Can Any Dem/lib Tell Us What Agency The Govt Has Run Efficiently?

[Redfish]

Tens of thousands of babies in the 1950s-'60s were born with deformities like this from Thalidomide:​

Happened all over the world in over 40 countries. Didn't happen in the U.S.

Why not? Because the FDA put up a stop sign. And they were right.


This is Frances Kelsey of the FDA who put up that stop sign receiving the President's Award for Distinguished Citizen Service for doing that. She just turned 100 years old this summer.

​

I'm not sure what that has to do with "the economy" but there ya go.

Additionally?

The safety record of American Airliners are remarkable. That's not because the captains of industry wish Americans to safely travel by air. That's because the Government has rigorous regulations in regards to air travel.

another dem/lib that does not know what "efficient" means. Yes, american airlines are pretty safe compared to those of maylaysia and kenya. But is the FAA efficient in its regulation of airlines? Is TSA an efficiently run agency? How about the border patrol? are we getting efficient effective border security from that govt agency?

Hey, you asked for an example, you got two --- now you want to "yeah but" cherrypick?

Poster please.

those are not examples of efficient operations. Success can be achieved in an inefficient operation. Our military is very effective, but I don't think anyone on earth would call DOD efficient. the USPS does a pretty good job delivering the mail, but it loses money every quarter----------efficient????

Again, you show you don't have any idea what you are talking about.

"Waste" isn't necessarily inefficient. Sometimes you have to bake in "waste" into your provisioning model. Why? Because in most cases, what you are doing is not stagnant or rote. Your work or business requires you to do things are fluid and always changing. And many times you have to make the best guess about what your resources should be. It's always "efficient" to have more than you need as opposed to not enough.

Because if you have "not enough"? You've failed.

Right. The Post Office is in a business that is "fluid" and "always changing."

Who are you trying to kid?

The post office is much more effective and efficient then either FEDEX or UPS.

The reason it's "losing" money is because conservatives in Congress are trying to kill it:

1. Through funding pensions in a manner no other business or public agency has to do.
2. Having no control over how to price services, so they are kept unusually low.

Sheesh..that was easy.

USPS more efficient than Fedex and UPS----------------------that is one of the all time stupid posts to ever appear on USMB.

 

[Sallow]

Tens of thousands of babies in the 1950s-'60s were born with deformities like this from Thalidomide:​

Happened all over the world in over 40 countries. Didn't happen in the U.S.

Why not? Because the FDA put up a stop sign. And they were right.


This is Frances Kelsey of the FDA who put up that stop sign receiving the President's Award for Distinguished Citizen Service for doing that. She just turned 100 years old this summer.

​

I'm not sure what that has to do with "the economy" but there ya go.

Additionally?

The safety record of American Airliners are remarkable. That's not because the captains of industry wish Americans to safely travel by air. That's because the Government has rigorous regulations in regards to air travel.

another dem/lib that does not know what "efficient" means. Yes, american airlines are pretty safe compared to those of maylaysia and kenya. But is the FAA efficient in its regulation of airlines? Is TSA an efficiently run agency? How about the border patrol? are we getting efficient effective border security from that govt agency?

Apparently YOU DON'T know what it means.

Efficiency in regards to running a government agency MEANS provisioning the right amount of RESOURCES to EFFECTIVELY get the job done.

If you DO NOT do that. Then you are NOT efficient.

Idiot.

You really don't know what the word means do you.

efficient = capable of producing desired results without wasting materials, time, or energy.

Now, which goverment agency fits that definition?

Actually I do.

You don't.

I've owned and ran businesses. I work in the financial industry. I am a licensed practitioner of ITIL.

You have no fucking clue what you are talking about.

None.

What the hell is ITIL?

Seriously?

How is it that you are an "expert" on efficiency yet know nothing about ITIL?

Information Technology Infrastructure Library - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Sallow]

Tens of thousands of babies in the 1950s-'60s were born with deformities like this from Thalidomide:​

Happened all over the world in over 40 countries. Didn't happen in the U.S.

Why not? Because the FDA put up a stop sign. And they were right.


This is Frances Kelsey of the FDA who put up that stop sign receiving the President's Award for Distinguished Citizen Service for doing that. She just turned 100 years old this summer.

​

I'm not sure what that has to do with "the economy" but there ya go.

Additionally?

The safety record of American Airliners are remarkable. That's not because the captains of industry wish Americans to safely travel by air. That's because the Government has rigorous regulations in regards to air travel.

another dem/lib that does not know what "efficient" means. Yes, american airlines are pretty safe compared to those of maylaysia and kenya. But is the FAA efficient in its regulation of airlines? Is TSA an efficiently run agency? How about the border patrol? are we getting efficient effective border security from that govt agency?

Apparently YOU DON'T know what it means.

Efficiency in regards to running a government agency MEANS provisioning the right amount of RESOURCES to EFFECTIVELY get the job done.

If you DO NOT do that. Then you are NOT efficient.

Idiot.

You really don't know what the word means do you.

efficient = capable of producing desired results without wasting materials, time, or energy.

Now, which goverment agency fits that definition?

Actually I do.

You don't.

I've owned and ran businesses. I work in the financial industry. I am a licensed practitioner of ITIL.

You have no fucking clue what you are talking about.

None.

How come you don't own a business now? Is it because your posts here were an example of your business model and your business failed?
And who gives a rat's ass if you work on Wall Street? What's that got to do with anything? Try again.

Try what again?

What is it you do in Florida?

Grow geraniums?

What did you do before that?

And yeah..my business failed. I was young and didn't have a clear understanding of all the moving parts.

That didn't stop me. I kept going.

