The U.S. Postal Service, Saturday Delivery And Are Their Days Numbered?

Posted by Modern Day Machiavelli on February 7, 2013
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I’m sure by now everyone has heard the news the United States Postal Service has made the big decision to cease saturday delivery. It seems they have been threatening or considering the move for some time and there was even question as to whether the USPS had the authority to make the decision or was that a decision only Congress could make. I hear that some Congressmen disagree with the Postal Service about the authority but nonetheless, they have made the decision. The only question, is stopping Saturday delivery enough to preserve an institution such as the postal service? I’m wondering if stopping Saturday delivery will even begin to correct the problems associated with the Postal Service. It leaves me wondering, can the United States Postal Service be fixed or has it’s time come and gone.

The first time I really remember noticing the Postal Service was in the early to mid 90s. I noticed that the Postal Service was sponsoring the Olympics and Lance Armstrong’s cycling team. I thought to myself, why in the world does a government entity have to employ a marketing strategy that includes multi-million dollars sports sponsorships and endorsements. I found this particularly odd. The Lance Armstrong deal was worth $10 million or so a year. Also the USPS signed on as a major sponsor for the 1992 Olympics at the tune of around $90 million dollars. After five years and $140 million of taxpayer money to gain sponsorships and endorsements usually reserved for Fortune 500 companies you would think it made a positive difference. Not exactly, the revenue of the USPS dropped approximately $13 million by 1996. They say “hind-sight” is 20/20 but I think this was one of the most ridiculous and ill-managed decisions in the history of the United States government. I would have thought there would have been some public outcry about the need (or lack there of) of the endorsements and sponsorships. It begs the question, “why would a government agency need a campaign that marketed a service in which the government had a monopoly”? You see the USPS has a monopoly on most, if not all mail. Unless someone can prove me wrong the USPS has a statutory monopoly on first class mail and other small enveloped mail. Packages are another issue. USPS wants you to believe that their package shipping is cheaper and offer these gimmick “if it fits, it ships” deals where anything can ship for a flat rate if it will “fit” in one of their predetermined size boxes. What I have found is that the boxes seem intentionally odd sized and very few things I have tried to ship will fit in them. Also they seem cheaper than their competitors but by the time you add the “bells and whistles” such as insurance and tracking that come standard with UPS, the cost is usually more. Even if the cost was a wash, anyone who has had any interaction with the Postal Service knows that their customer service is an ABSOLUTE nightmare. So if the cost of shipping is anywhere near the same, most people are going to avoid the USPS altogether.

Also as they cease Saturday delivery and continuously raise the price of a stamp, the USPS states that it cost the USPS around $1.50 per mail item. What I would like to know is how much of that $1.50 is the result of absurd union influence on employee pay and benefits? I know, I have seen a federal employee benefits chart and postal employees benefit packages are separated from other employees and are somewhat better. For example comparable health insurance for postal employees is approximately 15% cheaper than any other federal worker. It puzzles me as to why the USPS workers are entitled to be required to pay a smaller portion of their premium than other federal employees. This is just an example of government unions and how they are just not compatible with federal service. If someone has a different opinion or believe I wrong, please let me know.

For years I lived in a very rural area that had a local Post Office in the community. The office only had one full-time employee and she was the postmaster. She had been employed by the USPS for years and was paid well. The crazy thing is the postmaster lived about 30 miles from the post office. The lobby hours extended past the service counter hours so they had to pay someone to lock the lobby every night. So instead of hiring a local person who was not a postmaster, and much cheaper for the USPS , they over paid a postmaster to travel 60 miles a day plus a local person to do nothing but lock up. The bad part about it was the fact that when the local person was not available the postmaster would lock the lobby when the service counter closed, without notice, denying mail to a majority of the community. Later they announced that only the lobby would be open on Saturday and that the service window would be closed. So afterwards every Saturday the postmaster would drive the 30 miles (one way), sort and post the mail, and then sit there behind the service counter until the lobby closed and then locked the doors and left. You could walk into the office, check your mail, and wave to the postmaster on the other side of the closed glass window. If you received a package or something registered you could show her the notice through the window, but she couldn’t help you because she was “closed”. It was one of the most ridiculously stupid things I have ever seen. Why would you cut service without cutting cost. Someone please explain that one.

Remember earlier when I was talking about customer service. Have you ever heard of those UPS Brown Stores? For those of you that haven’t they are “store faces” owned by UPS that offer shipping / package solutions as well as a place to receive packages to be held. These locations also have PO boxes they rent for a premium price. As a matter of fact the last time I checked the monthly rent on a UPS/Brown store PO box was almost as much as the yearly rent on PO box at the local Post Office. Yet, the last time I checked, almost all of the boxes were currently being rented. What?? Why in the hell would someone pay that much per month when you could get one at the post office for a fraction of the cost, or for that matter delivered to your home for free? You see the way these boxes work, the postal service delivers the mail to the UPS store who in return place it in the customer’s box. The only reason I could understand why ANYONE would do this is level of service and convenience. Which is almost non-existent at your local post office. Again, please someone tell me I’m wrong.

