Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Campaign to Dismantle the Post Office
Guest Post by Steve Hutkins a literature professor who teaches “place studies” at the Gallatin School of New York University.
This is Part 1 in a series of 3 articles as written by Steve Hutkins in 2012. These articles originally appeared on the “Save The Post Office Blog”. Steve lives in a small town in New York’s Hudson Valley. He has no affiliation with the U.S. Postal Service—he doesn’t work for it, nor does anyone in his family. Like millions of Americans, he just likes his local post office, and he doesn’t want to see post offices being closed.
The leaders of the Postal Service have made no secret of their plans for reforming the postal system. They have issued white papers, given speeches, presented “optimization” programs, and appeared before Congressional committees. The plans are clear: eliminate the layoff protections in union contracts; cut the career workforce by nearly half while tripling the number of non-career workers; reduce service standards for first-class mail; do away with Saturday delivery; give management control of workers’ benefit plans; consolidate over 250 processing plants; and close 15,000 post offices.
What we don’t see very often are the players making this all happen. We assume the Postmaster General is making the decisions, but he is merely the front man. Behind him are the USPS Board of Governors, the mail industry stakeholders, and the corporate class as a whole. These businessmen (and women) prefer to keep a low profile, so we rarely hear from them in public. They leave it their surrogates — journalists and academics, politicians and pundits — to speak for them. But it’s the businessmen who fund the think tanks, endow universities, make campaign contributions, pay lobbyists, and run the news media. Yet for the most part, they are not to be seen.
In her excellent book Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal, historian Kim Phillips-Fein paints a very revealing picture of how the corporate class operates. Her theme is the way conservative businessmen worked behind the scenes to undo the New Deal. Believing all would be right if government stayed out of the economy and left everything, in Adam’s Smith famous expression, to the “invisible hand” of the market, these businessmen have spent decades working to weaken unions, eliminate social welfare programs, minimize government regulation of their companies, and diminish public services.
While the U.S. Postal Service is obviously not a product of the New Deal, that same conservative agenda is behind the attack on the Postal Service we’re witnessing today. Cutting the workforce, closing post offices and plants, and moving toward privatization through outsourcing and divestiture of assets — these are all part of an effort to shape the postal system in ways that serve the interests of an elite business class rather than the good of the country as a whole. The free-market ideology and greed for profits that drove efforts to undo the New Deal are basically what’s driving the “postal reform” movement today.
Power in numbers: The stakeholder associations
As Phillips-Fein explains, one of the most common methods for the businessmen to advocate for their agenda was to bond together. Recognizing the power in numbers, they formed associations like the American Liberty League (organized by the du Ponts) and the Foundation for Economic Education (founded with help from B. F. Goodrich), as well as giving new energy to existing organizations, like the National Association of Manufacturers and other industry trade groups.
In the same way, the mail industry stakeholders — the big direct marketing firms, the pre-sort companies, the periodical publishers, and so on — have formed their own organizations to advocate for their interests.
One of the most important of these groups is one operated by the Postal Service itself. The Postmaster General’s Mailers’ Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC) consists of mailer associations and other organizations related to the mailing industry. Its goal is “to assist the USPS in determining the best course of action to improve service and postal operating efficiency.” The MTAC has a page on the USPS website (it’s part of the National Customer Support Center), and its meeting minutes are published there, albeit in a rather cursory form. But much about the MTAC is cloaked in secrecy.
The MTAC charter says, “A current list of member associations/organizations and corresponding representatives will be published at least quarterly.” Apparently there are 58 member organizations, but good luck trying to find a list of the MTAC members on the Internet. A few years ago, when the APWU asked to join the MTAC, it was denied membership and it took a lawsuit and a year and a half before the MTAC finally relented. A few months ago, word came out that attendance at its meetings would be restricted.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is, according to its website, “the leading global trade association of businesses and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques.” It’s an international organization representing dozens of industries in almost 50 countries, including nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies. If you want to know who’s in the DMA you will find that the membership directory is off limits — you have to be a member to see the member list.
The National Association of Presort Mailers (NAPM) is, according to its website, “a trade association composed of firms concerned with the present and future of postal work sharing.” Its primary purpose is to represent the interest of presort mailers and to develop work share programs with USPS “to produce cost saving and service benefits to presort mailers and the USPS.” As with the DMA, if you’d like to see the membership list, you’ll need to become a member.
There are many other industry associations that are influencing the policies of the Postal Service, such as the National Alliance of Standard Mailers (NASM); DFW Mailers Association; Alliance of Non-profit mailers; Association of Priority Mail Users (APMU); Mail Systems Management Association (MSMA); Mail Order Association of America (MOAA); Parcel Shippers Association (PSA); National Newspaper Association (NNA); and Magazine Publishers of America (MPA).
The corporate stakeholders represented by these organizations are not monolithic in their views, and there’s a considerable degree of diversity and even conflict. The periodicals industry, for example, is usually more concerned about the timely delivery of their publications than the direct marketers are. And one wouldn’t want to lump the junk mail business together with newspapers and news magazines — delivering the news is one of the most important functions of the mail system.
But most big mailers are primarily interested in keeping postal rates as low as possible. They have generally supported the cost-cutting measures proposed by the Postal Service because they believe the cuts will keep rates down and their profits up. Back in August, for example, the DMA “applauded” the proposed cuts, and in the RAOI Advisory Opinion process, the direct marketing giant Val-Pak made a forceful argument for closing post offices because they lose money and consequently drive up postage rates.
Most of these stakeholders don’t care about post offices because big mailers present their mail at Bulk Mail Entry Units, and Saturday delivery is not a major concern either because ad mail would do fine with even three-day delivery (which the Postmaster General says is coming within fifteen years). The industry doesn’t care about having a blue collection box on every corner — over the past twenty years, half of them have disappeared, even as the FedEx boxes have become ubiquitous — and they don’t care how often the mail is picked up at those boxes. Their interests, in other words, are not those of the average citizen and small business. But they are one of the strongest forces shaping the future of the Postal Service.
Think tanks do the talking
One of the main themes of Phillips-Fein’s Invisible Hands is that the anti-New-Deal businessmen wanted to keep their activities hidden from the general public. Otherwise, it might look like their attack on unions and public services had selfish motives. They also wanted to give their views intellectual respectability. So they founded and funded think tanks and enlisted journalists and academics to write articles and produce studies extolling the virtues of the free market.
In 1943, Lewis H. Brown, president of the Johns-Manville manufacturing company, got several of his allies in the business community together and formed the American Enterprise Association to provide congressmen with legislative analyses that would promote private enterprise. Most of the money came from major corporations like GM, Ford, Con Edison, and du Pont, and the AEA ended up being investigated by Congress, which questioned how it could provide disinterested research with such sponsors.
The AEA eventually morphed into the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of the country’s leading right-wing think tanks. The AEI now publishes works like Saving the Mail: How to Solve the Problems of the U.S. Postal Service by R. Richard Geddes. Geddes advocates privatizing the Postal Service, and he shows up frequently in news articles about the plight of the Postal Service. The AEI is responsible for many other publications about the desirability of moving the Postal Service toward a more corporate model, such as this one by AEI senior fellow Kevin Hassett, encouraging the Tea Party to push for postal privatization as a means of fighting big government.
Another of the country’s well-known right-wing think tanks is the Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973 by conservative businessman Joseph Coors of brewery fame, with the help of contributions from Dow Chemical, GM, Mobile, Pfizer, Sears Roebuck, and Chase Manhattan bank. More recently, the Heritage Foundation has received generous support from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the billionaires Koch brothers. (Harry Bradley and the Koch brothers’ father were charter members of the John Birch Society.) The Foundation has a long history of advocating privatization of government agencies, including the Postal Service. Check out its 1986 primer on privatizing federal services, and this long list of articles on its website.
The Cato Institute, the nation’s first libertarian think tank, was launched by the Koch brothers, who continue to fund it generously. According to the Center for Public Integrity, between 1986 and 1993 the Koch family gave $11 million to the institute. The Cato Institute holds conferences and publishes books and papers advocating the privatization of the Postal Service, such as Restructuring the U.S. Postal Service, The Last Monopoly: Privatizing the Postal Service for the Information Age, Free the Mail: Ending the Postal Monopoly, and Mail at the Millennium: Will the Postal Service Go Private?
The Koch brothers also founded Citizens for a Sound Economy, and one of its senior fellows was James C. Miller III, a well-known advocate of privatizing the Postal Service. Miller is a member of the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service.
Citizens for a Sound Economy eventually split into FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. According to the New York Times, FreedomWorks is “the Washington advocacy group that has done more than any other organization to build the Tea Party movement.” It received $12 million from Koch family foundations. Like the other Koch-funded organizations, it advocates privatization of the Postal Service.
How to break a union
In one of Invisible Hands’ most disturbing chapters, “How to Break a Union,” Phillips-Fein examines the war against unions in the 1950s, particularly the efforts of General Electric to destroy the electrical workers union. (In 1954, GM enlisted the help of a failed movie actor named Ronald Reagan to promote its agenda.) From the point of view of the conservative businessmen, organized labor posed a serious threat, not just in terms of how higher wages might impact their bottom line, but also in terms of power and prestige. They also worried that at election time union workers would be mobilized to press for better Social Security benefits, more government spending, and expanded public services. Unions embodied everything the conservative businessmen were against.
The animosity toward unions fuels much of what’s going on with the Postal Service today. The leadership of the Postal Service wants to get rid of the no-layoff clause in union contracts so that it can cut hundreds of thousands of jobs. In a USPS white paper released last summer, the Postal Service stated explicitly that it wanted to reduce the career workforce from 580,000 to 300,000, and since there was no way that could happen through “attrition,” postal management wants Congress to change the law preventing layoffs. The Postal Service also wants to increase the number of non-career employees from 38,000 to 125,000 — yet another way to undermine the unions.
The leaders of the Postal Service aren’t trying to reduce their labor costs just to deal with the postal deficit or to keep the big mailers happy. The corporate class as a whole does not like the good wages that unions make happen. Postal clerks average $25 an hour, while the sales associates and cashiers at Walmart average $8.50 an hour. Good wages at the post office help bring wages up across the economy, while poor wages at Walmart drive them down.
Since union contracts have made it difficult for the leaders of the Postal Service to reduce the size of the workforce as drastically and rapidly as it would like, they have used other tactics. Outsourcing, for example, is a great way to shift work from postal employees to non-union workers in private industry. The Postal Service now contracts out $12 billion annually.
At the top of the list of corporations enjoying a profitable relationship with the Postal Service — with $1.37 billion of business in 2010 — is FedEx, whose founder and CEO, Fred Smith, testified before Congress “closing down the USPS . . . is an option that ought to be considered seriously.” FedEx has also campaigned against legislation making it easier for its workers to unionize.
Work-share arrangements with pre-sort companies are another way to give work to private companies that could be done by postal workers. The huge discounts that these companies are given are often far in excess of what the Postal Service saves by receiving mail pre-sorted, and they end up costing the Postal Service huge amounts of money. The postal unions have been fighting these discounts for a long time, but to little avail. They are a valuable tool for downsizing the Postal Service, and they help move things further down the path to privatization. (For more on presort companies, see the excellent thesis Understanding Postal Privatization by labor historian Sarah Ryan.)
Follow the money
One of the main tactics the anti-New Deal businessmen used to help keep themselves invisible was to support pro-business politicians like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. These days, with PACs and other modes of funding and lobbying politicians totally out of control, there are very few politicians who are not being overly influenced by the corporate elite. In postal matters, the two most prominent of these politicians are Darrell Issa and Dennis Ross.
Issa is the Congressman for California’s 49th congressional district and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In 2011, his committee held hearings (videos here) and called as witnesses various individuals to testify that the Postal Service was heading toward catastrophe if radical reforms weren’t made. Issa’s Postal Reform Act would create an Authority empowered to restructure the postal system and a Commission that would recommend post office closures and consolidations to Congress. These measures would do essentially what the leaders of the Postal Service have been advocating, but the Act would put Issa and his allies in charge, effectively sidelining postal headquarters.
Dennis A. Ross is the Congressman for Florida’s 12th congressional district and a member of the Tea Party Caucus. As chair of the Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, he held several hearings last year on the Postal Service, during which his witnesses attacked the postal unions, argued that the Postal Service needs to reduce “excess capacity” (i.e., post offices and plants), and called for changes in the law that will make it easier to close post offices.
Eleven of the 23 Republican representatives on Issa’s committee received financial help from Koch Industries in the last election. Issa himself was the largest recipient, with $12,500 since 2008. Not that Issa really needs the money. His net worth is about $450 million, making him the richest man in Congress. Ross received $12,000 from the Koch brothers.
It’s not just the Koch brothers who are contributing to the postal legislators. Pitney Bowes is $5.6 billion-a-year business employing 33,000 workers around the world, selling mail equipment and providing marketing through mail. It’s based in Stamford, Connecticut, so no surprise that it has contributed generously to the campaign of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, chair of the Homeland Security Committee, which deals with postal legislation. In 2011, Pitney Bowes also contributed $10,000 to Darrell Issa and $10,000 to Senator Susan Collins of Maine, another key player in postal legislation. (If you’re interested in doing some detective work, Influence Explorer and Open Secrets are useful sites.)
Privatization, the Holy Grail
Phillips-Fein’s book culminates with the election of Ronald Reagan, who represented everything the conservative businessmen had worked for since the New Deal. Reagan made a stand against unions when he fired the striking air-traffic controllers, he made the tax code less progressive (remember Reaganomics?), he cut social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and he slashed the budget of regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency.
Reagan also created a presidential Commission on Privatization. Its 1988 report Privatization: Toward More Effective Government recommended that the private express statutes, which mandate the postal monopoly, be repealed to allow competition in the provision postal services. That recommendation has not yet come to fruition, but the Commission also recommended that the Postal Service more actively pursue contracting out. Fulfilling that recommendation was facilitated by changes to the USPS Procurement Manual (also in 1988), which made it easier for management to outsource without worrying about “full and open competition.” Outsourcing has become one of the most useful tools for privatizing the postal system without an act of Congress.
Reagan, however, can’t get the credit for initiating the push toward postal privatization. That goes way back, at least until the 1960s, when a Democratic president, LBJ, charged the Kappel Commission to come up with ideas for reforming the Department of the Post Office. The Commission consisted almost exclusively of corporate executives, with retired AT&T Chairman Frederick R. Kappel as its chair. Its recommendations led to the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act, which “corporatized” the Post Office into the U.S. Postal Service.
It was no secret that turning a cabinet-level department into a government corporation would be a big first step toward the ultimate goal, privatization. In testimony before Congress, Kappel testified, “If I could, I’d make [the Post Office] a private enterprise and I would create a private corporation to run the postal service and the country would be better off financially. But I can’t get from here to there.”
For the past four decades, getting from “here” to “there” has remained the Holy Grail for the conservative business elite. All the books and articles put out by the think tanks and their scholars, all the lobbying and campaign contributions, all the organizing and behind-the-scenes networking— the goal has remained constant. The free market ideologues will be satisfied with nothing less than the privatization of the postal system.
In the meantime, the mantra is the same: The Postal Service needs to act more “like a business.” If it can’t be turned into a private corporation, it should at least act like one. If a post office isn’t bringing in a profit (80 to 90 percent of them don’t, at least the way the Postal Service runs the numbers), then close it. If career employees can be replaced by part-time casuals or contract workers, replace them. If there’s “excess capacity” in the system, get rid of it. If there’s a way to undermine the unions, drive down wages, degrade benefits, do it.
As for average citizens, they just don’t seem to be very important to postal management. They are not big customers. The services they might like to see offered at the post office — like an Internet connection or low-cost banking services — aren’t very profitable. Sometimes one even gets the impression that the Postal Service is intentionally alienating its regular customers — causing long lines by reducing the staffing at the windows, not being responsive to complaints, demoralizing postal workers so it’s difficult for them to be courteous. Perhaps management thinks it’s not so bad if people are dissatisfied with the Postal Service. Maybe it will make them happy to hear about plans to privatize.
Dismantling the legacy
In 1970, when the U.S. population was about 200 million and first-class mail volumes were not quite 50 billions pieces, there were around 43,000 post offices (including contract postal units). Today the U.S. has over 300 million people, first-class mail volumes are about 78 billion pieces, and there are around 35,000 post offices. While population and mail volumes have increased by more than 50%, the number of post offices has declined by almost 20%. Yet somehow we are expected to believe that there are too many post offices.
Almost every one of the country’s post offices is a valued part of the community it serves. If you have any doubt about that, just read a few hundred of the thousands of news articles that have come out over the past few months, describing the frustration, anger, and sadness people express when they hear their post office may close.
While the focus has been on the 3,600 post offices on the Retail Access Optimization Initiative (RAOI) list, the Postal Service wants to close half the country’s post offices. The retail end of the business will continue to be moved to the “alternate retail outlets” the Postal Service claims that customers prefer — Wal-Mart, CVS, Office Depot, Costco, your local supermarket. There are already 50,000 alternative places to buy stamps — more locations than there are post offices. Though the Postal Service never labels it as such, this is yet another form of outsourcing and privatization.
The leaders of the Postal Service are committed to dismantling what they call — with considerable disdain — the “legacy” of “brick-and-mortar” post offices. The legacy hangs around their neck like an albatross, weighing them down and holding them back from progressing into a light and fluid post-office-less future. They say “brick and mortar” to make the post office seem old fashioned, passé, a nostalgic icon of a bygone era.
These leaders want the Postal Service be fashionably chic — like those European countries that are closing their village post offices as part of their privatization programs. Headquarters doesn’t like the way people get attached to their post office, or the way the workers in the post office give a face to the postal system and the government. The bonding to a place and the human connection make people care too much about what happens with the postal system as a whole, and that just gets in the way of what postal leaders are trying to do.
During the Great Depression, the federal government built over a thousand post offices, as well as many schools, libraries, and federal buildings. These buildings are usually an important place in a town, and many are on the National Register of Historic Places. Constructing these buildings put hundreds of thousands of people to work; but, they had another purpose.
The New Deal wanted people to feel connected to their federal government, to have faith in its permanence, to see that it was a part of their community. Considerable attention was also given to the architectural design of the New Deal post offices, and most are adorned with beautiful murals depicting scenes from local history. They bring an element of culture to the community, and they remind people of their past.
