugene, Oregon, where
hundreds gathered.
North of Detroit, 200 pressured Republican Representative
Candice Miller to sign on to the bill.
Letter Carriers Branch 3126 member John Dick was encouraged
by the rally of 60 he attended in Troy, Michigan.
"There was a lot of new faces I' d never seen before," said
Dick, referring to his co-workers. "It was the first rally
they 'd ever been to. They've been awakened as to what's
going on."
Dick said the events educated the public about the real
reason the Postal Service is in the red: not a surplus of
workers or post offices but a 2006 law that requires it to
put away enough money, over 10 years, to fund 75 years of
retiree health benefits - about $5.5 billion each year.
"It's not an easy thing to wrap your fingers around," he
said, but "more and more people are getting it."
The AFL-CIO is planning a national week of action October
10-16 as part of its "America Wants to Work - Good Jobs Now"
initiative. The week will focus on creating new jobs and
preserving the good jobs we have - including those in the
postal service and at Verizon and Hyatt, where unions are
fighting for good contracts and organizing rights.
Find a local rally here. http://local.we-r-1.org/weareone
==========
'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government'
by John Nichols
TheNation.com Blog
September 27, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163650/save-post-office-movement-defends-human-side-government
When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was
completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill.
The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he
was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than
fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born
only a little more than a century after the Constitution was
adopted.
Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution
and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-
building that focused on the affirmative role of government
and the necessary role of the extension of the federal
government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet
and urban neighborhood: the post office.
Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that
Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the
Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential
project of the federal endeavor.
Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the
local facility, be it a frame building at a country
crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of
the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of
packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more
even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.
The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and
honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem
distant and, at times, ominous.
As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer,
Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role
that government could play in the lives and communities of
Americans had better make the defense of the post office a
high priority.
"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down," he
said. "When the human side of government closes its doors,
we're all in trouble."
Randolph spoke the faith of the small-"d" democrat with
those words-and, at least in his time, that of the large-"D"
Democrat.
But, now, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are
entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the
American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we
know it."
There are proposals afoot to close as many as 3,700 post
offices nationwide-most of them in rural communities and
inner cities, where there services (and the employment they
provide) are most needed.
There are proposals to end Saturday delivery, and perhaps to
make even more extensive cutbacks-moves that would drive
more business away from the US Postal Service and toward
private-sector competitors that will not match its standard
of universal service to all Americans.
There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of
thousands of postal workers and gut the service.
Why? Because of bad policies forced upon the USPS, policies
that could be reversed as quickly as they were implemented.
Those bad policies have created what is called a "financial
crisis." This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a
"political" crisis.
The postal service is running the deficits that so concern
conservative politicians and pundits not because it is
inefficient, and not even because it faces new forms of
digital competition. It is running deficits because it was
forced to pre-pay seventy-five years of retiree health
benefits in ten years, and because it overpaid federal
pension funds by more than $80 billion.
The crisis is, as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates
argue, "manufactured."
Across the country Tuesday, tens of thousands of postal
workers, union allies and community advocates rallied to
defend the United States Postal Service and to argue for
responsible Congressional action to renew and strengthen a
precious public asset. Backed by five major postal unions
and worker groups - the American Postal Workers Union, the
National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal
Mailhandlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers'
Association and the National Association of Postal
Supervisors - the rallies took place at close to 500
locations (post offices, congressional offices, state
capitols) nationwide, in one of the broadest displays of
support for public services the nation has seen in many
years.
Jennings Randolph (who passed in 1998) isn't around to cheer
them on. But if he were, he would celebrate the fact that
there are still great masses of Americans who recognize that
"when the human side of government closes its doors, we're
all in trouble."
==========
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.
Submit via email: portside@portside.org
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe
Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate
Oregon, where
hundreds gathered.
North of Detroit, 200 pressured Republican Representative
Candice Miller to sign on to the bill.