 

[Sallow]

Tens of thousands of babies in the 1950s-'60s were born with deformities like this from Thalidomide:​

Happened all over the world in over 40 countries. Didn't happen in the U.S.

Why not? Because the FDA put up a stop sign. And they were right.


This is Frances Kelsey of the FDA who put up that stop sign receiving the President's Award for Distinguished Citizen Service for doing that. She just turned 100 years old this summer.

​

I'm not sure what that has to do with "the economy" but there ya go.

Additionally?

The safety record of American Airliners are remarkable. That's not because the captains of industry wish Americans to safely travel by air. That's because the Government has rigorous regulations in regards to air travel.

another dem/lib that does not know what "efficient" means. Yes, american airlines are pretty safe compared to those of maylaysia and kenya. But is the FAA efficient in its regulation of airlines? Is TSA an efficiently run agency? How about the border patrol? are we getting efficient effective border security from that govt agency?

Hey, you asked for an example, you got two --- now you want to "yeah but" cherrypick?

Poster please.

those are not examples of efficient operations. Success can be achieved in an inefficient operation. Our military is very effective, but I don't think anyone on earth would call DOD efficient. the USPS does a pretty good job delivering the mail, but it loses money every quarter----------efficient????

Again, you show you don't have any idea what you are talking about.

"Waste" isn't necessarily inefficient. Sometimes you have to bake in "waste" into your provisioning model. Why? Because in most cases, what you are doing is not stagnant or rote. Your work or business requires you to do things are fluid and always changing. And many times you have to make the best guess about what your resources should be. It's always "efficient" to have more than you need as opposed to not enough.

Because if you have "not enough"? You've failed.

Right. The Post Office is in a business that is "fluid" and "always changing."

Who are you trying to kid?

The post office is much more effective and efficient then either FEDEX or UPS.

The reason it's "losing" money is because conservatives in Congress are trying to kill it:

1. Through funding pensions in a manner no other business or public agency has to do.
2. Having no control over how to price services, so they are kept unusually low.

Sheesh..that was easy.

USPS more efficient than Fedex and UPS----------------------that is one of the all time stupid posts to ever appear on USMB.

Eyeah.

I am sure you use both all the time to mail stuff.

 

[Sallow]

Most of them.

Most government agencies couldn't find their backsides with both hands in a well-lit room surrounded by mirrors.

Oftentimes staffed by dull, unimaginative, self-seeking bureaucratic and calendar-watching pension-sniffers, bellying-up to the trough for their unfair share of budget dollars, territorial, secretive, self-promoting, self-preserving, overlapping and wasteful, many of those same departments need a thorough housecleaning, mission and charter review, new performance indicators and outcomes evaluation, new and more visible and transparent public accountability, and, in some cases, closure, consolidation or downsizing.

Uh-huh.

Unlike the Private Sector, which are run by the cream of the crop.

frankly, I've seen more incompetence in the private sector than I've ever seen in the government.

My experience has been pretty much the reverse.

As have the experiences of a great many others, else the stereotyping of government agencies would never have gained such traction.

Private companies have a bottom-line indicator of success... their bottom line.

Government agencies can operate inefficiently (sometimes, grotesquely inefficiently) for decades on end, without fear of closure, because of a guaranteed revenue stream.

And a highly politicized and pro forma Performance Review process.

You know as well as I do that these fundamental differences between the public and private sectors contribute-to and sustain the inefficiency of a great many government agencies.

This is not to say that there are not legions of dedicated public servants within that sector who are largely devoted to their country and service to their countrymen.

But to ignore the grotesque inefficiencies and problematic operations of so many of these agencies is to ignore the 10-ton elephant in the room.

And there in lies the difference between conservative and liberal thought.

For conservatives, wealth is the one and only goal. With wealth, for a conservative, comes power and the ability to exert one's will over others.

For liberals, it is the advancement of civilization, as a whole that is the goal. If a civilization is effective in providing safety, scholarship and is sustainable for the future, that's success.

It's a vastly different mindset.

Newsflash, mine good colleague...

We are closer to being on the same page here than you appear to perceive...

My reference to private corporations and gauges for success is not an indicator that I (or anyone else) citing that gauge is not also in favor of the advancement of civilization.

It is merely an articulation of the hard-and-fast indicators available in the private sector, versus the need for better barometers and mission and charter and goals and outcomes measurement in the public sector.

Nowhere in my own meanderings here on the subject will you find a mindless advocacy that the private sector can do everything better than the public one.

I throw rocks at the public sector here as my own microscopic contribution to public airings of opining that we have much work yet to do on the public side of the fence.

Well heck.

I am a big advocate of finding out where a plan goes wrong..and fixing it.

Yes men are just as injurious to a process as people who want to tear it down.

Grats.

how would you fix our national debt of 17 trillion dollars?

Put a moratorium on Defense Spending for 2 years.

That would clean up about 16 trillion in debt.

How would Obama destroy ISIS as he said he wants to do? Would you lay off 100% of the military?

your statement is just plain stupid, not surprising coming from you.

Well no..it's not at all.

And it puts squarely on display, you folks aren't serious about debt.

Not one bit.

 

[Redfish]

Tens of thousands of babies in the 1950s-'60s were born with deformities like this from Thalidomide:​

Happened all over the world in over 40 countries. Didn't happen in the U.S.

Why not? Because the FDA put up a stop sign. And they were right.


This is Frances Kelsey of the FDA who put up that stop sign receiving the President's Award for Distinguished Citizen Service for doing that. She just turned 100 years old this summer.

​

I'm not sure what that has to do with "the economy" but there ya go.

Additionally?