Now some of you are probably saying that all I am doing is complaining without offering any solutions to the problem. First of all I’m not sure the postal service can be corrected and if so it will take compromises by both citizens and postal employees. It would take monumental changes to create any real difference. One thing I have always wondered is why do you get mail delivered to your house for free (regardless where you live) yet you pay to go where they sort the mail anyway. Does that make any sense whatsoever? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Any other service would be the opposite, personal service at your home would involve an extra fee. So maybe we should look at charging a yearly fee for home delivery and if you don’t won’t to pay then go pick up your mail yourself. Depending on how far you live from an incorporated area should determine your yearly fee. I currently have my mail delivered to my house, not because I don’t won’t to pay for a box, but because any way to avoid the circus they call a post office is what I want. If the box was free and delivery was with a fee trust me I would be paying. Another way would be to alter the way “junk mail” is handled. First of all junk mail should have its own class such as first class, media mail, and others, except it should cost a premium. That would eliminate the needless BS bulk the Postal Service is responsible for and the ones thinking it was important enough would pay more. Maybe that would generate more revenue, I’m not sure. It would be worth consideration. These are just several suggestions that could help get the USPS on the right path

Now as I’ve stated earlier I’m not sure anything could repair the disarray that the postal service has become. Sometimes I wonder if one day our children will talk about the United States Postal Service like the Pony Express. Don’t get me wrong, I like the fact that my mail is delivered to my door six days a week (soon to be five) for absolutely free. I very seldom use the mail myself so a book of stamps last me longer than it takes to raise the price of a stamp. I’m just afraid that the time may have come and gone for the United States Postal Service.

What say you.

I’m the MODERN DAY MACHIAVELLI!

The Great Traffic Scam Our Local Government at Work

Posted by Modern Day Machiavelli on February 6, 2013
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Everyone seems to have reservations about the government these days. Between the threat of banning firearms and being overtaxed there is now, more than ever, reason to be untrusting of the government. The largest and most wide-reaching conspiracy doesn’t involve Washington, it’s not a product of the CIA, its much more local than you would ever think. They involve the counties and municipalities in which we live and socialize.

Yes, traffic enforcement and ticket writing are one of the biggest scams, rackets, or whatever you want to call it in America today. Forget all of the “legitimate” reasons you hear for traffic enforcement because most of it is BS. The real reason for writing tickets and the issuance of traffic citations is much more deceptive and self preserving than you could imagine. As a career law enforcement officer on various different levels I learned this first hand.

One thing that I feel the need to clarify before we go any further is the difference between a traffic officer and a patrol officer. In very small departments there may be little, if any difference between the two, but in larger departments there is a significant one. Both are what we refer to in the profession as uniformed officers, but the difference relies in the duties in which each has. Patrol officers for instance answer “calls for service”. They usually patrol a specific assigned area and respond to 911 calls as well as other incidents within the assigned beat. Traffic officers on the other hand do just that. They enforce traffic laws, parking laws, and respond to accidents. Just something I wanted to make people aware.

First of all the only presumption in traffic enforcement is not the presumption that you are innocent but the presumption that you will not appear in court. Most traffic officers issue more citations than they could possibly testify to in court. Therefore the only way they could possibly do this is the presumption that the vast majority of people issued a citation will not take the time or hassle to challenge them but simply take the easy route and just pay the fine. Some studies suggest that less than 5% of drivers issued citations challenge them. That gives traffic enforcement a 95% chance that they will never be questioned about this ticket. When some officers issue more than 100 tickets a month, that officer doesn’t have the time on duty, nor mental capacity to testify to that many tickets. When you do challenge a ticket the real “racket” begins.

