Going Postal.....

[lurker]

Yelp, first class postage is jumping to 39 cents. The story is that the increase is to fund civil service retirement.

No mention was made about (just) increasing the rate of junk mail.

Price of a stamp rises to 39 centsBY BOB CURTRIGHTThe Wichita EagleA first-class postage stamp will jump to 39 cents -- up 2 cents -- Sunday, the first increase in four years.
The hike, which amounts to about 5 percent, isn't because the post office is losing money, said Tim Norman, U.S. Postal Service spokesman in Wichita.
Instead, he says, it's to cover a $3.1 billion escrow account to fund civil service retirement programs mandated by Congress.
"Without the mandate, it would not have been necessary to raise this year," Norman said.
The new 39-cent stamp, which went on sale Dec. 8, features the Statue of Liberty against the background of the American flag.
There is no 39-cent designation, just "first class USA."
One of the first stamps that will say 39 cents honors Oscar-winner and Wichita native Hattie McDaniel, available Jan. 25, Norman said.
There is also a new 2-cent stamp for those who still have some 37-cent stamps hanging around. It features a silver and turquoise Navajo necklace on a black background.
About 2.5 billion 2-cent stamps were printed to bridge the gap, Norman said.
Why do the feds pick odd numbers like 34, 37 or 39 cents rather than rounding off to 35 or 40 cents to prevent dealing with pennies?
"We hear that all the time," Norman said with a laugh. "Even those of us in the Postal Service ask.
"We can raise our rates only to cover our costs.... The increases reflect what's necessary, not what's convenient."
International rates, which are determined separately from domestic prices, will also go up Sunday -- nearly 6 percent, on average.
The cost of sending a letter to Canada and Mexico will increase by 3 cents to 63 cents. To all other countries, the increase is by 4 cents to 84 cents.
The upcoming 2-cent domestic increase is actually one of the smaller ones in postal history. There were 3-cent increases in 2002, 1995, 1988, 1981 and 1975.
There was even a 4-cent increase -- the single largest jump -- in 1991.
And there were two increases in 1981: from 15 to 18 cents, then six months later to 20 cents.
It's hard to believe, but rates have also dropped -- twice.
The first drop -- from 3 cents to 2 cents -- came in October 1883. It jumped to 3 cents again during World War I, then dropped back to 2 cents in 1919.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/13531331.htm

[Lone Gunman]

Do ya think maybe email is taking a bite out of the USPS's monopoly on the way we communicate with each other?

[K C Muffin]

Email and on-line shopping and bill paying is taking a HUGE bite out of my postage expenditures. But they seem to be hiring more and more people. I dunno. They're pricing themselves out of a job. At some point, Congress is going to have to look at the necessity of it all and see that a private company really can do it well - and cheaper!

[wordsmythe]

Yeah Halliburton could do it.

[K C Muffin]

Originally Posted by wordsmythe

Yeah Halliburton could do it.

Yeah, there's always a chance of that....wouldn't it be a shame?

[Bubba]

Originally Posted by wordsmythe

Yeah Halliburton could do it.

Probably get awarded the job with a "no bid" contract too!

[lurker]

Originally Posted by wordsmythe

Yeah Halliburton could do it.

Yeah Halliburton could do it, if the need ever arises.

In order to understand what Halliburton/Kellogg, Brown & Root is today, you really should learn just how President Johnson's early House & Senate years (after his school teaching ended) were spent handing government contracts their way; with very little oversight. Along comes WWII, the Cold War, Korea, VietNam AND the huge increase in worldwide oil demand...

Brown & Root, though, was riding higher than ever thanks to its old political fixer, LBJ, now Kennedy's vice president. At the time of the merger, Brown & Root had just been handed one of its biggest federal contracts, the multi-billion dollar deal to build NASA's Manned Space Center outside Houston-a complex that would later be renamed the Johnson Space Center.

But the most majestic profits, as always, were to be made during wartime and LBJ gave them a big one. During World War II and Korea, Brown & Root made billions building bases and ships in the US. But Johnson's Vietnam War forever changed the role of Pentagon contractors, and Halliburton's Brown & Root subsidiary lead the way.

Halliburton/KBR were available to tackle the needs that couldn't be met by this Nation's Bureaucracies.

It was discovered that a private company could handle much of the Military's logistics and an attempt to discover how to get that done was launched by George the Elder.

In 1992, Halliburton won a $3.9 million contract from the Pentagon in the waning days of the George H.W. Bush administration to a develop a scheme for outsourcing to private corporations much of the logistics and construction work previously handled by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The plan came to be known as LOGCAP and Halliburton soon got an additional $5 million to flesh out the details.

The additional $5 million came at the beginning of the Clinton's years and Bill found it very useful to use Halliburton to reduce the number of troops required to fight Bill's Wars. Halliburton's CEO, Dick Cheney, found it very profitable helping him with his fights.

First stop Somalia, where Halliburton set up shop providing fuel, food, laundry services and even morticians for US troops.

Then in 1995, at the same time Cheney was taking over the reins at Halliburton, the Pentagon handed the company a $550 million contract to provide logistical support for US and NATO's IFOR forces in Bosnia, Croatia and Hungry. Halliburton won another $6.3 million contract to service US troops stationed at the air base in Aviano, Italy, from which US jets launched bombing raids on Yugoslavia.

The contract was another of the notorious cost-plus deals, where Halliburton simply faxed over receipts to the Pentagon and got fully reimbursed, along with a guaranteed 1 percent profit and performance bonuses that went as high as 8 percent of the total costs. It's the contract that keeps on giving.

And Give and Give and Give he did.

it was politically expedient since it allowed civilian officials in the Pentagon to steer billions into the coffers of favored contractors, such as Halliburton, Lockheed and DynCorp. Far from being the path toward a leaner military, the General Accounting Office pegged the LOGCAP program as an adventure in "high risk government spending."

In 1997, the renewal of the LOGCAP contract was finally put up for competitive bid and, lo and behold, DynCorp snatched the golden egg of Pentagon contracts away from Halliburton. But even the Clinton administration showed mercy to the Republican firm. It cushioned the blow by awarding Halliburton a $405 million no bid deal to provide support for US troops in Bosnia. Two years later, Halliburton won the 5-year renewal of this deal, valued at $180 million.

Then in 1999 Halliburton struck gold once again in the Balkans when Clinton went to war against Serbia over Kosovo. Halliburton got a $200 million cost/plus contract to work in Kosovo. But before the year had ended that contract, covering everything from road construction, vehicle maintenance and power generation to food services, latrines and mail delivery, had generated nearly a billion dollars in revenues for Halliburton.

Of course, the deal had sublime benefits for the Clinton administration as well. By outsourcing most of the logistics work in Kosovo, the Pentagon was able to reduce its deployment by around 8,000 troops, helping Clinton and Albright to sell an unpopular war at home.

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair07142005.html

lurker bows and wows....

[Highwayman]

But even the Klinton administration showed mercy to the Republican firm. It cushioned the blow by awarding Halliburton a $405 million no bid deal to provide support for US troops in Bosnia.

Was there outrage over this no bid deal? I can’t seem to remember any…..