Now the country is being told that we cannot afford to keep these post offices. Historic New Deal post offices are being closed and sold off, right and left. Recently the Postal Service has closed and/or sold the historic post offices in Westport, Connecticut; Palm Beach, Florida; Ukiah, California; and Pinehurst, North Carolina. Over the coming months, the same will happen to the post offices in Venice and La Jolla, California. The historic post offices in Northfield, Minnesota; Athens, Pennsylvania; and Camas, Washington are also threatened. Many are closed without even a public meeting because the Postal Service is relocating postal services to another location and not actually “closing” the post office.
The Postal Service says these historic post offices are too big — the mail handlers and carriers were probably moved to an annex years ago, thus creating “excess capacity” — so now it does not make any sense to hold on to them, and selling them would bring in much needed revenue. Maybe so, but, there is something else going on.
These post offices are a proud reminder of the great things our government and our postal system can do. These are indeed icons, symbolic of everything the conservative anti-government businessmen have been crusading against since the New Deal. Closing these post offices and selling them to private businesses, to be turned into real estate offices and restaurants and clothing stores, is yet another mode of privatization and sad proof the attack on the New Deal continues to this day.
The whole thing is sad, really. Depriving workers of a decent salary, job security, and the promise of a secure retirement; treating communities as insignificant and undeserving of a post office, transferring historic public buildings to private hands for private profits, putting the interests of the wealthy corporate elite above those of the country as a whole — it’s more than sad, it’s a crime. It will not be good if the nation’s lawmakers continue to permit it to happen.
Dismantling the government is know to most. What would help is voters to know which representatives are voting for the dismantling. It is not one party issue and often the representatives vote differently when their up for re-election.
What is needed is a national organization on a state by state basis that would bring up these issue when representatives were running for office, on a bipartisan bases.
The net is a great tool, that no one yet has developed for the 90% on the most important issue which is what their legislator is doing.
Just to be clear, I contribute to the Save the Post Office website but the post featured above was the work of Steve Hutkins, the Blog’s publisher.
STPO is the brainchild of Steve Hutkins, a professor at NYU Gallatin. The post featured above first appeared on STPO without a byline and is Steve’s works.
Posts without a byline on STPO are primarily Steve’s work with background contributions by others including me. My posts on the site appeared with a byline. Steve gets credit for those as the editor, a very good editor.
Mark:
Made the changes. My apology to you and Steve.
Regards,
Bill
Mr. Jamison,
I am a big fan of Save the Post Office site and your work. I am a letter carrier and I’m trying to my part with a blog I call, Instead of Going Postal. We are losing America to the wealthy. It is an uphill battle and the slope is becoming very slippery. Again, thank you for your efforts.
The New Deal was a failure.Learn from the mistake and not follow down the path of the radical socialist big government agenda.
Nonsense, If anything the New Deal was what changed this country making people realize the greatness it could have.
run you might want to repost the chart of how well the incomes of the majority have done with neoliberal policies of small government.
So what is the author’s gripe? That different Americans, with similar goals, work together to lobby for a more efficient, less costly postal service in this country? It’s right in the Bill of Rights, the “right to assemble to petition the government”. You know, sort of like employees do when they form………………labor unions. If the federal government wants to maintain a monopoly on the nation’s mail delivery system, then it needs to allow all stake holders to state their arguments.
BTW, do we need tens of thousands of post offices in the 21st century? I think not.
Fred & Run
Fred: You are absolutely right.
We do not need tens of thousands of post officers in the
21st century.
Those buildings could be put to much better use.
For instance, they could be turned out:
–community centers
— day-care centers for the elderly (who could then admire the murals and be reminded of their past)
–spacious child-care centers.
If the post office sold them to non-profits this could happen.
The folks who don’t want to downsize close the post office
belong to the postal workers union. They want to keep them open to preserve jobs that we no longer need (as the Internet
replaces paper as a means of communicating and spreading
information.)
They want to hold onto those jobs because they are quite well paid (entry level- $25 an hour for a clerk) with rich benefits–
unlike other federal employees, many postal workers receive
health care benefits without having to pay a penny of the premium.
Their union contract also has a “no lay-off clause.”
Postal workers feel entitled to :
–jobs for life
–excellent entry-level salaries and salaries far above median income for middle-level and upper-level workers
— free health care
Why?
Because they have a strong union, and with the help of the junk mail industry have been very successful at lobbying Congress.
There are many things that government does better than for-profit companies,and many areas where the government needs to hire more workers:
–public education
— staff for public hospitals
— running prisons (though they, too should be down-sized, even thought that will mean layoffs.)
The gov’t is not better at delivering information and providing a
medium for communication.
The Internet is.
75% of American homes now have broadband Internet access, and at least one computer. 50% of those living below the poverty line have broadband and a computer. With some help
from the govt, almost everyone could have broadband and a computer. In areas where broad and isn’t possible now, public schools and public libraries offer can (and usually do) offer
access and computers.
This is how Americans need to be “connected”– not by a chain
of middle-men (postman) trudging door to door to deliver the mail (and these days, increasingly it is simply junk mail.)
Run–
I am dismayed by the combination of sentimentality and sheer
jingoism in the post.
The service that the USPS provides has absolutely nothing to do with the “New Deal.”
Postal service is not a social welfare program. (Long ago, when
people living in remote areas had a hard time getting information, it was, at least to some degree,– but that was a long time ago. )
I know quite a bit about WPA art. Some of the murals in post offices are very nice. No doubt some should be preserved (this could be done as buildings are converted.)
But this is not a reason to keep post offices open.
The people who lament closing tend to be elderly people who
lament any change–even change like the Internet which is connecting us, not just locally, but world-wide.
As for the postal workers union, it is a very greedy union that has joined with the for-profit junk mail industry to gain great clout
in Congress.
For evidence, see my reply to Mark Jamison’s first post. My
comment is dated October 15.
I like unions–but not unions that over-reach. They have killed the union movement.
Finally, if you Google “postal workers” and “depression” you will
find that they complain because they are under “great pressure
to be efficient”, under pressure to “complete their routes on time”
I have never had a job where I wasn’t under pressure to be efficient.
This is a union with an extraordinary sense of entitlement.
