[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]A reader asked me last week why I've become so fixated on the Post Office. Since I worked for the Postal Service for 27 years, I care about postal workers. They are a part of my extended family. I have an intimate understanding of the hardships they endure.
As a political animal, I understand that the Postal Service is a microcosm of America. It is clear that the injustice inflicted on postal employees today is a prelude to what American workers will face. The reader's remarks demonstrate why.
“Any organization with hundreds of thousands of employees is going to experience graft and fraud on all levels from time to time. But you don't seem to have made a case for this being a noteworthy problem at the USPS. With the growth of email and competition from FedEx, UPS and even Twitter, the organization has become more superfluous. It must downsize and become vastly more efficient. Employees, whether in management or on the line, will have to be more productive (and thousands released) because the “product” is increasingly shunned. This is not an evil government plot to trod upon the weak. It is reality.”
First, let's dispose of the myth. The Postal Service isn't in trouble due to competition. Its competition is due to managerial incompetence. FedEx and UPS owe their existence to Post Office incompetence. There is a market for the service the Postal Service is supposed to provide. In one sense, the reader is correct. What's going on in the Postal Service is part of reality, but that should not be.
An American Tradition or an Insult?
Due to a 30-year assault on our educational system and endless mind-numbing titillation over our airwaves, this reader, and America, have been conditioned to believe that “a little corruption now and then” is the American way.
It is not. If we allow ourselves to embrace that philosophy the middle class is doomed. Due to the corporate media, we're headed in that direction.
The oil spill in the Gulf is a major catastrophe. But the media hasn't become fixated on this story because it's an environmental disaster. They are covering that angle because it can't be ignored.
For three reasons the story has drawn so much attention: 11 people were killed, the live video of oil rushing out into the ocean provides compelling video, and the disaster is going to cost a lot of important people a lot of money, trouble, and controversy. Informing the people has nothing to do with it.
The media is not as interested in informing the public as it is providing revenue, enhancing drama. The primary reason we know about the Gulf spill is because it managed to tear the media's attention away from really important stories, like Tiger Woods's sex life.
That reflects the new journalistic standard of what's newsworthy. The standard is that it must be titillating, gruesome, have great visuals (the wives of coal miners crying over their dead husbands' bodies), or have a negative impact on important people.
Why Aren’t They Interested?
The MSM has become voyeurs, peeping toms, totally reactive. They no longer have any interest in digging beneath the surface to keep the people informed.
They become giddy over the chance to exploit the misery of the very people they've failed. Where was the media that should have been investigating the rationale behind the invasion of Iraq? Getting film footage of themselves riding through the desert on tanks, in bed with the very government officials that they should have been investigating. If they'd focused on good journalism instead of self-service, they might have saved the lives of thousands of American troops, and nearly a million Iraqis.
The mainstream media never becomes interested in a story until there's an explosion, 29 mineworkers trapped in a poisonous coal mine, 11 oil workers vaporized in the Gulf, or when a postal worker snaps from abuse and walks into the Post Office with an M16.
What has happened to the victims’ families? We'll never know. They are yesterday's news.
The Postal Service is pushing for a five-day delivery schedule under the pretext of saving on fuel costs. Is the media investigating that contention? The story is not sexy enough. If they investigated, they would find the Postal Service is trying to do is dump the consequences of its irresponsible management in the laps of the workers again.
Just because the postal service will only deliver five days a week doesn't mean that mail won't continue to come in seven days a week. What that means is on Monday letter carriers are going to be forced to process and deliver 24 hours of mail in eight hours. Since there's no Sunday delivery letter carriers are already forced to deliver 16 hours of mail in eight hours every Monday; that's why the postal service finds it necessary to steal their overtime.
The postal service is simply trying to institutionalize the robbery that's already currently going on illegally. But you won't hear about that in the mainstream media – at least, until someone snaps and kills innocent postal workers, or God forbid, goes berserk on someone's front porch. But mark my words, once that does happen, and it's going to, you won't be able to get passed the hordes of media with a blowtorch – and never once will they suggest that senior postal service officials were criminally negligent.
In last week's column, we quoted U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes of New Hampshire saying he wrote to the Inspector General of the Postal Service last year to investigate claims letter carriers’ timesheets had been altered for the last six years. Last December, arbitrator Sherrie Rose Talmadge said that “management's violations were so egregious over a period of many years that punitive damages were awarded to deter the service from further clock ring violations.”
The American people should be aghast over the fact that a government agency is casually committing a felony against its citizens. Poor and middle class workers in this country are being rapidly conditioned by both the government and the corporate media to meekly accept the ethical standards of a banana republic.
I'll respond to the above reader with a question of my own. How can any responsible journalist not continue to beat a drum over this issue?
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Chairman Edolphus Towns
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202.225.5051
Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think and act like me. It’s just that God does.