As I’ve clearly stated above, most officers presume, hope, or “bank” on the fact that you will not challenge a traffic citation and that you’ll not inconvenience yourself in traffic court. If you are one of the 5% that do, be ready for an experience that is very conducive for the officer and as much a hassle as can possibly be for the defendant. In most jurisdictions you are given a court date and this date is not actually a court date but more or less a deadline in which to pay the fine. When you pay the fine, you are pleading guilty prior to the court date. If you don’t want to pay the fine, a phone number and point of contact is usually provided on the citation. Once you inform the court you want to challenge the citation you are assigned a court date. You will be required to be in the courtroom at that date and sit through the entire day’s court cases until your case is called. Once your name is called you and the issuing officer will be asked to testify before the judge. This is where it gets tricky. First of all, as I stated earlier most officers presume you won’t appear, some even have that presumption after you plead not guilty, so there is a good chance the officer will not be there for the first scheduled court date. I’ve seen some agencies that discipline officers who do not show for court, but the agencies who encourage, or even condone, officers that issue unrealistically numbers know they cannot be at every court appearance. This is where the judge will lose credibility in my opinion. Some judges, not all but most, will ask the clerk to postpone the trial until the officer is available and give you another court date. Remember, an officer writing 100 tickets or more a month doesn’t do so by testifying in court. But what is really unethical on the court’s part is the biased way in which they give the officer a way out for not appearing in court. If a lawyer were to represent someone in the same court, the case would more than likely get dismissed if the officer doesn’t appear and worse if the defendant doesn’t show, at the very least, the court would find you guilty and access the fine PLUS court cost. I have seen some jurisdictions that issue bench warrants for failure to appear in traffic court. Yet the officer gets the unfair benefit of “hey this person is serious about challenging the ticket”, and usually the officer will appear the second date. In extreme cases I have seen officers who will not appear regardless and they just play the percentages, 95% is definitely in the officers’ favor.

Now there are numerous credible stories on the web involving law enforcement agencies, including municipalities, counties, and state agencies instituting quota systems among their traffic enforcement officers but that is not the real travesty. The real travesty involves the direct correlation between revenue and citations. There have been many credible studies that show a direct correlation between the two. It seems when local governments run low on funds, citations increase to generate revenue for the local government. There have been many documented cases where municipalities have relied on citation revenue for approximately 50% of their budget. Randolph, Missouri, a small town not too far from Kansas City, relied on citation revenue for approximately 3/4 of their municipal budget. Even though a law had been passed 15 years prior by the Missouri legislature stating that only 35% of a municipal budget could be generated through citation fines, the small town was targeting out-of-town traffic to fund their city. City and County judges rubber stamp these practices, and condone these unethical policies, with unrealistically high conviction rates.

To make matters even worse, these unethical practices by everyone from the police to government administrators lead to much more serious violations of citizens rights. The traffic stops and citations are used by officers to conduct unlawful searches of persons and vehicles on a routine basis. They use tactics such as intimidation and promises not to issue citations if a search is allowed. Sometimes they threaten to detain motorist for hours until proper warrants are obtained if they refuse or fail to consent to an otherwise unlawful search. What about the DUI/DWI? Police use false premiss to set up DUI checkpoints and arrest motorist with absolutely no probable cause whatsoever. Can you imagine the revenue that DUI’s generate? Now I’m in no way condoning driving while intoxicated, but even worse than that is gross violation of civil rights. In my first few years as a patrol officer, our department had one DUI officer assigned to each precinct. The one assigned to my precinct set the state record for DUIs in a year with around 600. He was recognized and given an award by the department of public safety, but what no one talked about was the fact that how many of those DUIs were dismissed or had a not guilty verdict. But that didn’t matter because it didn’t fit the template.

Now I know a large percentage of the readers will think I crazy, some will think I’m insensitive, and members of MADD think I have my opinions because no one close to me has ever been hurt by a drunk driver. None of that is the case. I think it is imperative that this gross injustice be known to the public. What if everyone who received a citation this year pleaded not guilty? I know it would never happen but if it did it would throw the municipal and county court system into disarray. There should be a distinct standard when issuing a citation. The standard should be that for every citation issued, that officer should be prepared and physically able to testify in court. Today that is just not the case. If you remember anything from this, remember when you are issued a citation it’s not the presumption of innocence but the presumption that you won’t challenge the ticket.

Have a different opinion, think I’m crazy, or want to challenge me, I’ll welcome any and all to debate this anytime.

Just “dos centavos” from The Modern Day Machiavelli.

Does Everyone Deserve An Education???

Posted by Modern Day Machiavelli on February 4, 2013
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I have so many issues with our college education system I’m not sure where to begin. I’m not sure there is an institution that is in more disarray, or is in worse shape than the college and university system in the United States. The cost of education, the enrollment numbers, and even the common everyday perceptions of what the education system is what it is for is skewed beyond belief. The other day I was having lunch with a friend of mine, a very liberal guy, and the subject of education began. My friend stated that everyone deserved an education. I asked didn’t he mean to say that everyone deserves an opportunity to get an education and reiterated no, that every American deserves an education and a country that is as great as ours should ensure that everyone gets an education.