Letter Carriers Branch 3126 member John Dick was encouraged
by the rally of 60 he attended in Troy, Michigan.
"There was a lot of new faces I' d never seen before," said
Dick, referring to his co-workers. "It was the first rally
they 'd ever been to. They've been awakened as to what's
going on."
Dick said the events educated the public about the real
reason the Postal Service is in the red: not a surplus of
workers or post offices but a 2006 law that requires it to
put away enough money, over 10 years, to fund 75 years of
retiree health benefits - about $5.5 billion each year.
"It's not an easy thing to wrap your fingers around," he
said, but "more and more people are getting it."
The AFL-CIO is planning a national week of action October
10-16 as part of its "America Wants to Work - Good Jobs Now"
initiative. The week will focus on creating new jobs and
preserving the good jobs we have - including those in the
postal service and at Verizon and Hyatt, where unions are
fighting for good contracts and organizing rights.
Find a local rally here. http://local.we-r-1.org/weareone
==========
'Save the Post Office' Movement Defends 'the Human Side of
Government'
by John Nichols
TheNation.com Blog
September 27, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163650/save-post-office-movement-defends-human-side-government
When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was
completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill.
The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he
was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than
fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born
only a little more than a century after the Constitution was
adopted.
Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution
and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-
building that focused on the affirmative role of government
and the necessary role of the extension of the federal
government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet
and urban neighborhood: the post office.
Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that
Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the
Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential
project of the federal endeavor.
Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the
local facility, be it a frame building at a country
crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of
the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of
packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more
even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.
The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and
honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem
distant and, at times, ominous.
As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer,
Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role
that government could play in the lives and communities of
Americans had better make the defense of the post office a
high priority.
"When the post office is closed, the flag comes down," he
said. "When the human side of government closes its doors,
we're all in trouble."
Randolph spoke the faith of the small-"d" democrat with
those words-and, at least in his time, that of the large-"D"
Democrat.
But, now, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are
entertaining proposals that would, in the words of the
American Postal Workers Union, "end the postal service as we
know it."
There are proposals afoot to close as many as 3,700 post
offices nationwide-most of them in rural communities and
inner cities, where there services (and the employment they
provide) are most needed.
There are proposals to end Saturday delivery, and perhaps to
make even more extensive cutbacks-moves that would drive
more business away from the US Postal Service and toward
private-sector competitors that will not match its standard
of universal service to all Americans.
There are proposals to break union contracts, layoff tens of
thousands of postal workers and gut the service.
Why? Because of bad policies forced upon the USPS, policies
that could be reversed as quickly as they were implemented.
Those bad policies have created what is called a "financial
crisis." This is not a "financial" crisis; it is a
"political" crisis.
The postal service is running the deficits that so concern
conservative politicians and pundits not because it is
inefficient, and not even because it faces new forms of
digital competition. It is running deficits because it was
forced to pre-pay seventy-five years of retiree health
benefits in ten years, and because it overpaid federal
pension funds by more than $80 billion.
The crisis is, as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates
argue, "manufactured."
Across the country Tuesday, tens of thousands of postal
workers, union allies and community advocates rallied to
defend the United States Postal Service and to argue for
responsible Congressional action to renew and strengthen a
precious public asset. Backed by five major postal unions
and worker groups - the American Postal Workers Union, the
National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Postal
Mailhandlers Union, the National Rural Letter Carriers'
Association and the National Association of Postal
Supervisors - the rallies took place at close to 500
locations (post offices, congressional offices, state
capitols) nationwide, in one of the broadest displays of
support for public services the nation has seen in many
years.
Jennings Randolph (who passed in 1998) isn't around to cheer
them on. But if he were, he would celebrate the fact that
there are still great masses of Americans who recognize that
"when the human side of government closes its doors, we're
all in trouble."
==========
___________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.
Submit via email: portside@portside.org
Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3
Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq
Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive
Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate
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