Kamer Trethewey: Postal Service has been unfairly burdened

In response to your Oct. 22 Our View: "Privatize post office, Amtrak:"

Your editorial suggests that the US Postal Service is poorly managed, amassing debt and will need a taxpayer bail out. As an alternative, you point to UPS and FedEx whom you said earn profits and pay taxes. Let's remember that the US Postal Service delivers mail to every address in the country. UPS and FedEx hand off their less profitable packages to the US Postal Service for final delivery.

The post office operated was successful for decades prior to the passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, using only the revenue it generated by selling stamps and with no government taxpayer support.

However, with the passage of this act in late December 2006 by the lame duck Republican-controlled Congress, the US Postal Service is required to pre-fund its retirement health care benefit account 75 years into the future.

It was passed by voice vote, allowing no record of who voted for or against it and signed into law on Dec. 20, 2006, by President George W. Bush.

It mandated that the post office to put aside $5.5 billion per year for 10 years and disallowed it from generating any new revenue by offering new services.

No business, public or private, has ever been held to such draconian mandates.

Business owners reading this, ask yourself, "Could my business survive these demands?"

Of course not. You would instantly realize that these measures were designed to ensure the failure of your business.

The US Postal Service is our second largest public employer next to the military, with more than 575,000 unionized workers, who are paid a living wage.

Unions, by giving an organized voice to workers, are one of the last defenses against a complete corporate takeover of our country. Could this be why this act was passed?

Trethewey is a retired public school teacher/administrator, Marysville resident