Eric Wattree

As I pointed out last week, the forty-year experiment of trying to provide mail service by using the principles of private enterprise has led to the Postal Service becoming so corrupt and inefficient it no longer is able to perform its primary mission, delivering the mail.

It is easy to criticize the Postal Service. Everyone does. Like Congress, the agency has become so dysfunctional it is an easy target.

The U.S. Postal Service is on the verge of collapse. Customer service is being curtailed, the price of stamps is going up, much- needed employees are being excessed, and the wages of gainfully employed workers are being stolen with impunity.

In a recent column, I pointed out how on the day after Thanksgiving, the Postal Service took the unprecedented action of closing the doors on its customers at both the Barrington and Bicentennial stations two hours before its scheduled closing time without prior notification.

The hip-hop community takes great pride in “keeping it real.”

Are they really keeping it real, or are they simply struttin' around saying, "look at me," while the corporate elite have them unknowingly doing an updated version of Steppin' Fechit?

I received a flood of emails and phone calls over the weekend, all from postal employees in the Los Angeles District, angrily reporting that the U.S. Postal Service has committed yet another assault on customer service.

As one who always has tried to be progressive in his thinking, here are my observations on the contemporary progressive movement. I long have recognized that I do not corner the market on knowledge, wisdom or intellect. I share my thoughts not as a condescending edict handed down by a self-appointed pundit but in the hope that observations of an average man are worthy of public discussion.

In President Obama's own words, the Democratic Party received a shellacking in the mid-term elections.

I love President Obama, but he is scaring me. He could be one of the best Presidents America has ever had except for one serious shortcoming. He doesn’t have the killer instinct necessary to survive in Washington, D.C. I thought he'd learn from the whipping that the Democrats just took in the last election, but he already is talking about compromising.

In 1921, eight years before the Great Depression, Republicans took over the helm of the nation for 12 years. There were three Republican administrations, starting with Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding's administration for one thing more than anything other, scandal. The Teapot Dome Scandal erupted during Harding's Presidency, considered the most corrupt in the history, until Nixon's, then Reagan's, and finally Bush's.