We have spent a lot of our recent posts about which state or city will go bankrupt first and the massive fraud that has been going on relative to government programs. But that does not mean that the potential class has been up to its traditional incompetence, insanity, and screw ups. So, let’s catch up with the shenanigans that continue to plague the country:
1)We have previously discussed the reality that the Post Office is in serious financial trouble. Over the past few decades the volume of first class mail pieces has decreased from about 220 million first class mail pieces a year to about 110 million a year. It is obvious to anyone with a just a bit of common sense that the Post Office has been hurtling towards bankruptcy and something has to be done to prevent that.
But over the decades the Washington political class has done nothing to resolve the financial problems facing the Post Office, so much so that this is where we find ourselves today:
If nothing had been done, the Post Office was going to run out of cash for operations by 2027.
The good news is that the day of reckoning has been delayed to 2031 or so.
The bad news is that the Post Office management has stopped making payments into their employees’ retirement funds, endangering the retirement payments to retiring/retired Post Office employees.
Thus, just to keep operating, the Post Office is using employee retirement funds to keep afloat, a tactic that only delays the inevitable financial disaster.
According to the Postmaster General: "What we are doing right now is we're basically borrowing money from our retirement plans to fund current operations. I'm not particularly comfortable with that. I promise you our employees are not particularly comfortable with that. You all shouldn't be comfortable with that. None of us should be comfortable with that. To me, that's why we have to have this discussion of how we fix this broken business model."
The Post Office lost a whopping $2 billion in this fiscal year’s second quarter after losing $9 billion last year.
The Post Office business model is certainly now in the decline stage of its life cycle. Drastic, courageous action is needed by the political class to develop and deploy a new business model. Whether it is restricting the number of days it delivers mail, consolidating Post Office locations to save on real estate and utility costs, etc. something has to be done. The mail volume will continue to decrease, expenses will continue to go up, that is reality and denying that reality makes the end result even worse.
Unfortunately, as we all know, the American politicians always have neither the ability, the foresight, or courage to take the drastic actions needed to resolve any problem facing the country. Including changing the business model of postal operations.
Side note: I have been doing a little survey of mail deliveries on my own. Over the past four days, I have received 21 pieces of mail. Seventeen of those mail pieces were advertisements for tree pruning, auto sales, real estate sales, and other business advertisements. Only four pieces of mail were non-advertising and important in my life. Whether I got those advertisements today or tomorrow would make no difference in my life.
My point: given how much less important mail we all receive these days, it would probably not be a hardship if the Post Office not only dropped Saturday delivery but could probably drop Tuesday and Thursday deliveries also. A day delay in getting that auto deal advertisement is not a big deal. Restricting mail delivery days would greatly reduce costs and give the Post Office some financial breathing room.
But to think that our politicians in Washington have the courage to restrict the number of delivery days, or do anything else needed to fix what is broken, is just wishful thinking.
2)One would hope that those elected to serve the citizens in their government entity would be of the highest honor and integrity. Unfortunately, that is not often the case, as illustrated by a recent situation in New Jersey:
A New Jersey sitting councilman was recently arrested for allegedly running a loansharking operation out of his council office.
Yes, running an illegal criminal enterprise out of his government office, unreal.
Councilman John Alite, of Englishtown was arrested and charged with theft by extortion, corporate misconduct, usury, and terroristic threats.
He was arrested with another gentleman who was allegedly his partner in running a loan shark racket.
They are accused of making loans at so-called "extreme rates” and threatened loan recipients with violent acts to force repayment, a classic organized crime loansharking approach.
But these allegation maybe should not surprise us since 15 years ago he received a 10 year prison sentence on racketeering charges and yet still ended up being a high ranking city government official.
He supposedly had ties to the Gambino crime family and notorious gangster, John Gotti Jr.
Obviously these two gentlemen are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But if the allegations are true, it really makes you wonder how broken our political processes are if someone with a long criminal record can get elected and yet continue those criminal activities out of a taxpayer funded office.
3)We have not been a fan of New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, since he was elected. His ideas of government border on communism and we know from history that communism is a failed style of governance that is not conducive to freedom and a high quality of life.
But that does not mean he has not promised a high quality of life for his citizens. He has proposed "free" day care, “free” bus service, and greatly reduced grocery prices in government run grocery stores. Of course,”free” is a misleading adjective since someone is going to have to pay for all of his “free” services and that someone is the city taxpayer who will be taxed at a higher and higher rate to fund his ideas.
But these ideas have previously failed miserably around the country and around the world. Government run grocery stores in the Soviet Union and communist eastern Europe were disasters with minimal product offerings at high prices. His idea to operate government run, reduced priced grocery stores was tried and failed in Kansas City. The city lost $18 million of taxpayer wealth trying to implement Mamdani’s government grocery idea which failed miserably in just a single store location.
And Kansas City, which tried to implement another of Mamdani’s communist concepts, has another failure on its hands:
Kansas City attempted to operate a city bus system where there was no charge to those using the bus system, much like the concept Mamdani wants to implement in New York City.
But the city politicians recently abandoned the idea and started charging people bus fares once they found out that they could not afford this “free” service.
The Kansas City “free” bus service started back in 2020.
The concept of “free” bus service operated for a while but was surviving financially because of Covid relief dollars that flowed to the city and its bus operations under the Biden regime.
However, once the Federal government source of those funds dried up it became obvious that the free service could not survive without huge government subsidies.
Thus, the city’s politicians were faced with a brutal choice: greatly reduce bus service until the city government could afford to provide free service or start charging again for bus ridership.
The original forecasted cost of suspending charging for bus fares was estimated at $8.8 million a year but the real cost of “free” bus service actually came in at almost double the cost or about $15 million a year, $15 million that city taxpayers were going to have to pay to keep the “free” service.
A failed concept that has a proven track record of failure and yet, Mamdani is still pressing ahead with the idea. The cost of Kansas City’s “free” bus failure is likely tiny compared to the massively larger bus service that New York City would try to make free and probably fail doing. A failure in New York City would not be a mere $15 million but orders of magnitude higher, which again, would eventually require massive cuts to service or the eventual return to bus fares, exactly what happened in Kansas City.
And for a city facing larger and larger structural budget shortfalls in the coming years, it is unknown and doubtful if Mamdani could find the additional funding that would cover the massive loss of bus fare revenue.
Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” This concept obviously is unknown to Mamdani. Government grocery stores have failed many times. Free bus service has already failed in a smaller city that could not support a much smaller bus operation than New York City. Failed concepts that will make a failing financial situation in New York City fail even quicker with no benefit to city residents.
4)The last piece of political class insanity today is just another tragic chapter in the long story of violent insanity from the the city of Chicago:
Despite a new mayor, the violence in the city continues to grind out every day.
During a recent weekend, six residents were shot and killed and another 39 were gunshot wounded.
Unfortunately, this is just another pretty typical example of the constant gun violence in Chicago, violence that the city’s politicians have no clue on how to get under control.
And yet the mayor and the Illinois governor refuse to accept help from the Trump administration to help reduce the violence. They would rather have their citizens die and live in fear than accept help from the President they detest.
Since a very basic tenet of any government entity is to protect the lives and property of the citizens they serve, their Trump Derangement Syndrome is preventing them from executing this basic government entity. And because of their stubbornness, Chicago residents will continue to die unnecessarily.
Enough insanity for today: more carnage in Chicago, Mamdani’s favorite programs are already failures, a loan sharking politician in New Jersey, and the Post office financial death spiral gets worse.
**********************
If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
**********************
