Yesterday, Dead Tree Edition, gave Congress the John Adams award for how useless members of Congress in finding a real solution to the Postal Service’s financial problem. He notes that Congress deserves this award because not only has Congress been useful, some of the legislative changes members have proposed and appear likely to be part of any postal legislation passed this year could make the problem worse not better. I would argue that a more appropriate award would have been the Mark Twain award who looked at Congress as a mix of idiots and petty criminals. Here are is just a sample.
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can. – What Is Man?
[Congress includes]…the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes. – Letter fragment, 1891
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. – Mark Twain, a Biography
Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man. – Notebook #14, Nov. 1877 – July 1878
All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity. – Mark Twain’s Autobiography; also in Mark Twain in Eruption
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. – Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar
…I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman. – “Foster’s Case,” New York Tribune, 10 March 1873
The situation the Postal Service is now in appears to confirm Twain’s assertion that Congress is just a bunch of idiots or petty criminals. No other logical answer explains why:
- the national Post with the highest per-capita mail volume at the brink of shutdown;
- the Postal Service is in critical financial trouble when national posts with per-capita delivery volumes one-tenth what the Postal Service handles are maintaining their profitability;
- successful business models exist for ensuring the viability and self sufficiently of a national post that meets universal service obligations and yet no member of Congress has drafted legislation following these models;
- the legislative process appears designed to encourage the Postal Service’s business customers that provide 90% of the Postal Service’s revenue incentive to look for a more reliable business partner;
- Postal Service ”reform” legislation appears to support political goals and not the economic needs of the United States for a vibrant postal market;
- Postal Service “reform” legislation clearly misses the Postal Service’s current economic role as a means for businesses to communicate and deliver goods to consumers; and
- Postal Service “reform” legislation adds new layers of oversight and and adds/or maintains commercial and operating constraints that makes meeting customer needs, including those included in a rational universal service obligation, more difficult to meet.