Maggie:
I am not the one who brought up the New Deal. Before we go and accuse unions of wanting to keep their jobs, lets look at what happened in 2008 when at an ~$7 trillion was need to fix Wall Street. Main Street and union workers bailed out TBTF who were little more than gambling on Wall Street. Labor is still paying for bank problems. We still have yet to recover from that episode with a recovering Participation Rate and Unemployment. Social welfare to large corporations which had to be made into banks to qualify for help from The Fed is still going on today. Goldman Sachs, AE, AIG, etc. are still banks and they are borrowing money at less than market rates, investing it, and making greater profits than previously and Main Street and Labor are subsidizing it. It is ok for banks and corporations and not ok for Labor? Why is Goldman Sachs still a bank and why are we subsidizing them?
In any case the USPS has reduced the numbers of workers by tens of thousands through the implementation of Labor saving procedures, mechanization, and electronics. It is a process which takes a period of time. What would be the point of launching several hundred thousand workers into the job market which has no jobs to employ them and in which case they become even a greater burden on the economy besides keeping them employed? They are claiming it will be another 80 months before the job market even approaches what it was pre-2008. There is also the issue of training these workers for other occupations after years in the Postal Office? Many of these workers are older and the training may not impact them as well as younger workers. Finally, I believe over time the USPS will decrease in size due to greater efficiencies the same as manufacturing has done.
Which brings up a point with the mention of manufacturing. Who took the hit in the automotive industry? Was it Labor or Management? New Automotive workers now start at $14/hours (as opposed to ~$20) which is considerably less than what it used to be and for a job which debilitates the physical body over time. I would bet Postal workers suffer from a similar environment also. It is physical and demanding Labor. Management is an issue at the Post Office and they do not deserve to be let off the hook.
I have no problem with Mark’s Post as it points out the issues we face today with Labor and how the country as a whole is degrading it. Unions and Labor are not what is harming this country, corpocracy is. We are rapidly becoming a nation dominated politically and economically by large corporations.
Maggie,
How are the postal worker unions greedy? How do they overreach? Their ability to negotiate is constricted by Congress. Disputes are settled by interest arbitration. The unions make their best case and win or lose on that.
No, it really doesn’t sound like you have an affinity for unions. You’re simply adding a qualifier to preface a visceral statement with no basis in fact.
Ok Maggie let’s unpack the arguments in your latest comment:
“Fred & Run
Fred: You are absolutely right.
We do not need tens of thousands of post officers in the
21st century.”
Because? Who says? Talk to folks all across America and see how many fight for their local post offices. This is merely a debatable assertion without substance.
“Those buildings could be put to much better use.
For instance, they could be turned out:
–community centers
– day-care centers for the elderly (who could then admire the murals and be reminded of their past)
–spacious child-care centers.
If the post office sold them to non-profits this could happen.”
I suggest you follow the debate on this subject a bit more closely. The issue has been how the Postal Service stewards the real estate assets that were transferred to it when transferred from the old Post Office Department. Actually there are a good many folks in my camp who agree with at least part of what you’re saying here – if these facilities aren’t posy offices then how do we get appropriate and proper value from them. Suggest you look up Peter Byrne’s book on the Postal Service’s real estate partner CBRE.
All those things you mention are good and as a society we should do those things but someone could use the exact same arguments you are using to counter your argument.
I agree, the Postal Service should be run as a nonprofit entity, it’s current structure is part of the problem. By the way, the nonprofit sector in this country has more than a few problems of its own but that’s another debate.
“The folks who don’t want to downsize close the post office
belong to the postal workers union. They want to keep them open to preserve jobs that we no longer need (as the Internet
replaces paper as a means of communicating and spreading
information.)”
Well, no, I wasn’t a union member or part of the bargaining unit and Steve Hutkins who wrote this post has nothing to do with the Post Office. Surprise, millions of Americans actually like their postal services and value them. The Postal Service is polled as the most trusted and useful government organization.
They want to hold onto those jobs because they are quite well paid (entry level- $25 an hour for a clerk) with rich benefits–
unlike other federal employees, many postal workers receive
health care benefits without having to pay a penny of the premium.
The jobs are well paid, bet you want to hold on to your well paid job. You’re an economist are you going to diss self-interest? No, 850 senior executives don’t pay premiums. The other 497,000 employees who are covered by health insurance pay about 26% and that will escalate to 30% per the contract (same as other Federal employees). Retirees pay the same as other Federal retirees.
Facts Maggie, facts.
“Their union contract also has a “no lay-off clause.””
Yep, that was negotiated in the 1970’s and management has never challenged that clause in an arbitration hearing.
“Postal workers feel entitled to :
–jobs for life
–excellent entry-level salaries and salaries far above median income for middle-level and upper-level workers
– free health care
Why? ”
Because those things are good to aspire to and most Americans used to aspire to just those sorts of things before Reagan came in and decided Friedmanism should be the prevailing ethic. Are we better off for that? Are you a Libertarian? Oh, and how do you know what postal workers think – that’s a rather presumptuous assertion.
“Because they have a strong union, and with the help of the junk mail industry have been very successful at lobbying Congress.”
How are the postal unions (there are five) strong? They can’t strike. They are limited to the topics they can bargain on by law. Disputes go to interest arbitration. The unions and the advertising mailers, who, by the way, are only one slice of the industry did have some common ground in the mid-80”s but certainly not recently. I would invite you to listen to a few Congressional hearings or look at votes to see how effective union lobbying has been.
You are simply making blind assertions here.
“There are many things that government does better than for-profit companies,and many areas where the government needs to hire more workers:
–public education
– staff for public hospitals
– running prisons (though they, too should be down-sized, even thought that will mean layoffs.)”
Yep
“The gov’t is not better at delivering information and providing a
medium for communication.
The Internet is.
75% of American homes now have broadband Internet access, and at least one computer. 50% of those living below the poverty line have broadband and a computer. With some help
from the govt, almost everyone could have broadband and a computer. In areas where broad and isn’t possible now, public schools and public libraries offer can (and usually do) offer
access and computers.
This is how Americans need to be “connected”– not by a chain
of middle-men (postman) trudging door to door to deliver the mail (and these days, increasingly it is simply junk mail.) ”
Maybe and Nope. Internet penetration is at 84% not 75% but millions of Americans do not have reliable, affordable, or fast internet, sometimes all three. There is a broad debate on the future of print, it isn’t nearly as simple or clear as you make it. This isn’t the place to get into that debate or discussion but it is worth taking up, meanwhile you are welcome to continue making assertions based on channeling your inner Ray Kurzwell.
