By Andrew P. Napolitano
The president's men trash the Constitution to pursue antagonists
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Despite nearly $16 billion in annual losses announced by the U.S. Postal Service on Thursday, all but one of the top five executives for the nation's mail service had an overall compensation increase this year, records show.
More than a quarter-million U.S. Postal Service workers are eligible for retirement, and a restructuring plan proposed Thursday relies heavily on getting many of them to quit.
The U.S. Postal Service lost more than $3 billion during the last three months of 2011 as continued declines in volume of first-class mail wiped out good news about the shipping and packaging business.
The U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday reported a $5.1 billion annual loss, but the figure would have been more than twice as high if Congress had not postponed a $5.5 billion bill to fund retiree health benefits.
Made popular by the "If it fits, it ships" slogan in television ads, the Priority Mail initiative is seen as a bright spot during otherwise tough economic times for the U.S. Postal Service, where multibillion-dollar deficits and declining mail volume have officials moving to cut a day of delivery.
When the U.S. Postal Service's top marketing officer agreed to hire Goldman Sachs nearly two years ago without a written contract, top executives inside postal headquarters scrambled to make the unauthorized deal square with postal procurement rules.
He said the Postal Service has never had significant layoffs before, adding that officials believe the reduction is possible "by other means."
