From this Saturday's Forbes on Fox, more attacks on labor unions and calls to privatize the United States Postal Service. Host David Asman opened the segment talking about the postal union's decision to hire Ron Bloom, one of the advisers that helped steer the auto industry out of bankruptcy.
That was followed by a call from panel member Dennis Kneale to just shut down the whole Post Office and allow FexEx and UPS to buy it and in his words to “chop it up.” Fellow panel member Victoria Barret, while disagreeing with Kneale that it's not possible to just “junk the whole Post Office” and said she still likes sending Christmas cards, but of course thought that the union contracts need to be ripped up.
Here was host David Asman's response to that:
ASMAN: Well Steve, you can send Christmas cards for free on the Internet now! I mean the Internet changes everything, doesn't it?
To which Barret and Forbes responded, “It's not the same.” Well, no it's not but how about someone reminding Asman that the Internet is not free?
Forbes continued with the fearmongering that if the Post Office is not privatized, tax payers are going to be on the hook for their pension funds and finally one of their panelists actually pointed out the real problem the Post Office is facing right now, which is that Congress has forced them to over fund their pensions to the tune of $75 billion and if some of that money was returned, it would solve their problems immediately.
Which was naturally met with scorn from the other panel members. When Asman also brought up the fact that shutting down the Post Office would likely harm services for those who live in rural areas, Forbes claimed that private industry would take care of the problem on its own and Dennis Kneale chimed back in and said if they're unhappy with not having service after the business is privatized, they can...get this... just move. So if you live in a rural area, according to Kneale you'd better suck it up and move to the city if you want to get mail service. What a guy. So much for those claims of “compassionate conservatism.”
Our own Kenneth Quinnell has been following this story which you can read about here:
New York Times Blames Workers for Postal Service Woes, Glosses Over Real Cause of Problems
here:
More Details Emerge in Republican Assault on Post Office and Postal Unions
and here:
