Security vs. customer service?

I want to close a Fidelity mutual fund account and put the funds in an Ameritrade account.  In this day and age one would think it would only involve a a few minutes of typing on each company’s website.  It sure would beat having a check mailed (3 days minimum), taking the check to a bank, and writing another check to the other company.

One, Fidelity would not recognize the routing and account numbers of my local bank account.  Although Fidelity would allow a transfer to another brokerage, it wanted a routing number.  I could find no routing number for Ameritrade.  Of course, using Google I found it as I was writing this paragraph.  The Google summary gives the routing number.

Two, Ameritrade wanted me to print out a form and fill it in by hand.  And of course, include a copy of my latest statement.  Given all that paper, I would probably take it to the Post Office to get the correct postage.

Three, I went back to the “horse and buggy days” and asked Fidelity to mail me a check.  When the check arrives, I’ll take it to my bank.  When the check clears than I will send the fund electronically to Ameritrade.

So, I could have saved myself much time and hair pulling if I had gone with plan three instead.

And some people have the gall to complain about government inefficiency.  Many government organizations are far more efficient than many corporations.  The government will get the check to me quite well, thank you.

How many seconds in a minute and other corporate misdeeds

According to Apple, there are five seconds in a minute!

I just did a software update on my MacBook Air, and near the end, the screen said there were five seconds left.  i watched and watched, but the number didn’t change.  I did Mississippi-one, Mississippi-two and so on.  I stopped at about Mississippi-thirty.  A bit later, the counter disappeared.  And a bit later, the system rebooted.

Yahoo! Finance redid their web page several weeks ago and took away drag and drop.  I have a list of symbols in a TextEdit file that I would drag and drop in the symbol look-up list.  I have been using this successfully and satisfactorily for years.  Then poof!  It didn’t work!  I now had to copy and paste.  Gosh!  Drag and drop has been an Macintosh feature for over twenty years.  Now Yahoo! decides its users don’t need drag and drop.

This week Yahoo! Finance flummoxed its users again by providing some very circuitous means of providing a list of quotes.  Instead of a spreadsheet-like page, they have buried a text list on the side of the page.  By some magical clicking, one can get the spreadsheet listing, but I haven’t memorized it yet.

Many users left comments complaining about this, but I doubt if there will be any change.  Some threatened to go to Google Finance.  I tried Google Finance and didn’t find it any easier to use.

My suspicion is that corporations put together focus groups and browbeat them into accepting what management wants to do.  Then management browbeats long-time customers into accepting the changes by saying the changes were what focus groups wanted.

Of course, there are many fine corporations that bend over backward for customer satisfaction.  Toyota has had some bad recalls, but many of their dealers bend over backward to provide customer satisfaction.  My examples are Kari Toyota of Superior WI and Maplewood Toyota of Maplewood MN.

For the likes of the corporations that screw up the customer experience, I can only say that the U.S. Postal Service has historically provided far superior service, when Congress lets it.  And believe it or not, the IRS too.  I have had the IRS send me corrections on my returns, both for underpayment and overpayment.

Iconoclastic ideas (or mysteries)

 “I would love to talk to people, and say ‘Why do you need so much money?’ And why do people say it’s so admirable? I think the world has gone quite mad.” - John Cleese as reported by Lee Schafer, Star Tribune, 2016-02-17.

I haven’t yet gone back to “Dark Money”, the book I mentioned last week, but I keep wondering why so many exorbitantly rich have so much money to slosh around that they spend exorbitant sums to ensure that they get even more.  When one has hundreds of billions of dollars, what’s a hundred billion or two less?

What is galling is that many claim they earned it, every penny.  But how many people worked for a pittance or even a decent salary to create and implement the ideas to earn this money?  Often several thousand people showed up every day to bring in that money while the billionaire was jetting here and there on vacation or attending a conference to rail against taxes and government, the same taxes and the same government that subsidizes many of their enterprises.  For example, I’ve seen estimates that every Walmart store costs government entities one million dollars a year.

Many who want strict adherence to the Constitution seem to forget "Regulate commerce among states" and "establish a post office”.

The Republicans and their giant-corp backers are doing their best to nullify the EPA rule about emissions.  Are these polluters keeping their emissions in the state where they are produced?  If any of these emissions go to another state, then the President is right to regulate this commerce in emissions.

The Republicans seem to be bending over backwards to dis-establish the Post Office.  The latest gimmick was to impose far greater requirements on pension funding than many corporations get by with.  The last I looked my Unisys pension was funded at 77 percent.  I exaggerate, but it seems like the Republicans want the Postal Service to be fully-funded on pensions for employees who have not even been hired yet.

I really don’t know what a “fair share” of taxes is, but it is a mystery how many people want perfect infra-structure, immediate arrest of all criminals, and bombing of countries far, far away but do not want to pay any taxes for any of these.  Is there a correlation between complaints about government and complaints about burdensome taxes?

A good case in point is the following headline: “Wisconsin crackdown on repeat drunken drivers will cost taxpayers”, Mark Sommerhauser, Wisconsin State Journal, published in the Duluth News Tribune, 2016-02-19.  Duh!?  What is the cost to taxpayers of the death and destruction caused by drunken drivers?  I submit that it is quite a bit higher than the cost of the crackdown.  In other words, spend what seems too much to prevent something that costs even more.  Even that crackdown on fourth offenders may be too soft. Sweden had or maybe still has tough drunk driving laws: first offense was two years in jail, even for members of Parliament.

Why does Clinton have to be president so we finally have a woman president?  Amy Klobuchar or Elizabeth Warren are much better choices, but neither seems to be interested.

Why do we have reach out across (fill-in the blank) lines?  Can’t we just be nice to everybody.  I hold doors for others, they hold doors for me.  Rodney King said, “Can’t we all just get along.”

We do have to reform or at least neutralize people who judge people by factors which have nothing to do with a given situation.

Right now many established and respected media are giving misleading information.  Clinton “won” in Nevada and Trump “won” in South Carolina.  I posted a comment on a New York Times article; the article made no reference to the actual delegates gained. Sorry, I didn’t note the article.  Interestingly, my comment was not posted for all to see.  At least, as I write this hours later, I have not been emailed that my comment was posted.

Well, Trump did win in South Carolina because the South Carolina Republican primary is winner take-all.  He “won” with less than a third of the vote.  However, in Nevada, Clinton received 22 delegates and Sanders received 16 delegates.  Oops, another source gives 19-15, and yet another shows a spread of about 600 votes.  Sorry, I’m visiting so many sites to get to the truth that I have forgotten where I found which figures.  Clinton does have an advantage because of super-delegates, elected and party officials who are automatically delegates to the convention.  The super-delegates are overwhelmingly pro-Clinton.

One of these sources was “How many delegates do Trump, Clinton need to win? What's the delegate count for each candidate?” by Jonathan D. Salant at http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/how_many_delegates_do_hillary_clinton_and_donald_t.html.

Let's skip caucuses and primaries and even do away with political parties.  Even though the writers of the Constitution warned about factions, they soon split into them.  The most famous being the long feud between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Let’s start at the local level.  Let each registered voter send in a nomination for each position by email or mail.  Rank the nominations by number of votes; those who are in the top half of the list go on to the next ballot.  Repeat as necessary until one is chosen. Named candidates can drop out at any time.

Some may say that this is too expensive and subject to fraud.  Isn’t the low turnout expensive to our society?  Supposedly we already have too much fraud if you believe those who demand onerous restrictions on voting.

The only vote that doesn’t count is the vote not cast.

Also in the Reader Weekly of Duluth on 2015-02-25 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/25/6797_iconoclastic_ideas_or_mysteries.

General Ization battles truth

Originally published in
Reader Weekly
April 26, 2007

I meant to write about the General’s sister Globa L,. but several articles, including in the Reader Weekly, made writing about the General seem more timely.

Generalization is taking something specific and applying it to many other situations that might not have any relation to the original event or idea.  One of the worst examples is calling Jews “Christ killers” because a mob called upon Pilate to crucify Jesus.  But does a mob in one part of one city represent all the people of a country?  Is every child in that country responsible for the actions of a mob?  Should these children’s descendants be responsible for something they had no say in?

We certainly don’t like certain Muslims deciding all Americans should die because of the actions of governments that we can’t always control.

One of the most frequent generalizations is “the media is liberal”, seen most often in the letters to the editors of daily papers.  These letters are often written by someone who has a “conservative” agenda and doesn’t want to see anything published that contradicts his or her viewpoint.  Ironically, the publication of these letters proves the writers are correct; publishing many different viewpoints is a liberal action.

On the other hand, many so-called liberals complain that the media is conservative.  The Reader Weekly publishes the views of two columnists who often level this charge.  I long ago gave up on reading Norman Solomon because he derides “the media” for not covering news as he thinks it should.  Jim Hightower recently complained about media bashing Democrats for investigating the Justice Department using two publications as an example.  Then he uses a poll by USA Today to show popular support for continuing the investigation. (1)  The papers that I read, all called “liberal”, report that even Republicans are dissatisfied with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony.

“Mallard Fillmore”, the conservative duck drawn by Bruce Tinsley, bashes liberals and government mercilessly.  One of his favorite targets is the U.S. Postal Service.  One of his recent strips was a reply to an “irate postal worker” asking when Mallard would stop bashing the Postal Service.  Mallard’s reply was “When they stop bashing my packages.”  My question is when is Mallard going to bash UPS or other package carriers for bashing his packages. (2)

I’ve probably received more damaged packages from UPS than I have from the Postal Service.  Does that mean UPS bashes packages more?  No, I have to take into account that I probably receive more packages from UPS than any other source.

Ad hominem arguments are a form of generalization, that is, an idea is not very good because a certain person said it.

I would suppose that the income tax is a bad idea because Marx and Engels called for it in “The Communist Manifesto”.  Oh, but conservatives in Britain imposed an income tax in 1799.  The British Government needed all the revenue it could get in its struggle against Napoleon’s France.  Despite income and property taxes going from 1.67 million pounds in 1799 to 14.6 million pounds in 1815, the British economy prospered. (3)  Napoleon had to rely on indirect taxes because the French were resistant to more direct taxes.  Guess who won the war.

Many conservatives seem to use ad hominem thinking to formulate their positions.  They see global warming as a liberal cause, and therefore they must oppose it.  Some of these global warming skeptics use generalizations to support their arguments.  Many letter writers say the cold weather in March proves there is no global warming, mixing up meteorology and climate (weather today and weather trends spanning decades and centuries).

Global warming skeptics also use “positive” ad hominem thinking.  If someone who seems to have some scientific stature supports his or her viewpoint, then that person must be correct.  (Like all those liberals who are praising Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which I haven’t seen and don’t intend to.)  One of these global-warming skeptic documents was supposedly signed by 17,000 (or was it 20,000) scientists stating “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide … is causing, or will, … cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” (4)

But who are these 17,000 scientists?  Are they all climatologists or chemists employed by oil companies?  Are there even 17,000 climatologists in the world?  It turns out that these scientists are anybody with a degree who signed a certain petition. (5)(6)  I think I would rather go with the opinion of people who regularly study weather and climate. (7)

If climate change is not happening, why is the corporation liberals love to hate, Wal-Mart, going green, saving itself and its customers money? (8)

Generalizations about conservative and liberals certainly don’t always work out as expected. Truth takes a bit more work.

P.S. Do your own search on "17,000 scientists" and "Marshall".  I did and found the "Global Warming Petition Project".  I looked for a unique name in the A section and found "David Acerni" and did a search for him.  There is only one "D Acerni" at whitepages.com.  He lives in Kittaning PA.  According to a Department of Energy spreadsheet from 1999, he was the contact for the Rosebud Mining Co. of Kittaning PA.  I can find no current professional reference to him.

(1) “NYPD’s ‘intelligence’”, section titled “Why media companies get no respect”, Jim Hightower, Reader Weekly, April 12, 2007

(2) “Mallard Fillmore”, Bruce Tinsley, Star Tribune, April 13, 2007

(3) The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy, p. 130

(4) “Gore causes lobal warming in area middle school brains”, Budgeteer News, April 15, 2007

(5) “What the skeptics don’t tell you”, Woods Hole Research Center

(6) “The denial industry”, George Monbiot, The Guardian, September 18, 2006

(7) Climate Change: An information statement of the American Meteorological Society, Feb. 1, 2007,

(8) “The Power of Green”, Thomas Friedman, New York Times Magazine, April 15, 2007

See also "General Ization's power grows".

©2007 Melvyn D. Magree

Voting choices

As I was balancing my checkbook, I noticed that a payment that I had sent last week had not been debited to my account.  I wondered if it was corporate slowness on the part of the recipient or a less efficient postal service.  That led me to think how too many Republicans are trying to make the postal service inefficient.

From that I thought about the voter mantra of “choosing the lesser of two evils”.   Isn’t that a bit harsh?  Shouldn’t it be “choosing the lesser of two incompetents”?

Excessive Corporate Inefficiency

This afternoon I got a call from the Essentia Health Fitness Center that I have not made the annual payment for use of the facility.  We never received any notice that this was due.  Last year we were told at the reception desk, and we were able to pay there.

This year, the phone call was my first notice from anyone, Essentia, Medica, or Silver&Fit.  The administrator said we had to pay Silver&Fit directly.

Now the fun begins.

I called the 800 number for Silver&Fit.  I was told by the pleasant recorded voice that there was a very long wait.  Have you seen anything in the papers about this like you’ve seen about MNSure’s wait times?

I went to the Silver&Fit website.  When I began the registration process, it knew my address and phone number just from my name, but then efficiency disappeared.

I had to enter my birthdate in a specific format; the format was not described next to the box. I was asked to select a security question and give the answer.  I clicked “Next” and then I was told how to enter my birthdate.  But then it would not go any further until I selected a security question again.  It showed my answer, but it wouldn’t show the drop-down list again.  It said I needed to select a security question??

I gave up and started a new session.  I ran into similar problems again.  On the third try I found the form for paying by money order.  No form for check or page for using a credit card.

I gave up on that and sent an email of dissatisfaction.  At least there was a link to do so.

I went to the Medica website and managed to find a form for paying by check.

So we each filled out a form, wrote our checks, and put them in a single envelope.  That will probably screw things up at Silver&Fit.  One of us will be credited with another year’s membership and the other not.

With Congress screwing up the Postal Service, it will probably take more than three days to arrive at Silver&Fit, two more days to get to a clerk to open the envelopes, and two more days for Silver&Fit to notify Essentia Health.

It is not the form of an organization, it’s the personnel and management.  Good and bad of these are found in both government and corporations.

BTW I went to St. Louis County Auditor’s License office last week to renew my driver’s license.  The longest part was filling out the form.  Somebody waited on me right away, had me sign the form, took my money, gave me a copy, and asked me to step over to the eye exam device and the camera.  It took me longer to take off my coat than to have my picture taken.  And all this was done with cheer and courtesy.

If we have smaller government…

...will smaller corporations follow?

I thought a recent article in the New York Times had a headline linking Jeb Bush and “small government”.  At the time, I only saved the link.  When I revisited the link, the article didn’t have that headline but one about his emails as Governor of Florida.  (“Emails from tenure as governor of Florida show Jeb Bush’s agenda and goals”, 2014-12-25).

He did campaign on promising to make Florida state government smaller. He did set a goal of cutting the number of state employees in half.  “And while he did not slash the number of state employees by half, he did privatize thousands of public jobs.”

The problem with promises of smaller government is that often little discrimination is made between what government services are important and what services are superfluous.  It reminds me of Senator Rudy Boschwitz and his call for “across the board cuts”.  Are we going to cut understaffed court systems as well as grants to the arts?  Many people will step in with increased donations to the arts, but how many are willing to donate to the court systems?

What services did Gov. Bush cut?  Could these cuts have resulted in longer wait time for developmentally disabled individuals to receive assistance?  Did he cut law enforcement?  Would this have resulted in more traffic crashes because irresponsible drivers had more chances to hurt other people?

What about the privatizing of public services?  Who are these companies responsible to: the people or the shareholders?  If prisons are privatized, do the companies have an incentive to help inmates re-integrate with society?  Or do they have an incentive to maximize profits and feed and house prisoners at the lowest possible cost without any concern about recidivism?

What is it that makes some people automatically assume corporations will always do better than government?  Have they considered that both corporations and governments are run by people?  And what do people do too often?  Make mistakes.

Deadly mistakes like air bags that kill people and brakes that don’t work.

People lie too often.  Government officials tell us about weapons that don’t exist.  Corporations tell us that their projects will create jobs and will not harm people or the environment.

Two of the favorite punching bags of government critics are the Departments of Motor Vehicles and the Postal Service.  Sorry, but my experiences with either have been almost always positive.  Sure, I have to wait in line sometimes, but I console myself that the clerks will treat me as if I were the only customer.  And the last words of a postal clerk are “Anything else?”  Our usual postal carrier trudges through the snow and cold, and she can still greet us with a cheery smile.

Most of my interactions with large companies are generally positive, but the number of things that go wrong is far too many.

