Who is Killing the Post Office?

I've been wondering this for years, as the USPS has been struggling to subsidize the Congressionally mandated 75 years in advance retirement plan during the worst downturn in the economy since the Great Depression. In order to continue, they have to shut down stations, limit deliveries, and eliminate next-day mail. Or be in violation of a Federal Unfunded Mandate. Note that the Post Office receives $0.00 in taxpayer money, yet Congress gets to tell it how much it is allowed to charge, how much it has to pre-pay on all its benefit programs, and even how many free perks it has to give to members of Congress. In my lifetime, the price of a First Class stamp has gone from the price of a cup of coffee (5¢) to less than a third of that. We pay less for postage now than ever before in history, in terms of coffee, movie tickets, ounces of gold, or any hard measure. Yet Congress in its wisdom has been steadily adding burdens and removing permissions in the last decade. And I have been wondering, why? Sure, the answer is clearly pandering to the lobbyists. But whose? Who really wants to kill the only company that delivers to every house in the country? Last night, I think I got my answer. I was watching the news, flipping through the networks, and every outlet covered this story: Record online holiday sales trigger record shipping day.So which stations covered which shipping company? Who covered this story for the USPS? For DHL? For UPS? No one. But FedEx was given minutes of free advertising (as an in-depth story) on every network. Thus my wacky conspiracy theory of the day is: FedEx is behind the lobbyists who are behind the legislation that is gutting the post office.

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Lesson learned about rationality, perhaps.

I thought I was different. I have a well-documented history of being more skeptical than the average person. At this website, for instance, I have vigorously attacked the hypocrisy of all politicians, regardless of party. In the spirit of letting the chips fall and seeking the truth, even if inconvenient, I’ve often taken positions contrary to family, friends and “country.” I tend to not be a joiner. I have long-agreed with David Hume that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” Therefore, I tend to be on-guard regarding runaway emotions. I also agree with Jonathan Haidt’s conclusion that humans function like tiny lawyers attempting to control big emotional-laden elephants upon which they ride. The observations of Hume and Haidt dovetail well with the findings of Antonio Damasio, who carefully examined rationality. See Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Phineas Gage, a 19th century railroad worker who suffered brain damage to his pre-frontal cortex, couldn't no longer connect emotion to decision-making. He’s what Damasio discerned from the evidence about Gage (and about modern-day people who suffered damage to the pre-frontal cortex): He “could no longer set priorities or make decisions. He had no sense of the relative importance of any situation.” His accident made him “rational.” Damasio further noted that this pure rationality “is helpless to make decisions; it paralyzes us. In fact, he proclaimed that “Rationality” is the way “brain-damaged people make decisions.” I’ve known all of this for a long time, and I try to stay on guard that when I write that I will keep emotions in check enough that I can be seen as a trusted source of information. That’s why what I’m about to mention is embarrassing and frustrating to me. Back on April 28, 2011, the night I read the U.S. Supreme Court Case of AT&T v. Concepcion, I became angry at the majority opinion, and I steamed full speed ahead and published an angry post at this blog (since deleted, for the reasons discussed below). I stand by many of the concerns I raised in that post, including the following: [More . . . ]

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Santorum In Defense of the Family

This is an unscientific response to a ridiculous claim.  Rick Santorum, who wishes to be the next Bishop In Charge of America (or whatever prelate his church might recognize) recently made the claim that Gay couples are going to destabilize the family in America in order to accommodate their lifestyle. We’ve all been hearing this claim now for, oh, since gays stopped sitting by and letting cops beat them up on Saturday nights without fighting back.  Ever since Gay Pride.  Even on my own FaceBook page I had someone telling me I was blinded by the “Gay Agenda” and that the country was doomed—that because of the Gay Agenda little children were being taught how to use condoms in school and this—this—would bring us all to ruin. So….okay.  How? If we collectively allow homosexuals to marry each other, how does that do anything to American families that’s not already being done by a hundred other factors? I’ll tell you what destablilizes families.  And I’m not genius here with a brilliant insight, this is just what anyone can see if they look around and think a little bit. Families are destabilized over money.  [More . . . ]

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Larry Wilkerson discusses proposed military powers as “the road to tyranny.”

Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, indicates that the National Defense Authorization Act (that passed the Senate) gives the military power for indefinite detention without trial is therefore a draconian violation of our rights. In this interview, it is pointed out that the highly offensive provision of the proposed new law that allows the U.S. military to detain and prosecute American citizens was inserted into the proposed legislation at the insistence of Barack Obama.

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What Most Sets of Commandments Get Wrong

I recently read Penn Jillette's 10 Commandments for atheists, written as a response to a challenge by Glenn Beck. Most of Penn's rules made good sense. But one went off the rails, I opine. He included one found in most mistranslations of the Christian Ten: "Don't Lie." Penn explicitly adds the caveat: "(You know, unless you're doing magic tricks and it's part of your job. Does that make it OK for politicians, too?)" But the premise is basically flawed. The original line in Exodus 20:16 (KJV) is Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. This is a very specific form of lie. Even too specific. Not only is it an injunction against perjury, but only against perjury against your landholding neighbor, as opposed to people from other places, or to property such as women and slaves. Of course we all must lie on occasion. How else can we answer, "Isn't she the most beautiful baby ever?" or "Honey, do I look puffy?" Would it be false testimony to confirm a harmless bias one on one? Yet I suggest that the proper commandment should be, "Don't bear false witness." Period. Don't testify to things of which you are not absolutely sure; that you have not personally experienced. Not in a public forum. Don't repeat "what everybody knows" unless you preface it with an appropriate waffle, such as "I heard that someone else heard that..." But this might make it difficult to testify to the all-embracing love of a demonstrably genocidal God. A Google image search of "Testify" gives mostly Christian imagery.

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