The safety record of American Airliners are remarkable. That's not because the captains of industry wish Americans to safely travel by air. That's because the Government has rigorous regulations in regards to air travel.

another dem/lib that does not know what "efficient" means. Yes, american airlines are pretty safe compared to those of maylaysia and kenya. But is the FAA efficient in its regulation of airlines? Is TSA an efficiently run agency? How about the border patrol? are we getting efficient effective border security from that govt agency?

Hey, you asked for an example, you got two --- now you want to "yeah but" cherrypick?

Poster please.

those are not examples of efficient operations. Success can be achieved in an inefficient operation. Our military is very effective, but I don't think anyone on earth would call DOD efficient. the USPS does a pretty good job delivering the mail, but it loses money every quarter----------efficient????

Again, you show you don't have any idea what you are talking about.

"Waste" isn't necessarily inefficient. Sometimes you have to bake in "waste" into your provisioning model. Why? Because in most cases, what you are doing is not stagnant or rote. Your work or business requires you to do things are fluid and always changing. And many times you have to make the best guess about what your resources should be. It's always "efficient" to have more than you need as opposed to not enough.

Because if you have "not enough"? You've failed.

Right. The Post Office is in a business that is "fluid" and "always changing."

Who are you trying to kid?

The post office is much more effective and efficient then either FEDEX or UPS.

The reason it's "losing" money is because conservatives in Congress are trying to kill it:

1. Through funding pensions in a manner no other business or public agency has to do.
2. Having no control over how to price services, so they are kept unusually low.

Sheesh..that was easy.

USPS more efficient than Fedex and UPS----------------------that is one of the all time stupid posts to ever appear on USMB.

Eyeah.

I am sure you use both all the time to mail stuff.

operating and operating efficiently are two very different things. Fedex and UPS do not lose money every quarter, USPS does.

 

[Redfish]

Most of them.

Most government agencies couldn't find their backsides with both hands in a well-lit room surrounded by mirrors.

Oftentimes staffed by dull, unimaginative, self-seeking bureaucratic and calendar-watching pension-sniffers, bellying-up to the trough for their unfair share of budget dollars, territorial, secretive, self-promoting, self-preserving, overlapping and wasteful, many of those same departments need a thorough housecleaning, mission and charter review, new performance indicators and outcomes evaluation, new and more visible and transparent public accountability, and, in some cases, closure, consolidation or downsizing.

Uh-huh.

Unlike the Private Sector, which are run by the cream of the crop.

frankly, I've seen more incompetence in the private sector than I've ever seen in the government.

My experience has been pretty much the reverse.

As have the experiences of a great many others, else the stereotyping of government agencies would never have gained such traction.

Private companies have a bottom-line indicator of success... their bottom line.

Government agencies can operate inefficiently (sometimes, grotesquely inefficiently) for decades on end, without fear of closure, because of a guaranteed revenue stream.

And a highly politicized and pro forma Performance Review process.

You know as well as I do that these fundamental differences between the public and private sectors contribute-to and sustain the inefficiency of a great many government agencies.

This is not to say that there are not legions of dedicated public servants within that sector who are largely devoted to their country and service to their countrymen.

But to ignore the grotesque inefficiencies and problematic operations of so many of these agencies is to ignore the 10-ton elephant in the room.

And there in lies the difference between conservative and liberal thought.

For conservatives, wealth is the one and only goal. With wealth, for a conservative, comes power and the ability to exert one's will over others.

For liberals, it is the advancement of civilization, as a whole that is the goal. If a civilization is effective in providing safety, scholarship and is sustainable for the future, that's success.

It's a vastly different mindset.

Newsflash, mine good colleague...

We are closer to being on the same page here than you appear to perceive...

My reference to private corporations and gauges for success is not an indicator that I (or anyone else) citing that gauge is not also in favor of the advancement of civilization.

It is merely an articulation of the hard-and-fast indicators available in the private sector, versus the need for better barometers and mission and charter and goals and outcomes measurement in the public sector.

Nowhere in my own meanderings here on the subject will you find a mindless advocacy that the private sector can do everything better than the public one.

I throw rocks at the public sector here as my own microscopic contribution to public airings of opining that we have much work yet to do on the public side of the fence.

Well heck.

I am a big advocate of finding out where a plan goes wrong..and fixing it.

Yes men are just as injurious to a process as people who want to tear it down.

Grats.

how would you fix our national debt of 17 trillion dollars?

Put a moratorium on Defense Spending for 2 years.

That would clean up about 16 trillion in debt.

How would Obama destroy ISIS as he said he wants to do? Would you lay off 100% of the military?

your statement is just plain stupid, not surprising coming from you.

Well no..it's not at all.

And it puts squarely on display, you folks aren't serious about debt.

Not one bit.

and someone who says to curtail all defense spending for two years is serious?????

How about this-----------cut all federal agency budgets by 30%, no exceptions. Cut all SS, welfare, food stamps, and other govt payouts by 30%. Cut congressional salaries and benefits by 30%.

Cut every line in the federal budget by 30%. Now, thats a serious proposal. How aboout it?

 

[Sallow]

That no fault of the USPS.

The Truth About The Post Office s Financial Mess#.

