Postal Tsunami News Ripples for March 25th, 2015

By Mel Carriere

After a delay of a few days it is time for the Postal Tsunami to roll into action again.  A coworker slash Sherlock Holmes-style sleuth friend of mine, the one and only person who has been able to successfully deduce the secret identity of that Mysterious Militant Mailman Mel Carriere - called me out today because it has been a while since the Tsunami has flooded the Internet with its massive, murky, turbulent wave clogged with whatever mental debris flushes out from the dusty back corners of my mind, which hasn't been touched by a broom since my LLV was last swept, which was probably months ago.  Anyhow, even though my brain is clogged with that same dried equine waste product that comes from all the horse farms on my route; the stuff that is now actually starting to form tiny windblown dunes in the back of my postal vehicle, I will do my best to fulfill my blogging duties.

The problem is I couldn't really think of any out of the ordinary topics that I thought would be of any interest to anybody.  My supervisor did tell me yesterday that my DPS count was "irrelevant," which is a shocking but not surprising thing to say considering the source, but I didn't think I could squeeze enough out of that worn out old sponge to fill a blog.  So I decided to go online and check the Postal News, to see if there were any noteworthy events taking place on Planet Postal to merit an irreverent, perhaps snarky comment or two.  Fortunately I did find some low hanging mushy fruit there; albeit a little ripe, perhaps borderline rotten.  So here are my "news ripples" for March 25th, 2015.

• The USPS keeps raking in massive operating profits, such as the 1.4 billion the Postal Service earned through February of the current year, which is what you get after you take real revenue and then subtract real expenses.  But as usual, after this the "Postal Enhancement" bookkeepers get their slimy hands on it and suck the profits away into some abstract, hallucinatory pension fund that will probably never contribute a dollar to anybody's retirement. Then we are left with some imaginary, contrived, phantasmal loss that politicians will use as a weapon to say that we are broke and either need to be fixed or sold for scrap.

• Is Jason Chaffetz, the supposedly "kinder, gentler" replacement for "he who must not be named" Darrell Issa as Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, starting to reveal his true colors?  When the man first took office he was busy redecorating the committee meeting room; hanging charming, folksy pictures of Post Offices and Postal Workers and taking down all the hideous eyesore Darrell Issa selfies that polluted the place before.  But now in a surprising statement he says he wants to flat out fire any federal employee who is delinquent on his or her taxes.  Gee, I wonder how many of Chaffetz's fat cat Republican financiers are tax evaders and tax cheats - but I'll bet you never will hear him say a word about depriving them of their livelihood.  Sure didn't take long for Chaffetz to take off his halo and reveal the Issa-style devil horns budding on his forehead.

• After record-breaking snowfalls in the winter of 2014-2015, some Postal Customers in Massachusetts actually have the audacity to complain about poor service.  As is usually the case with these complainers, I'll give you good odds that none of them were among the kind, understanding, appreciative postal customers who invited their letter carriers inside to drink a cup of hot chocolate and warm their frosty fingers.  They're probably also the same customers who never shovel the sidewalk.  And then they complain when their Mailman's numb, frostbitten digits drop an occasional letter at the neighbor's house.  Instead of belly-aching about what you could never do, why don't you get off your fat, cozy butt, brave that icy walkway and slippery steps you never clean off in front of your house, and GO GET YOUR MAIL YOURSELF.  Then again, your neighbors probably don't like you either.

That's probably enough ranting for one day.  I'm going back to lounging by the pool with these ducks who live on my route, that you can see in the photo above.  Maybe a dip in the pool will clean out some of that horsesh** from between my ears.

Below are links to the articles I commented upon.

Postal Operating Profits

Chaffetz Wants to Fire Tax Delinquent Federal Employees

Postal Complainers in Massachusetts

Duck Photo is my own.  Steal it if you want, I'll be flattered.

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