By the way, read the Founders on communication networks and look up Steve Ramdam who gives presentations at HOPE conferences about the really invasions of privacy that companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook are engaged in. We discuss some of these issues in detail at STPO. Oh, and look at the use of the last-mile network.
You send a bit like a shill for Peter Theil and quite frankly that isn’t very attractive or hopeful for the great mass of society.
“Run–
I am dismayed by the combination of sentimentality and sheer
jingoism in the post.”
Maggie, I am dismayed of your inability to comprehend infrastructure. I am also dismayed and disappointed at your banal dismissal and obvious disgust for basic human values if they don’t fit your preferred paradigm.”
“The service that the USPS provides has absolutely nothing to do with the “New Deal.”
Yep, it’s over 240 years old and has adapted to the railroads, telephones, and the airlines all of which were predicted to end the use of mail. In each of those cases the postal network ended up enhancing those technologies. Your point is an extraneous non-sequitor.
“Postal service is not a social welfare program. (Long ago, when
people living in remote areas had a hard time getting information, it was, at least to some degree,– but that was a long time ago. )”
I don’t know where you live but the world isn’t quite like you imagine it. Yes, in some ways the Postal Service is a social welfare program. You see the Founders stuck a reference to it in the Constitution because they understood the necessity for a free, open, neural network to foster the communications of the nation and contrary to your assertions it still fulfills that role. The opening paragraphs of Title 39:
(a) The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. The costs of establishing and maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people.
(b) The Postal Service shall provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining. No small post office shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit, it being the specific intent of the Congress that effective postal services be insured to residents of both urban and rural communities.
“I know quite a bit about WPA art. Some of the murals in post offices are very nice. No doubt some should be preserved (this could be done as buildings are converted.) ”
Read up a bit more on this and the fight to hold the Postal Service accountable.
But this is not a reason to keep post offices open.
Not a primary one, but there are some very good arguments about the presence of post offices as representations of government, accessible to the people.
It’s pretty clear you don’t have tremendous respect for those sorts of arguments but that doesn’t make them less valid.
Oh, and “some of the murals…are very nice” – really, art is just nice?
“The people who lament closing tend to be elderly people who
lament any change–even change like the Internet which is connecting us, not just locally, but world-wide.”
And you know this how? And even if it’s true how would you replace the necessary services?
“As for the postal workers union, it is a very greedy union that has joined with the for-profit junk mail industry to gain great clout
in Congress.
For evidence, see my reply to Mark Jamison’s first post. My
comment is dated October 15.
I like unions–but not unions that over-reach. They have killed the union movement. ”
Answered in an earlier comment but again, an opinion based on limited knowledge.
“Finally, if you Google “postal workers” and “depression” you will
find that they complain because they are under “great pressure
to be efficient”, under pressure to “complete their routes on time”
I have never had a job where I wasn’t under pressure to be efficient. ”
Because the world is all about you and your experiences mirror all of humanities you dismiss this offhandedly. Check your privilege here, you sound very much like the Tea Party folks who think they are the only ones in the world with legitimate grievances, everyone else is lazy or a whiner.
This is a union with an extraordinary sense of entitlement.
This is a blind assertion without substance.
We haven’t touched on many of the aspects of this issue like the growing problems with unregulated monopoly in package delivery markets – essential to e-commerce (how’s that for including the internet). The real problem is the structure of the Postal Service which is something of a chimera.
If Run continues to post on the subject I will patiently answer each and every one of your criticisms Maggie. I doubt we’ll come to agreement but hopefully you will delve into this subject a bit more and find that it isn’t as nearly easy to dismiss as you would have it. You say you value public goods like public education, well mail delivery which has been efficient and productive in spite of poor management and a badly designed corporate structure has served the American public well on several fronts and could continue to do so with some relatively minor adjustments.
Fundamentally I think we’re going to disagree about what the future looks like. That may be inevitable but the disagreements on that front are widespread.
Mark —
In your first reply you write:
You write” the postal worker union’s “ability to negotiate is constricted by Congress.”
Right. And who owns much of Congress-? The lobbyists, including the
very powerful Postal Workers Union.
Here are some facts:
From a 2011 story: “Unions for postal workers contributed $7 million in the 2010 elections, 90 percent to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group. That’s as much as was given by the National Education Association, representing teachers, and was exceeded among unions only by the $8.8 million from the Service Employees International Union, whose members include health-care workers and janitors.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-08/postal-unions-grassroots-clout-tested-by-planned-u-s-job-cuts.html
What did the union get for its money? “Democrats in the House urged this week that the Postal Service honor labor agreements that prohibit firing most workers”.
Mark, how may unions do you know of that have succeed in getting labor agreement that prohibit firing–even when the operation is losing money? The union’s contract also prohibits layoffs.
The Postal Service, which has lost money for eight consecutive quarters, may lose $10 billion this year, Donahoe [the head of the postal service] said, adding to last year’s $6 billion loss.
Mail volume will decrease 2 percent this fiscal year, for a drop of 22 percent since 2006, Donahoe said .
In an interview, Gary Chaison, a labor professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, said i. “As government workers with significant lobbying power, they were able to negotiate major job protections, and then lobby to have Congress approve the cost of their agreements.”
Note that The Postal Service itself wants cut-backs and closings. It has told Congress that if cutbacks are not approved, it will need a bail-out “by taxpayers” by 2014:
This from Reuters (2013) :
“The U.S. lobbying forces that defeated a Postal Service plan to end Saturday delivery to reduce its annual deficit are now using their Capitol Hill clout to pass a law to make six-day delivery mandatory.”
The postal workers lobby doesn’t want to cut Saturday delivery because they don’t want to lose the extra pay.
Reuters explains why cutting Sat. service is necessary:
“The Postal Service, which is losing millions of dollars everyday as more Americans communicate by email and the Internet, has said it could require a $47 billion taxpayer bailout by 2017 if Congress doesn’t permit cuts.