I have accounts with several corporations for various services from online newspapers to cell phone service.  I make payments to many of these by automatic payment through my credit card. Some of these have been sending me emails that my card has expired!

This was beginning in December and into this month.  Strange!  My card has an expiration date of 01/15!  My bank verified that means 1/31/15.  I’ve called or emailed a few about this.  I said I would probably not receive a new card until mid-January.  How can I update it without an updated card?

My new card arrived this past week!  Hurray, I won’t be receiving these messages for another three years.

But…

I spent half a morning updating half the auto-pay accounts.  I wrote some of this while waiting for Virgin Mobile to give me the next page of ???  I lost count.  Each took over a minute to load.  This is corporate efficiency?

Ah, Virgin Mobile accepted my card.  No, it did not!  It doesn’t like the old card number that is displayed with mostly asterisks.  I replaced that with 16 digits all jammed together.  It didn’t like that.  I can’t remember all that happened but finally I had a screen that had the updated info.  Except my choices now are to cancel or pay now.  I would pay automatically on the due date.  I cancelled.  When the next page finally came up it looked like I was all set, but the expiration date wasn’t included.  Then I was waiting  for the page “Edit info”.  The expiration date was NOT updated.

Then I was watching the wait circle go round-and-round for “Contact Us”.  Ah, it finally loaded.

I received an email from Virgin Mobile a couple of hours later.  The representative listed five straight-forward steps.  Why didn’t I see the first step?  Did I go off to another page where that step was not shown?  I don’t know, and I’m not going to double check now.  I do know that all was not peaches and cream.

“Terms and agreement” had a check-box for acceptance, but it was not obvious.  It was partially hidden by text.  I finally got all the steps done, and was told that it would take fifteen minutes to reflect the change in my account.  I bet it wouldn’t take them fifteen minutes to notify me if I had run over the limit on my credit card.

I could rant on about some of the other problems of two days updating only a few accounts.  Some went smoothly; other were almost as bad as the Virgin Mobile experience.

I do know some people who would not even attempt this task.  They would find an expert to do it for them.  With all the research in the last thirty years that has gone into human interface and ease of use, one would think that large corporations with their “efficiency” would be experts in this field.

Mel wonders if there is a Moore’s law for software bugs: every 18 months, the percentage of errors doubles.

Good Service

Good service is something we often take for granted.  If we get bad service we often don’t return.  If we get good service, if convenient, we return again and again.

Many almost make a career of bashing government.  Government is “bloated” and “inefficient”.  Little do they consider all the ways that government makes their lives easier.

Two favorite targets of government bashers are the Postal Service and the Internal Revenue Service.  So effective are these government bashers that others parrot their complaints without considering how necessary and effective these services are.

Five days a week, our mail carrier Sarah comes to our door and deposits mail in our box.  She almost always has a smile, whether she trudges through knee-deep snow bundled up for minus twenty or she easily strolls across mowed grass in shorts.  This attitude is found throughout the Postal Service, at least in Minnesota.  If you stop at a Post Office with a long line at Christmas, the clerks treat each customer as if they were their only customers.  When they have finished with your request, they ask, “Anything else?”

Filing taxes is a chore most of us dread.  Why so many details to note?  Did I remember every donation?  Did I remember every dividend check?  And on and on.  As we plow our way through all these details and curse that we still owe money, we curse the IRS.  But the IRS didn’t create all these rules except at the bidding of Congress.  And Congress created a complex tax code to satisfy thousands of lobbyists.  To top it off, Congress doesn’t fund the IRS sufficiently to do all that it is required to do effectively.

A few weeks ago I received an IRS letter.  Oh, boy!  Did I screw up some calculation or miss an item?  Do I owe even more money?  I opened the letter to get the pain over quickly and found that I will be receiving a refund check!  I used a wrong percentage for a calculation and have less taxable income than I reported.

I know most of this is automated but real people had to be involved to double check and order the refund.  As all large organizations do, the letter said I would receive payment in four-to-six weeks.  I think I received it in a week or ten days.

But that same Congress that bashes the IRS bashes the Postal Service.  It saddled the Postal Service with the requirement to fully-fund future pensions, farther out than many corporations are required.  For example, as of the last letter I received about my Unisys pension, it was only funded at 77 percent!

The result of this pension burden on the Postal Service is that it has to cut services.  But if the Postal Service cuts services then what costs will be incurred by the public?  When rural post offices are cut, how many people will have to spend time and money to drive thirty or more miles to the nearest post office?  If the Postal Service consolidates sorting centers, how much longer will it take for businesses to provide service to their customers?

For example, Netflix has a Duluth distribution center.  Instead of two-day turnaround for a DVD, turnaround from the Duluth center could be four days.  That means, Netflix would probably close its Duluth distribution center, taking jobs direct and indirect with it.

UPS often uses the Postal Service for the “last mile” for small packages.  I’m not sure exactly how this works, but if the Duluth postal sorting center closes, then USPS will have to change its procedures to have its center nearest the Postal Center handle these “last mile” packages.  That will take a major reworking of UPS’s operational procedures.

I did not expect to write so much on government service.  This leaves me less space to praise all the businesses local and national, big and small that provide good service.

I’ll start with a few that know me by name or at least recognize my face.

Every so often I buy something from Denny’s Lawn and Garden, but more often I come in with a question or a broken something.  Tom is always ready to answer my questions or explain what has to be fixed.

Across the street at Denny’s Hardware, Yvonne always has a smile and is ready to point me in the right direction or to the right person.  Even when the person is new to me, they seem to know where what I want is located.

Whenever I want to buy a book,  The Bookstore at Fitgers can quickly tell me if its in stock or if it has to be ordered.  Northern Lights Books provided the same service.

I buy boots and jeans every few years at Minnesota Surplus, but Rick and others recognize me and cheerfully serve me.  Similarly, I buy a couple of shirts every few years at Mainstream for Men, and maybe a belt.  Doug and Tom always treat me as if I were their favorite customer.

Oh dear, the word count is going up too fast.  I have some favorite corporate places, but I’ll just end with a bit about Menards.  Often a clerk will walk half-way across the store to show you where an item is.  The king of service at Menards was Roy.  People sought him ought for advice because he always seemed to have the right answer.  He’s been retired for many years, but many still remember him.

Mel buys both local and corporate; he drinks Duluth beer and Italian wine.  And he forgot to mention Brandon and crew at Mt. Royal Bottle Shoppe.

Originally published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-07-10 at  http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/07/17/3739_good_service.

How did you get your heart attack?

Shoveling three feet of snow.

Why were you shoveling snow?

So the first responders could reach me if I had a heart attack.

As you can see, I did not have a heart attack.  These words of irony did occur to me as I shoveled our walk to the street.

Why did you shovel out to the street?

So the mail carrier can get to our house.

Has the mail carrier come yet?

No, she hasn’t.  But it is still early considering the conditions.

If she is delayed, won’t the snow fill in again.

Please, don’t make me think about it.  You’ll give me a heart attack.

Different rules for private and public pensions (and organizations too)

I recently received the annual funding notice of a company pension plan, a large company I worked at for almost twenty years.  Among other things, a new federal law allows companies to use more favorable interest rate calculations, thus having a smaller projected funding shortfall and a smaller minimum required contribution to the pension fund.

This is called the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act ("MAP-21").  To me it looks like progress for corporate bottom lines and regress for retirees' pension security.

For example, my former employer would have a funding shortfall under the older law of $1.3 billion.  Under the new law the shortfall would be $0.6 billion, less than half.  The required minimum contribution would have been $152 million.  Now it is $56 million, almost two-thirds less!

On the other hand Congress has really socked it to the Postal Service.  Search for

"post office" pensions

One I read was "Background on the $15.9 Billion Loss by the Postal Service".  Be sure to read the comments.

The Postal Service was required to significantly increase its reserves in its pension fund.  The Postal Service may only put those reserves in government securities, which pay significantly less than the securities corporations may use for their pension fund.

In short, the best Congress money can buy gave its supporters a big break on pension funds and threw stones at its favorite scapegoat.

One of the commenters to "Background" pointed out that the Postal Service is a Constitutionally-mandated organization.  I would add that the Constitution doesn't even mention private corporations.

Let's all praise government workers

A favorite sport of too many people is to bash government as inefficient.

Let us consider the many ways that we should be thankful to government.

Let's start with the rather prosaic in Minnesota.  We have had a lot of snow in Minnesota this month.  Schools have been closed and events cancelled.  But the plow operators were out clearing streets and alleys at all hours.  Major streets were opened almost immediately, other streets within a few hours, and alleys within a few hours more.  The plow operators are union city workers that are doing their best to battle nature without damaging parked cars.  Are they greedy union workers or are they people requesting just compensation for the difficult work they do?