The financial woes of the U.S. Postal System have become a point of contention on Capitol Hill. The Postal Service is supposed to make a $5.5 billion payment to its retiree health care fund by November 18th... but doesn't have the money.
US Postal Service workers have a retiree health care benefit in addition to their pension. Before Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the USPS operated under a pay-as-you-go model for retiree health care funding. The new law requires the Postal Service to pre-fund its benefit obligations.
"The idea is that enough money is saved over the course of a career that the benefit is fully paid for by the time the worker retires.
Thanks to these prefunding payments, the Postal Service has greatly reduced its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits. At the end of fiscal year 2010, these obligations were under $49 billion – a substantial sum, but much more manageable. If the Postal Service continues making its prefunding payments, its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits will be around $33 billion by the end of the decade. And the postal service will be on course to pay these benefits over time," a Congressional insider explained.
But this pre-funding has become a lightning rod of controversy.
Members of the postal workers union say the pre-funding requirement has created a fiscal mess. Some people have even claimed that law has the effect of requiring the postal service to fund retirement obligations for people who are not yet employed by the USPS--potential future employees.
No one ever intended the law to work that way. And, in fact, it doesn't. Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees.
In light of all the controversy, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent off a series of questions on the pre-funding controversy to the Congressional Research Service to get to the bottom of the question: is pre-funding the reason for the USPS fiscal woes?
C-Suite Insider has exclusively obtained the CRS Memorandum on Postal Service Retiree Health Issue to Chairman Issa as well as an email explaining in further detail their findings. Below is a verbatim email correspondence between the CRS and Chairman Issa's office on the prefunding of 75 years of retiree health care benefits in just 10 years.
"The confusion over 75 years may be due to an "accounting" and not an "actuarial or funding" issue. They only have to fund the future liability of their current or former workforce. This would include some actuarial estimate about the mortality rates of their current workers (I.e. how long they live). So a 25 year old worker would have an average life expectancy (from birth) of 78.7 years. Thus, they would have to project future retiree health benefits for this individual up to about 54 years in the future.
But for accounting purposes they must estimate the future liability over a 75 year period (according to OPM financial accounting guidelines). In this case, they would make some assumptions about new entrants into the workforce and addresses your second question.
Theoretically, these new entrants could include someone who is not born yet. While they have to account for these future liabilities on their financial statements they do not have to fund them if they are not related to their current or former workforce."
Based on the findings of this memorandum, I asked Chairman Issa what his message is to the US Postal Service Unions who say Congress is to be blamed for this crisis.
Chairman Issa: Union leaders must understand that there is no easy fix to a crisis created by declining mail revenues. The often non-existent accounting issues unions want to talk about don’t address fundamental changes to delivery created by the growth of the Internet. Union leaders need to work with, not against, Congress on postal reform, because the alternative is a possible shut-down of the Postal Service next summer

And the usual suspects are involved.

 

[Meathead]

USPS is an excellent example of government which cannot adapt to change. My 85 year-old mother is the only one I know that still sends letters. That bird has pretty much flown.

 

[Sallow]

Most of them.

Most government agencies couldn't find their backsides with both hands in a well-lit room surrounded by mirrors.

Oftentimes staffed by dull, unimaginative, self-seeking bureaucratic and calendar-watching pension-sniffers, bellying-up to the trough for their unfair share of budget dollars, territorial, secretive, self-promoting, self-preserving, overlapping and wasteful, many of those same departments need a thorough housecleaning, mission and charter review, new performance indicators and outcomes evaluation, new and more visible and transparent public accountability, and, in some cases, closure, consolidation or downsizing.

Uh-huh.

Unlike the Private Sector, which are run by the cream of the crop.

frankly, I've seen more incompetence in the private sector than I've ever seen in the government.

My experience has been pretty much the reverse.

As have the experiences of a great many others, else the stereotyping of government agencies would never have gained such traction.

Private companies have a bottom-line indicator of success... their bottom line.

Government agencies can operate inefficiently (sometimes, grotesquely inefficiently) for decades on end, without fear of closure, because of a guaranteed revenue stream.

And a highly politicized and pro forma Performance Review process.

You know as well as I do that these fundamental differences between the public and private sectors contribute-to and sustain the inefficiency of a great many government agencies.

This is not to say that there are not legions of dedicated public servants within that sector who are largely devoted to their country and service to their countrymen.

But to ignore the grotesque inefficiencies and problematic operations of so many of these agencies is to ignore the 10-ton elephant in the room.

And there in lies the difference between conservative and liberal thought.

For conservatives, wealth is the one and only goal. With wealth, for a conservative, comes power and the ability to exert one's will over others.

For liberals, it is the advancement of civilization, as a whole that is the goal. If a civilization is effective in providing safety, scholarship and is sustainable for the future, that's success.

It's a vastly different mindset.

Newsflash, mine good colleague...

We are closer to being on the same page here than you appear to perceive...

My reference to private corporations and gauges for success is not an indicator that I (or anyone else) citing that gauge is not also in favor of the advancement of civilization.

It is merely an articulation of the hard-and-fast indicators available in the private sector, versus the need for better barometers and mission and charter and goals and outcomes measurement in the public sector.

Nowhere in my own meanderings here on the subject will you find a mindless advocacy that the private sector can do everything better than the public one.

I throw rocks at the public sector here as my own microscopic contribution to public airings of opining that we have much work yet to do on the public side of the fence.

Well heck.

I am a big advocate of finding out where a plan goes wrong..and fixing it.

Yes men are just as injurious to a process as people who want to tear it down.

Grats.

how would you fix our national debt of 17 trillion dollars?

Put a moratorium on Defense Spending for 2 years.

That would clean up about 16 trillion in debt.

How would Obama destroy ISIS as he said he wants to do? Would you lay off 100% of the military?

your statement is just plain stupid, not surprising coming from you.

Well no..it's not at all.

And it puts squarely on display, you folks aren't serious about debt.

Not one bit.

and someone who says to curtail all defense spending for two years is serious?????

How about this-----------cut all federal agency budgets by 30%, no exceptions. Cut all SS, welfare, food stamps, and other govt payouts by 30%. Cut congressional salaries and benefits by 30%.

Cut every line in the federal budget by 30%. Now, thats a serious proposal. How aboout it?

Which would make no serious dent in the debt.

Defense spending, tax breaks for corporations and subsidies for agriculture are the highest ticket items on in the budget.