First of all we, as a society, have created this notion that everyone in this country deserves an education. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hate to be the harsh and realist that I am but not everyone is college material. Everyone who graduates from highschool should not be expected to go to college, much less graduate. I think we do our young adults a disservice by implying that they are required to go to college, be successful, and graduate. For example, I worked with a guy several years ago who had a college degree and worked in an environment that required a college degree. He struggled in his position and admitted the position he held was not for him and the he would much rather be operating heavy equipment or something similar. He stated that family pressure influenced his decision to attend college and now he felt that if he worked a job that didn’t require a college degree he would have wasted the years he spent and college and that it would have been a total waste. I’m not going to say my coworker was unintelligent, but he was a very simple-minded “country boy” who would be much happier driving a bulldozer or some similar heavy equipment. Ironically our employer had heavy equipment operators employed and he applied for a transfer several times, but was turned down because of his resume. What’s even more ironic was the fact that the heavy equipment operators were paid a better salary than the position my friend had. In other words, my friend made effort to get a degree (that neither wanted nor needed) that did not benefit him at all. This brings me to my next point.

I know some of you are thinking that since he graduated and obtained the degree he obviously was deserving of the degree and should be able to secure a career coinciding with the degree, but I disagree. Because we lived in a society that pushes everyone deserves a college education, the pressure does not rest on the students alone. Colleges and universities are under pressure to turn out these kids as fast as they can. Our college and university system has become less of an institution and more of a business, and when it becomes a business it’s about enrollment numbers. It’s more about quantity than quality. What makes this such a conundrum is that it floods the market and work force with college graduates applying for jobs in which they “perceive” a college graduate should have. This causes a huge problem for employers who can’t tell the difference between college graduates and people with a college degree who are pushed through for society’s sake. That’s why we have job websites and job openings flooded with applicants, who probably had no business applying for the job to begin with. This where it causes problems for college graduates who deservedly have a college degree, they get lost in application process. How can businesses adequately go through a hiring process when so many people are applying for every single job? I applied for a position one time recently that I believed I was highly qualified but I didn’t get the job. I was so bewildered by not even getting an interview that I called the person in charge of hiring and just asked him why. His honest answer was that it was just impossible to go through everyone that applied for the job, so they developed a system to organize the applicants and sometimes good applicants were excluded. He stated that the system was not perfect, but it was the best they could do. When we created the culture that everyone deserves a college education, we created a culture and expectation that everyone deserves this grandiose job with all of the bells and whistles. Nothing could be further from the truth, for more on this watch the video . Because of this mindset, society has made it seem less than successful to have a skilled labor job or learn a trade or a vocation that doesn’t require a degree. The ironic part of all of this is the lack of people learning trades, vocations, and skills, has driven up the salaries of good skilled workers and tradesmen. In my close circle, I have friends with bachelor degrees, several of us even have graduate degrees, but the biggest earners in my group of friends are one with trades and vocations. I have one friend who has nothing more than a high school education, but is a very successful small business owner as an electrical contractor. But the one who tops them all, the most successful one in my circle only completed the ninth grade. This guy dropped out of school when he was 15, he has told me numerous times that school just wasn’t for him. When he dropped out of school he learned a trade and then eventually purchased the business in which he is employed. This friend of mine easily makes over six figures. I know, before you say it, these examples are purely anecdotal. Maybe so but look at the trends and wages of these types of workers in certain areas and tell me there’s not a correlation.

Another point that really puzzles me is the cost of a college education. Why should all college degrees cost the same? If you go into a restaurant is a 20 oz rib eye steak the same price as chopped steak? of course not, but why is it when you enroll in college is the cost of a degree in physical education the same as a degree in chemical engineering? How do we as a society justify going thousand’s of dollars in debt for a degree where the starting salary isn’t much above the poverty line or even that much different from a skilled or vocational worker who paid far less for his knowledge and skill? When you quantify it in that way it really makes you think, doesn’t it? How many people go to college as soon as they graduate from high school for no other reason than that is what their family, peers, and society tell them they should do, only to get a degree that gives them no benefit or edge whatsoever in the workforce? Another aspect is you can look around your office, circle of friends, or whatever and just see exactly how many people with degrees actually do what they studied in college, or many people’s degrees are directly related to their job. Unless you work in an environment with people who have professional degrees such as engineers, chances are not very many.

Now I’m not against college, I love going to college and have taken classes in some form or another since the day I graduated from high school. What I don’t like is how our society has cultivated a mindset that tells our younger generations that they aren’t successful unless they have a formal college education. College is a government endorsed “racket” that is teaching our young adults very little while putting them in serious debt during a very important time in their life. When responsible young adults should planning a family and buying a house, too many have the stigma of outrageous student loans hovering over their heads. Listen up, every damn kid in the United States doesn’t DESERVE a college education. Every child born in this country does deserve the same chances in life, and to roll the dice and let them land where they land. Some make decisions that put them on the track to be doctors and other make decisions that lead to other less desirable professions, but it’s life. There is nothing wrong with the electrician working, making an honest wage at a respectable profession. We’re not all Wall Street investors remember that. If I had it all to do over again, knowing what I do now, I might have just learned a trade or a vocation.