In shallow waters, shrimps make fools of dragons.
Chinese Proverb
Image of the Day
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| Via Dollar Vigilante |
A Charity That Brings Sight to Many Blind People By Replacing Defective Lens Inexpensively
Only in Obama's America
Americans Not In The Labor Force Rise To Record 93,194,000
To Me, "Happy Hour" Is When Lawmakers Are No Longer in Session...
Facebook Corner
(FEE). After eight years of losses, why is there a government postal monopoly?
Because the government isn't meant to turn a profit? How many years in a row has the USMC or the Department of Education failed to turn a profit?
The USPS hasn't been a government department since 1971. As for the economically illiterate OP who sees virtue in ineffective, inefficient bloated government going over budget at the expense of the legalized plunder of taxpayer, he's out of touch with the fact that a large government footprint suppresses economic growth. "Public goods"? Really, people? The USPS is an anachronism, and anyone who has studied the history knows that the monopoly of home delivery was conferred by a corrupt 19th century Congress, not the Constitution.
USPS loses money because of pension funding requirements that are designed to make it look like it's losing money, and because it is prohibited from owning airplanes like UPS and FedEx do and must instead must subsidize commercial airlines to carry the mail.
No, stupid union whore. The issue is ensuring that the taxpayer doesn't have to bail out the USPS retirement system. The money should come from USPS customers. The USPS has a dying cash cow monopoly in first-class mail. The problem is that the crony greedy postal union imposes an unsustainable, noncompetitive burden on a deteriorating business model which is an anachronism in an era where emails and attachments are sent at minimal costs with almost immediate delivery and higher reliability. As for the USPS owning its own aircraft, that's a recipe for losing even more money than it is already; the air haul business is very competitive and outside the competency of the USPS; it makes sense to use vendor who can provide the service cheaper than the USPS could do it by itself.
(IPI). Today the Illinois Supreme Court unanimously struck down Senate Bill 1, the pension-reform law former Gov. Pat Quinn signed in 2013. The decision essentially means that government employees’ “right” to ever-increasing pension benefits gets stronger protection than any constitutional right the rest of us have.
I've been predicting that the corrupt Illinois Supreme Court would do exactly what they did. It doesn't matter; when local and/or the state budgets quadruple or more over the past 15 years to handle ballooning payouts of million-dollar-plus retirements of Illinois public sector workers llving up to decades at half-pay or better, more than the median household income, you are going to see an unprecedented taxpayer revolt against the greedy bastards. I'm so sick and tired of reading the crony trolls in this thread argue a deal is a deal; when these retards don't understand is there are other claims to state funds which are also contracts and deserve equal protection under the law. As Andrew Jackson reportedly said to Chief Justice Marshall, "Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it." We have already seen citizens in California rise up against unsustainable pensions. All a rich Illinois resident has to do is leave the state. Illinois' corrupt Democrats will soon learn, there's a limited supply of high-earners, and even if you stole all their money, it doesn't take long for the burden to fall on the middle-income.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Eric Allie via IPI |
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall |
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| Courtesy of the original artist via Reason |
Olivia Newton-John (with ELO), "Xanadu"