We could keep our military personal on the payroll (By the way, the Constitution never provided for a military career) and cut all spending on weapons systems and patrolling the whole wide world for 2 years and save close to 16 trillion dollars.

If we were to cut oil subsidies and loopholes? You are looking at another several trillion bucks.

Of course the military spending part would throw the economy into turmoil since it is the main provider of jobs in red states like West Virginia and Utah.

Any wonder that's a scared cow to you folks?

The main provider of jobs, the hated Federal Government, is the biggest cash cow to conservatives.

 

[Redfish]

That no fault of the USPS.

The Truth About The Post Office s Financial Mess#.

The financial woes of the U.S. Postal System have become a point of contention on Capitol Hill. The Postal Service is supposed to make a $5.5 billion payment to its retiree health care fund by November 18th... but doesn't have the money.
US Postal Service workers have a retiree health care benefit in addition to their pension. Before Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the USPS operated under a pay-as-you-go model for retiree health care funding. The new law requires the Postal Service to pre-fund its benefit obligations.
"The idea is that enough money is saved over the course of a career that the benefit is fully paid for by the time the worker retires.
Thanks to these prefunding payments, the Postal Service has greatly reduced its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits. At the end of fiscal year 2010, these obligations were under $49 billion – a substantial sum, but much more manageable. If the Postal Service continues making its prefunding payments, its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits will be around $33 billion by the end of the decade. And the postal service will be on course to pay these benefits over time," a Congressional insider explained.
But this pre-funding has become a lightning rod of controversy.
Members of the postal workers union say the pre-funding requirement has created a fiscal mess. Some people have even claimed that law has the effect of requiring the postal service to fund retirement obligations for people who are not yet employed by the USPS--potential future employees.
No one ever intended the law to work that way. And, in fact, it doesn't. Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees.
In light of all the controversy, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent off a series of questions on the pre-funding controversy to the Congressional Research Service to get to the bottom of the question: is pre-funding the reason for the USPS fiscal woes?
C-Suite Insider has exclusively obtained the CRS Memorandum on Postal Service Retiree Health Issue to Chairman Issa as well as an email explaining in further detail their findings. Below is a verbatim email correspondence between the CRS and Chairman Issa's office on the prefunding of 75 years of retiree health care benefits in just 10 years.
"The confusion over 75 years may be due to an "accounting" and not an "actuarial or funding" issue. They only have to fund the future liability of their current or former workforce. This would include some actuarial estimate about the mortality rates of their current workers (I.e. how long they live). So a 25 year old worker would have an average life expectancy (from birth) of 78.7 years. Thus, they would have to project future retiree health benefits for this individual up to about 54 years in the future.
But for accounting purposes they must estimate the future liability over a 75 year period (according to OPM financial accounting guidelines). In this case, they would make some assumptions about new entrants into the workforce and addresses your second question.
Theoretically, these new entrants could include someone who is not born yet. While they have to account for these future liabilities on their financial statements they do not have to fund them if they are not related to their current or former workforce."
Based on the findings of this memorandum, I asked Chairman Issa what his message is to the US Postal Service Unions who say Congress is to be blamed for this crisis.
Chairman Issa: Union leaders must understand that there is no easy fix to a crisis created by declining mail revenues. The often non-existent accounting issues unions want to talk about don’t address fundamental changes to delivery created by the growth of the Internet. Union leaders need to work with, not against, Congress on postal reform, because the alternative is a possible shut-down of the Postal Service next summer

And the usual suspects are involved.

So the fix is to give the USPS an unlimited budget? Then lets do away with stamps and make it all free.

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Everything FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

[Redfish]

Most of them.

Most government agencies couldn't find their backsides with both hands in a well-lit room surrounded by mirrors.

Oftentimes staffed by dull, unimaginative, self-seeking bureaucratic and calendar-watching pension-sniffers, bellying-up to the trough for their unfair share of budget dollars, territorial, secretive, self-promoting, self-preserving, overlapping and wasteful, many of those same departments need a thorough housecleaning, mission and charter review, new performance indicators and outcomes evaluation, new and more visible and transparent public accountability, and, in some cases, closure, consolidation or downsizing.

Uh-huh.

Unlike the Private Sector, which are run by the cream of the crop.

frankly, I've seen more incompetence in the private sector than I've ever seen in the government.

My experience has been pretty much the reverse.

As have the experiences of a great many others, else the stereotyping of government agencies would never have gained such traction.

Private companies have a bottom-line indicator of success... their bottom line.

Government agencies can operate inefficiently (sometimes, grotesquely inefficiently) for decades on end, without fear of closure, because of a guaranteed revenue stream.

And a highly politicized and pro forma Performance Review process.

You know as well as I do that these fundamental differences between the public and private sectors contribute-to and sustain the inefficiency of a great many government agencies.

This is not to say that there are not legions of dedicated public servants within that sector who are largely devoted to their country and service to their countrymen.

But to ignore the grotesque inefficiencies and problematic operations of so many of these agencies is to ignore the 10-ton elephant in the room.

And there in lies the difference between conservative and liberal thought.

For conservatives, wealth is the one and only goal. With wealth, for a conservative, comes power and the ability to exert one's will over others.

For liberals, it is the advancement of civilization, as a whole that is the goal. If a civilization is effective in providing safety, scholarship and is sustainable for the future, that's success.

It's a vastly different mindset.

Newsflash, mine good colleague...

We are closer to being on the same page here than you appear to perceive...

My reference to private corporations and gauges for success is not an indicator that I (or anyone else) citing that gauge is not also in favor of the advancement of civilization.

It is merely an articulation of the hard-and-fast indicators available in the private sector, versus the need for better barometers and mission and charter and goals and outcomes measurement in the public sector.

Nowhere in my own meanderings here on the subject will you find a mindless advocacy that the private sector can do everything better than the public one.

I throw rocks at the public sector here as my own microscopic contribution to public airings of opining that we have much work yet to do on the public side of the fence.

Well heck.

I am a big advocate of finding out where a plan goes wrong..and fixing it.

Yes men are just as injurious to a process as people who want to tear it down.

Grats.

how would you fix our national debt of 17 trillion dollars?

Put a moratorium on Defense Spending for 2 years.

That would clean up about 16 trillion in debt.

How would Obama destroy ISIS as he said he wants to do? Would you lay off 100% of the military?

your statement is just plain stupid, not surprising coming from you.

Well no..it's not at all.

And it puts squarely on display, you folks aren't serious about debt.

Not one bit.

and someone who says to curtail all defense spending for two years is serious?????

How about this-----------cut all federal agency budgets by 30%, no exceptions. Cut all SS, welfare, food stamps, and other govt payouts by 30%. Cut congressional salaries and benefits by 30%.

Cut every line in the federal budget by 30%. Now, thats a serious proposal. How aboout it?

Which would make no serious dent in the debt.

Defense spending, tax breaks for corporations and subsidies for agriculture are the highest ticket items on in the budget.

We could keep our military personal on the payroll (By the way, the Constitution never provided for a military career) and cut all spending on weapons systems and patrolling the whole wide world for 2 years and save close to 16 trillion dollars.

If we were to cut oil subsidies and loopholes? You are looking at another several trillion bucks.

Of course the military spending part would throw the economy into turmoil since it is the main provider of jobs in red states like West Virginia and Utah.

Any wonder that's a scared cow to you folks?

The main provider of jobs, the hated Federal Government, is the biggest cash cow to conservatives.

a 30% cut in govt spending would not reduce the debt????????? you cannot be that dumb.

I said cut all govt agencies including DOD, how is that preserving a scared cow?

 

[Sallow]

That no fault of the USPS.

The Truth About The Post Office s Financial Mess#.

The financial woes of the U.S. Postal System have become a point of contention on Capitol Hill. The Postal Service is supposed to make a $5.5 billion payment to its retiree health care fund by November 18th... but doesn't have the money.
US Postal Service workers have a retiree health care benefit in addition to their pension. Before Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the USPS operated under a pay-as-you-go model for retiree health care funding. The new law requires the Postal Service to pre-fund its benefit obligations.
"The idea is that enough money is saved over the course of a career that the benefit is fully paid for by the time the worker retires.
Thanks to these prefunding payments, the Postal Service has greatly reduced its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits. At the end of fiscal year 2010, these obligations were under $49 billion – a substantial sum, but much more manageable. If the Postal Service continues making its prefunding payments, its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits will be around $33 billion by the end of the decade. And the postal service will be on course to pay these benefits over time," a Congressional insider explained.
But this pre-funding has become a lightning rod of controversy.
Members of the postal workers union say the pre-funding requirement has created a fiscal mess. Some people have even claimed that law has the effect of requiring the postal service to fund retirement obligations for people who are not yet employed by the USPS--potential future employees.
No one ever intended the law to work that way. And, in fact, it doesn't. Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees.
In light of all the controversy, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent off a series of questions on the pre-funding controversy to the Congressional Research Service to get to the bottom of the question: is pre-funding the reason for the USPS fiscal woes?
C-Suite Insider has exclusively obtained the CRS Memorandum on Postal Service Retiree Health Issue to Chairman Issa as well as an email explaining in further detail their findings. Below is a verbatim email correspondence between the CRS and Chairman Issa's office on the prefunding of 75 years of retiree health care benefits in just 10 years.
"The confusion over 75 years may be due to an "accounting" and not an "actuarial or funding" issue. They only have to fund the future liability of their current or former workforce. This would include some actuarial estimate about the mortality rates of their current workers (I.e. how long they live). So a 25 year old worker would have an average life expectancy (from birth) of 78.7 years. Thus, they would have to project future retiree health benefits for this individual up to about 54 years in the future.
But for accounting purposes they must estimate the future liability over a 75 year period (according to OPM financial accounting guidelines). In this case, they would make some assumptions about new entrants into the workforce and addresses your second question.
Theoretically, these new entrants could include someone who is not born yet. While they have to account for these future liabilities on their financial statements they do not have to fund them if they are not related to their current or former workforce."
Based on the findings of this memorandum, I asked Chairman Issa what his message is to the US Postal Service Unions who say Congress is to be blamed for this crisis.
Chairman Issa: Union leaders must understand that there is no easy fix to a crisis created by declining mail revenues. The often non-existent accounting issues unions want to talk about don’t address fundamental changes to delivery created by the growth of the Internet. Union leaders need to work with, not against, Congress on postal reform, because the alternative is a possible shut-down of the Postal Service next summer

And the usual suspects are involved.

So the fix is to give the USPS an unlimited budget? Then lets do away with stamps and make it all free.

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Everything FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

How about letting them operate like a private business?

 

[Meathead]

How about letting them operate like a private business?

Sounds good, but the unemployment rate will skyrocket.

 

[Redfish]

That no fault of the USPS.

The Truth About The Post Office s Financial Mess#.

The financial woes of the U.S. Postal System have become a point of contention on Capitol Hill. The Postal Service is supposed to make a $5.5 billion payment to its retiree health care fund by November 18th... but doesn't have the money.
US Postal Service workers have a retiree health care benefit in addition to their pension. Before Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the USPS operated under a pay-as-you-go model for retiree health care funding. The new law requires the Postal Service to pre-fund its benefit obligations.
"The idea is that enough money is saved over the course of a career that the benefit is fully paid for by the time the worker retires.
Thanks to these prefunding payments, the Postal Service has greatly reduced its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits. At the end of fiscal year 2010, these obligations were under $49 billion – a substantial sum, but much more manageable. If the Postal Service continues making its prefunding payments, its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits will be around $33 billion by the end of the decade. And the postal service will be on course to pay these benefits over time," a Congressional insider explained.
But this pre-funding has become a lightning rod of controversy.
Members of the postal workers union say the pre-funding requirement has created a fiscal mess. Some people have even claimed that law has the effect of requiring the postal service to fund retirement obligations for people who are not yet employed by the USPS--potential future employees.
No one ever intended the law to work that way. And, in fact, it doesn't. Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees.
In light of all the controversy, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent off a series of questions on the pre-funding controversy to the Congressional Research Service to get to the bottom of the question: is pre-funding the reason for the USPS fiscal woes?
C-Suite Insider has exclusively obtained the CRS Memorandum on Postal Service Retiree Health Issue to Chairman Issa as well as an email explaining in further detail their findings. Below is a verbatim email correspondence between the CRS and Chairman Issa's office on the prefunding of 75 years of retiree health care benefits in just 10 years.
"The confusion over 75 years may be due to an "accounting" and not an "actuarial or funding" issue. They only have to fund the future liability of their current or former workforce. This would include some actuarial estimate about the mortality rates of their current workers (I.e. how long they live). So a 25 year old worker would have an average life expectancy (from birth) of 78.7 years. Thus, they would have to project future retiree health benefits for this individual up to about 54 years in the future.
But for accounting purposes they must estimate the future liability over a 75 year period (according to OPM financial accounting guidelines). In this case, they would make some assumptions about new entrants into the workforce and addresses your second question.
Theoretically, these new entrants could include someone who is not born yet. While they have to account for these future liabilities on their financial statements they do not have to fund them if they are not related to their current or former workforce."
Based on the findings of this memorandum, I asked Chairman Issa what his message is to the US Postal Service Unions who say Congress is to be blamed for this crisis.
Chairman Issa: Union leaders must understand that there is no easy fix to a crisis created by declining mail revenues. The often non-existent accounting issues unions want to talk about don’t address fundamental changes to delivery created by the growth of the Internet. Union leaders need to work with, not against, Congress on postal reform, because the alternative is a possible shut-down of the Postal Service next summer

And the usual suspects are involved.

So the fix is to give the USPS an unlimited budget? Then lets do away with stamps and make it all free.

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Everything FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

How about letting them operate like a private business?

fine with me. let them compete with fedex and UPS on a level playing field. Great. lets do it.

 

[Sallow]

Most of them.

Most government agencies couldn't find their backsides with both hands in a well-lit room surrounded by mirrors.

Oftentimes staffed by dull, unimaginative, self-seeking bureaucratic and calendar-watching pension-sniffers, bellying-up to the trough for their unfair share of budget dollars, territorial, secretive, self-promoting, self-preserving, overlapping and wasteful, many of those same departments need a thorough housecleaning, mission and charter review, new performance indicators and outcomes evaluation, new and more visible and transparent public accountability, and, in some cases, closure, consolidation or downsizing.

Uh-huh.

Unlike the Private Sector, which are run by the cream of the crop.

frankly, I've seen more incompetence in the private sector than I've ever seen in the government.

My experience has been pretty much the reverse.

As have the experiences of a great many others, else the stereotyping of government agencies would never have gained such traction.

Private companies have a bottom-line indicator of success... their bottom line.

Government agencies can operate inefficiently (sometimes, grotesquely inefficiently) for decades on end, without fear of closure, because of a guaranteed revenue stream.

And a highly politicized and pro forma Performance Review process.

You know as well as I do that these fundamental differences between the public and private sectors contribute-to and sustain the inefficiency of a great many government agencies.

This is not to say that there are not legions of dedicated public servants within that sector who are largely devoted to their country and service to their countrymen.

But to ignore the grotesque inefficiencies and problematic operations of so many of these agencies is to ignore the 10-ton elephant in the room.

And there in lies the difference between conservative and liberal thought.

For conservatives, wealth is the one and only goal. With wealth, for a conservative, comes power and the ability to exert one's will over others.

For liberals, it is the advancement of civilization, as a whole that is the goal. If a civilization is effective in providing safety, scholarship and is sustainable for the future, that's success.

It's a vastly different mindset.

Newsflash, mine good colleague...

We are closer to being on the same page here than you appear to perceive...

My reference to private corporations and gauges for success is not an indicator that I (or anyone else) citing that gauge is not also in favor of the advancement of civilization.

It is merely an articulation of the hard-and-fast indicators available in the private sector, versus the need for better barometers and mission and charter and goals and outcomes measurement in the public sector.

Nowhere in my own meanderings here on the subject will you find a mindless advocacy that the private sector can do everything better than the public one.

I throw rocks at the public sector here as my own microscopic contribution to public airings of opining that we have much work yet to do on the public side of the fence.

Well heck.

I am a big advocate of finding out where a plan goes wrong..and fixing it.

Yes men are just as injurious to a process as people who want to tear it down.

Grats.

how would you fix our national debt of 17 trillion dollars?

Put a moratorium on Defense Spending for 2 years.

That would clean up about 16 trillion in debt.

How would Obama destroy ISIS as he said he wants to do? Would you lay off 100% of the military?

your statement is just plain stupid, not surprising coming from you.

Well no..it's not at all.

And it puts squarely on display, you folks aren't serious about debt.

Not one bit.

and someone who says to curtail all defense spending for two years is serious?????

How about this-----------cut all federal agency budgets by 30%, no exceptions. Cut all SS, welfare, food stamps, and other govt payouts by 30%. Cut congressional salaries and benefits by 30%.

Cut every line in the federal budget by 30%. Now, thats a serious proposal. How aboout it?

Which would make no serious dent in the debt.

Defense spending, tax breaks for corporations and subsidies for agriculture are the highest ticket items on in the budget.

We could keep our military personal on the payroll (By the way, the Constitution never provided for a military career) and cut all spending on weapons systems and patrolling the whole wide world for 2 years and save close to 16 trillion dollars.

If we were to cut oil subsidies and loopholes? You are looking at another several trillion bucks.

Of course the military spending part would throw the economy into turmoil since it is the main provider of jobs in red states like West Virginia and Utah.

Any wonder that's a scared cow to you folks?

The main provider of jobs, the hated Federal Government, is the biggest cash cow to conservatives.

a 30% cut in govt spending would not reduce the debt????????? you cannot be that dumb.

I said cut all govt agencies including DOD, how is that preserving a scared cow?

Well no..it wouldn't.

First off there are cost neutral things you'd like to cut, like SSI. That doesn't add to debt.

Secondly, cutting budgets of some agencies actually COSTS money in the long run, like the IRS and SEC.

Additionally, programs like SNAP and even welfare, benefit the economy over the long term.

Building a 4 trillion dollar super duper jet fighter? Not so much.

 

[Sallow]

That no fault of the USPS.

The Truth About The Post Office s Financial Mess#.

The financial woes of the U.S. Postal System have become a point of contention on Capitol Hill. The Postal Service is supposed to make a $5.5 billion payment to its retiree health care fund by November 18th... but doesn't have the money.
US Postal Service workers have a retiree health care benefit in addition to their pension. Before Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the USPS operated under a pay-as-you-go model for retiree health care funding. The new law requires the Postal Service to pre-fund its benefit obligations.
"The idea is that enough money is saved over the course of a career that the benefit is fully paid for by the time the worker retires.
Thanks to these prefunding payments, the Postal Service has greatly reduced its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits. At the end of fiscal year 2010, these obligations were under $49 billion – a substantial sum, but much more manageable. If the Postal Service continues making its prefunding payments, its unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits will be around $33 billion by the end of the decade. And the postal service will be on course to pay these benefits over time," a Congressional insider explained.
But this pre-funding has become a lightning rod of controversy.
Members of the postal workers union say the pre-funding requirement has created a fiscal mess. Some people have even claimed that law has the effect of requiring the postal service to fund retirement obligations for people who are not yet employed by the USPS--potential future employees.
No one ever intended the law to work that way. And, in fact, it doesn't. Although accounting rules require the postal service to calculate future liabilities, including those for projected future employees, the law only requires pre-funding of obligations to actual current and past employees.
In light of all the controversy, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent off a series of questions on the pre-funding controversy to the Congressional Research Service to get to the bottom of the question: is pre-funding the reason for the USPS fiscal woes?
C-Suite Insider has exclusively obtained the CRS Memorandum on Postal Service Retiree Health Issue to Chairman Issa as well as an email explaining in further detail their findings. Below is a verbatim email correspondence between the CRS and Chairman Issa's office on the prefunding of 75 years of retiree health care benefits in just 10 years.
"The confusion over 75 years may be due to an "accounting" and not an "actuarial or funding" issue. They only have to fund the future liability of their current or former workforce. This would include some actuarial estimate about the mortality rates of their current workers (I.e. how long they live). So a 25 year old worker would have an average life expectancy (from birth) of 78.7 years. Thus, they would have to project future retiree health benefits for this individual up to about 54 years in the future.
But for accounting purposes they must estimate the future liability over a 75 year period (according to OPM financial accounting guidelines). In this case, they would make some assumptions about new entrants into the workforce and addresses your second question.
Theoretically, these new entrants could include someone who is not born yet. While they have to account for these future liabilities on their financial statements they do not have to fund them if they are not related to their current or former workforce."
Based on the findings of this memorandum, I asked Chairman Issa what his message is to the US Postal Service Unions who say Congress is to be blamed for this crisis.
Chairman Issa: Union leaders must understand that there is no easy fix to a crisis created by declining mail revenues. The often non-existent accounting issues unions want to talk about don’t address fundamental changes to delivery created by the growth of the Internet. Union leaders need to work with, not against, Congress on postal reform, because the alternative is a possible shut-down of the Postal Service next summer

And the usual suspects are involved.

So the fix is to give the USPS an unlimited budget? Then lets do away with stamps and make it all free.

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Everything FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

How about letting them operate like a private business?

fine with me. let them compete with fedex and UPS on a level playing field. Great. lets do it.

Yep. And we can start by not having the government use those corporations to do any mailing.

Both..would fold in weeks.

 

[JoeB131]

So the fix is to give the USPS an unlimited budget? Then lets do away with stamps and make it all free.

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Everything FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Actually, the USPS would be perfectly capable of meeting its budget if the GOP Congress hadn't insisted on them front-loading the funding of their pension fund.

 

[Iceweasel]

USPS is an excellent example of government which cannot adapt to change. My 85 year-old mother is the only one I know that still sends letters. That bird has pretty much flown.

Not only that but I've mailed my manufactured products to Guam and Hawaii via Postal Service at the USDA's request. Many boxes over numerous years. Every box had to have a separate 4 part carbon copy form handwritten out in it's entirety by me. Then the post office guy would weigh each one and hand write out his forms too. Great job security but a bit long in the tooth technology wise.

 

[ShaklesOfBigGov]

Most of them.

Which explains the long wait times at a DMV, as well the United States Post office dropping further and further into debt in comparison to their private sector competitors. Tell us another lie Sallow.