The union is backing ” A bill mandating six-day delivery that began in the Oversight Committee in January has gained momentum and now boasts 175 cosponsors. It is yet another sign of the growing influence of interest groups and postal employee unions who constitute a powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill.
“The three major postal unions also poured a total of more than $7 million last year into the re-election campaigns of key congressional supporters, according to data on OpenSecrets.org.” http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/18/us-usa-postal-lobbying-idUSBRE93H1CD20130418
April 2014
The U.S. Postal Service itself wants to downsize.
The Postal Workers suggest you follow the debate on this subject a bit more closely. The issue has been how the Postal Service stewards the real estate assets that were transferred to it when transferred from the old Post Office Department. Actually there are a good many folks in my camp who agree with at least part of what you’re saying here – if these facilities aren’t posy offices then how do we get appropriate and proper value from them. Suggest you look up Peter Byrne’s book on the Postal Service’s real estate partner CBRE. All those things you mention are good and as a society we should do those things but someone could use the exact same arguments you are using to counter your argument.
I agree, the Postal Service should be run as a nonprofit entity, it’s current structure is part of the problem. By the way, the nonprofit sector in this country has more than a few problems of its own but that’s another debate.
“The folks who don’t want to downsize close the post office belong to the postal workers union. They want to keep them open to preserve jobs that we no longer need (as the Internet replaces paper as a means of communicating and spreading information.)”
Well, no, I wasn’t a union member or part of the bargaining unit and Steve Hutkins who wrote this post has nothing to do with the Post Office. Surprise, millions of Americans actually like their postal services and value them. The Postal Service is polled as the most trusted and useful government organization.
They want to hold onto those jobs because they are quite well paid (entry level- $25 an hour for a clerk) with rich benefits– unlike other federal employees, many postal workers receive health care benefits without having to pay a penny of the premium. The jobs are well paid, bet you want to hold on to your well paid job. You’re an economist are you going to diss self-interest? No, 850 senior executives don’t pay premiums. The other 497,000 employees who are covered by health insurance pay about 26% and that will escalate to 30% per the contract (same as other Federal employees). Retirees pay the same as other Federal retirees.
Facts Maggie, facts.
“Their union contract also has a “no lay-off clause.””
Yep, that was negotiated in the 1970’s and management has never challenged that clause in an arbitration hearing.
“Postal workers feel entitled to :
–jobs for life
–excellent entry-level salaries and salaries far above median income for middle-level and upper-level workers
– free health care
Why? ”
Because those things are good to aspire to and most Americans used to aspire to just those sorts of things before Reagan came in and decided Friedmanism should be the prevailing ethic. Are we better off for that? Are you a Libertarian? Oh, and how do you know what postal workers think – that’s a rather presumptuous assertion.
“Because they have a strong union, and with the help of the junk mail industry have been very successful at lobbying Congress.”
How are the postal unions (there are five) strong? They can’t strike. They are limited to the topics they can bargain on by law. Disputes go to interest arbitration. The unions and the advertising mailers, who, by the way, are only one slice of the industry did have some common ground in the mid-80”s but certainly not recently. I would invite you to listen to a few Congressional hearings or look at votes to see how effective union lobbying has been. You are simply making blind assertions here.
“There are many things that government does better than for-profit companies,and many areas where the government needs to hire more workers:
–public education
– staff for public hospitals
– running prisons (though they, too should be down-sized, even thought that will mean layoffs.)”
Yep
“The gov’t is not better at delivering information and providing a medium for communication. The Internet is.
75% of American homes now have broadband Internet access, and at least one computer. 50% of those living below the poverty line have broadband and a computer. With some help from the govt, almost everyone could have broadband and a computer. In areas where broad and isn’t possible now, public schools and public libraries offer can (and usually do) offer access and computers.
This is how Americans need to be “connected”– not by a chain of middle-men (postman) trudging door to door to deliver the mail (and these days, increasingly it is simply junk mail.) ”
Maybe and Nope. Internet penetration is at 84% not 75% but millions of Americans do not have reliable, affordable, or fast internet, sometimes all three. There is a broad debate on the future of print, it isn’t nearly as simple or clear as you make it. This isn’t the place to get into that debate or discussion but it is worth taking up, meanwhile you are welcome to continue making assertions based on channeling your inner Ray Kurzwell.
By the way, read the Founders on communication networks and look up Steve Ramdam who gives presentations at HOPE conferences about the really invasions of privacy that companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook are engaged in. We discuss some of these issues in detail at STPO. Oh, and look at the use of the last-mile network.
You send a bit like a shill for Peter Theil and quite frankly that isn’t very attractive or hopeful for the great mass of society.
“Run–
I am dismayed by the combination of sentimentality and sheer jingoism in the post.”
Maggie, I am dismayed of your inability to comprehend infrastructure. I am also dismayed and disappointed at your banal dismissal and obvious disgust for basic human values if they don’t fit your preferred paradigm.”
“The service that the USPS provides has absolutely nothing to do with the “New Deal.”
Yep, it’s over 240 years old and has adapted to the railroads, telephones, and the airlines all of which were predicted to end the use of mail. In each of those cases the postal network ended up enhancing those technologies. Your point is an extraneous non-sequitor.
“Postal service is not a social welfare program. (Long ago, when people living in remote areas had a hard time getting information, it was, at least to some degree,– but that was a long time ago. )”
I don’t know where you live but the world isn’t quite like you imagine it. Yes, in some ways the Postal Service is a social welfare program. You see the Founders stuck a reference to it in the Constitution because they understood the necessity for a free, open, neural network to foster the communications of the nation and contrary to your assertions it still fulfills that role. The opening paragraphs of Title 39:
(a) The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities. The costs of establishing and maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people.
(b) The Postal Service shall provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining. No small post office shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit, it being the specific intent of the Congress that effective postal services be insured to residents of both urban and rural communities.
“I know quite a bit about WPA art. Some of the murals in post offices are very nice. No doubt some should be preserved (this could be done as buildings are converted.) ”
Read up a bit more on this and the fight to hold the Postal Service accountable. But this is not a reason to keep post offices open.
Not a primary one, but there are some very good arguments about the presence of post offices as representations of government, accessible to the people. It’s pretty clear you don’t have tremendous respect for those sorts of arguments but that doesn’t make them less valid.
Oh, and “some of the murals…are very nice” – really, art is just nice?
“The people who lament closing tend to be elderly people who lament any change–even change like the Internet which is connecting us, not just locally, but world-wide.”
And you know this how? And even if it’s true how would you replace the necessary services?
“As for the postal workers union, it is a very greedy union that has joined with the for-profit junk mail industry to gain great clout
in Congress. For evidence, see my reply to Mark Jamison’s first post. My comment is dated October 15. I like unions–but not unions that over-reach. They have killed the union movement. ”
Answered in an earlier comment but again, an opinion based on limited knowledge.
“Finally, if you Google “postal workers” and “depression” you will find that they complain because they are under “great pressure to be efficient”, under pressure to “complete their routes on time” I have never had a job where I wasn’t under pressure to be efficient. ”
Because the world is all about you and your experiences mirror all of humanities you dismiss this offhandedly. Check your privilege here, you sound very much like the Tea Party folks who think they are the only ones in the world with legitimate grievances, everyone else is lazy or a whiner.
This is a union with an extraordinary sense of entitlement. This is a blind assertion without substance.
We haven’t touched on many of the aspects of this issue like the growing problems with unregulated monopoly in package delivery markets – essential to e-commerce (how’s that for including the internet). The real problem is the structure of the Postal Service which is something of a chimera.
If Run continues to post on the subject I will patiently answer each and every one of your criticisms Maggie. I doubt we’ll come to agreement but hopefully you will delve into this subject a bit more and find that it isn’t as nearly easy to dismiss as you would have it. You say you value public goods like public education, well mail delivery which has been efficient and productive in spite of poor management and a badly designed corporate structure has served the American public well on several fronts and could continue to do so with some relatively minor adjustments.
Fundamentally I think we’re going to disagree about what the future looks like. That may be inevitable but the disagreements on that front are widespread.
Click here to Reply or Forward
Mark–
You write : “Maggie I am dismayed and disgusted by your lack of respect for basic human values. , , , , Because the world is all about you and your experiences mirror all of humanities you dismiss this offhandedly. Check your privilege here ”
Mark these are ad hominem attacks– not arguments.
You lack arguments so you resort to these attacks–and assertions about how much much millions of Americans care about their post offices.
I have lived in this country for decades, and have never heard anyone express great affection for their post office.
In my experience, people take the post office for granted, and are irritated when they have to stand in line. That’s about it.
As for basic human values– I’m not quite sure what you mean.
Perhaps you consider “self-interest” a basic human value?
After acknowledging that postal worker’s are well paid and have good benefits, you write “The jobs are well paid, bet you want to hold on to your well paid job. You’re an economist– are you going to diss self-interest ”
Again, some facts: I do not consider “self-interest” to be a virtue. I applaud people who are able to see beyond what George Eliot once called “the speck of self.”
When writing about health care, I often suggest that Americans need to think beyond what is good for “me and my family” and consider what would
be good for society as a whole.
I often point out that in Europe, people are much more willing to pay very high taxes to support social safety nets for everyone.
An anecdote: for years, a close friend lived in France. I asked her why healthcare in France is so good (which it is–see this post and she replied “Because the French feel that nothing is too good for another Frenchman.” Unfortunately, Americans do not feel that way about each other.
The French also feel that nothing is too good for immigrants and visitors. If you’re in France, you get health care even if you’re not a citizen.
This is not true in the U.S.
,
But I digress. Returning to your unbiased assumption that I, too am driven by self-interest (“Bet you want to hold onto your well-paying job”) you should know that I left my last well-paying job about six years ago. Great salary, great benefits. But the organization was no longer as devoted to truth-telling as it had been in the past. So I resigned–voluntarily.
In my view, truth-telling trumps self-interest every day of the week.
I now write a blog and am not paid. I do it because I think I am providing a service. The traffic, which continues to build, and the comments suggest that I am right.
(Btw–I am not rich or “privileged” except by having a very good education. I can’t afford to work without pay, but given my politics, and my age, that’s just the way it is. As a friend (who actually is an economist) once said to me “What you provide is a public good. In this country there is not much of a market for public goods.)
Finally, I am not an economist. I am not even a fan of Aemrican-style capitalism (what the French call “the capitalism savage.” You attack me, personally, without having a clue as to whom I am.
I have a Ph.D. in English literature (which taught me a great deal about human values–see George Eliot above) and i taught English lit at Yale for 7 years.
Then I became a journalist , working at Time Inc, the New York Times, and Barron’s — among other places.. Much of my work has been investigative– exploring corruption in corporate America, in the government, on Wall Street, and in other organizations. Unions are hardly free from corruption, and too often over-weening self-interest sends them off the rails.
Finally, returning to the subject of “public services” and “public goods” Do you really think that a postal service that delivers more junk mail than first-class mail is really providing a public service?
Did you know that the postal workers union supports the junk mail companies in their lobbying efforts to mandate 6 day a week delivery and not to down-size?
Do you think that delivering junk mail is part a social service? You write:
“In some ways,, Postal Service is a social welfare program. You see the Founders stuck a reference to it in the Constitution because they understood the necessity for a free, open, neural network to foster the communications
Whenever someone refers to “the Founders” as if they were wise men, I have to wonder whether he or she is not bothered by slavery, and the sale of human beings which was countenanced by “the Founders. ” They were wealthy landowners who, in many cases, owned slave. I would be careful about summoning them up as authorities on what is and isn’t valuable.
In my next reply I will address some of your specific assertions.
Mark, Run & Everyone:
I just noticed this ad at the top of the Angry Bear website:
US Postal Jobs (Hiring)
Starting Salary is $51,000 a Year. No Experience Necessary. Start Now!
$51,000 to start, with No Experience Necessary!
What an unusually good deal!
I don’t know whether the ad was paid for. If so, it might suggest
a conflict of interest.
(I don’t take paid ads on HealthBeat for that reason.)
Maggie:
I have yet to see the ad of which you speak and I have been watching for it. The same as you, we are not paid bloggers nor do we contribute to the cost of AB. I do not see a conflict as I do not get any proceeds from ads. Occasionally, some nice publication may pick up one of my articles and use and kick in $400 for my efforts; but, this has been few and far between. Usually, I get the benefit of additional exposure (period). 🙂