With the big election in Wisconsin, there’s another big Labor v. GOP fight — this time in Ohio.
One point that came up repeatedly in our discussion last night about the crisis in the postal service is that the USPS is apparently subject to a regulation that requires it to pre-pay pension and health care obligations 75 years in advance, something that is required of no other government agency. And a substantial amount of their budget shortfall is tied to that regulation.
TPM Reader SM notes these points …
As a union organizer for SEIU, I have a distinctly labor perspective on the USPS crisis; and, I think that there are two HUGE pieces of information that are often left out of the “The USPS is an aging dinosaur” narrative often perpetuated by the mainstream media.
Got something to say about last night’s GOP debate?
Join us over on our TPM Facebook page, for our live discussion.
Here’s an article from the Post about some draconian measures the US Postal Service is planning to take to work its way out of a deep financial hole, including breaking labor agreements, cutting more than 100,000 jobs and withdrawing from federal health care programs.
But this passage jumped out at me …
During the past four years, the service lost $20 billion, including $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010. Over that period, mail volume dropped by 20 percent.
Those are big, big losses. And apparently accelerating ones. But look at that last statistics: mail volume dropped by 20 percent over the last four years. And while some substantial part of that is recession-related, it is hard to imagine that trend won’t accelerate. Read More
Remember that back and forth Bachmann and Pawlenty got into about some piece of legislation from back in Minnesota? We pulled the records to figure out who was right. Here’s our report.
Iran is not Iceland and other highlights from the Santorum/Paul Iran smackdown.
For every last detail and report on what’s happened so far in the debate check out TPMLivewire.
10:02 PM: My basic impression of this debate is that none of these folks is strong enough to withstand Perry’s entry into the race. I don’t mean I think he’s going to win necessarily. But Mitt’s hold on frontrunner status looks very shaky to me. It’s just that no one else up there can really match him. What’s weird about Perry is that usually these savior-like late entrants to a race end up going absolutely nowhere — Wes Clark, Fred Thompson, etc. But Perry actually seems to be registering strongly in the polls. He’s bad bad news for Romney, maybe fatal for Pawlenty. He’s certainly managed the atmospherics of his entry perfectly.
10:19 PM: Sheesh, Ron Paul is going the full Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky here.
10:24 PM: I think Cain’s plan to pull the price of oil so low it puts the squeeze on Iran may lack certain realism.
10:29 PM: I love it when right-wingers get in such a froth over Iran that they end up standing up for gays.
10:35 PM: I just realized this is a scheduled 7 hour debate.