To cap off his extremist Paleolithic platform and views GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump has chosen as his running mate a man who wants to gut the federal workforce.
One can only shudder at what Indiana Governor Mike Pence may want to do to postal jobs if the pair was ever elected. First off they want to cut salaries and make it easier to fire most federal employees, according to Government Executive http://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/07/gop-platform-cut-feds-pay-and-benefits-while-making-it-easier-fire-them/130032/?oref=top-story.
While the federal government has no direct authority over USPS day-to-day management personnel reductions in the rest of the government could have a spillover effect on the postal service—especially if both houses of Congress remain in Republican hands.
It’s well-known Pence is closely allied with the ultra-conservative libertarian Koch Brothers who generally oppose and government of any kind, especially one that stands in the way of their business operations, which include a lot of fossil fuel concerns, according to the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/us/politics/mike-pence-kochs-fundraising.html?_r=0.
Pence also peddled false conspiracy theories linking ex-Iraq leader Saddam Hussein to the 2001 anthrax attacks at postal facilities and Senatorial offices in Washington DC and elsewhere in which at least five people died, says Wikipedia.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks.
Those biological warfare tactics began about a week after the Sept. 11 terrorism at New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA.
Was linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 a responsible position for a then-Congressional Representative? Especially one now potentially a heartbeat away from the President who could end up as the effective President when Trump gets bored with the day-to-day duties of the office as some observers now point out.
As it turned out a former federal employee was responsible for the anthrax attacks. That investigation lasted nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, the House Government Oversight Committee has passed two separate bipartisan postal reform bills just before Congress was set to go on a break.
According to Federal Soup, the bills seek to rejigger the way postal pensions are calculated and administered and call for reducing the size of the USPS Board of Governors https://federalsoup.com/articles/2016/07/13/house-committee-passes-postal-reform-bills.aspx?s=FD_140716.
There may be some merit to adjusting postal pensions but any bill that does not abolish the postal service’s annual $5.8 billion obligation to cover future retiree healthcare costs is totally meaningless.
And reducing the size of the USPS governing panel doesn’t count for much when the Senate has sat on naming new members for about a year and a half.
But at least some members of Congress are trying to do something besides spouting caustic, hurtful and ultimately unworkable political blather.
Larry Riggs' Postal Digger 