A favorite target of many anti-government people is the U.S. Postal Service.  Sometime after nine I got busy on the walkway around our house.  I wanted to make sure our carrier didn't have much difficulty.  I saw her park almost in front of our house rather than down the street, just about on her usual schedule. Before I could even get to the front walk, Sara came trudging up the steps in nine-inch drifts.  She said that if she hadn't seen me, she would have waited until tomorrow to deliver our mail, none of it urgent.  Maybe regulations don't cover her discretion, but she was making a very good effort at delivering important mail in a timely fashion for all on her route.

Then there is the big government operation in Boston.  It is just amazing how the federal, state, and local criminal investigation bureaucracies worked through thousands of pieces of information to determine who the prime suspects were, locate them, and fatally wound one of them.  As I write this, the other is apparently cornered in a boat in somebody's yard.  All of this in less than a week.

An efficient private-public co-operation

I've written before about how well NetFlix and the Postal Service work together.  A couple of weeks ago I had a real surprise on how efficient that co-operation can be.

We returned a Netflix DVD on a Saturday morning.  On the following Monday, President's Day, a federal holiday, we received an email from NetFlix that we would receive the next DVD "on or about" Wednesday.  We received it on Tuesday!

I post these because I am tired of anti-government types who take a few incidents and blow them up to regular occurrences.  Any large organization makes many mistakes; consider my complaints about Apple and its many unsolved problems.  That doesn't mean that an organization that makes mistakes doesn't do a lot of other things well.  I've done a lot of useful things with my Apple products.  I just won't be in a rush to get the latest major upgrade of any of its software.  I'll wait until I have to buy a new device with the software installed.

BTW, DVDs by mail beat streaming.  Many call postal mail "snail mail".  Try streaming a movie any evening with a moderate speed connection.  A snail keeps moving.  A streaming movie can stop without warning.

Netflix disappointed me

I've posted a couple of entries how the US Postal Service and Netflix give excellent service in keeping me supplied with movies.  If I put a DVD in a mail box, Netflix has it early in the morning of the next delivery day and sends me the next DVD in my queue.  I receive that DVD on the next delivery day, in effect, two days turnaround.

I think it was Sunday morning that I woke up wondering if the last DVD I sent back to Netflix even got there.  I had to think when and where I put it in the mail.  Ah, yes, I watched an Inspector Morse DVD on the night of the Presidential debates, last Wednesday.  I put it in the mail box at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, on my way to a University for Seniors class.

Did mail get picked up from that box?  I checked my account and it was no longer on my list.  Ah, yes, I did get an email that it had been received but I had already deleted it.  Then I got an email that the next DVD would be sent for Monday delivery.

Well, that wouldn't happen because Monday was the official Columbus day this year.  Then my account said it was not available.  I forgotten the other changes for the status that DVD.  Finally, the status was that I would get the second DVD in my list on Wednesday and the first DVD would be sent shortly.

Drat, my wife isn't interested in murder mysteries (except Agatha Christie's) and she went to the Twin Cities today. So, I would be able to watch it without disturbing her.

Oh, well, the bright side, maybe, is that I wrote that "delightful" critique of the political parties at http://magree.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-true-names-of-republicans-and.html.  If you read that, I hope you are pleased that I didn't watch a DVD instead.  If you were pleased, I hope you'll let me know if you see me.

What is slower than the Postal Service?

Electronic fund transfers!  From one corporation to another!  In days, not hours!

On Tuesday I asked online for the cash balance of my brokerage account and the sales of some mutual fund shares, the proceeds of each to be transferred to my local checking account.  Neither transaction was confirmed until Wednesday afternoon.  My bank account did not show the deposits until eight o'clock Thursday.  About 46 hours after I had made my request, I saw the result.

Two days is what it takes to send in one Netflix DVD and receive the next!  In fact, the time from pickup to confirmation is less than 16 hours.  I am notified of the shipment of the next DVD about noon and receive it before 10 the next morning.  Hm!  With a 12:30 pickup and a 10:00 delivery, that's less than 46 hours!  A two-way transaction is faster than a one-way transaction!

The first is done completely by computers.  The second is done by a lot of hard-working people, both government and corporate.

Oh, yes, the last two DVDs have been from southwestern Wisconsin, not from Duluth.  Unbelievable, a Postal Service truck is faster than corporate computers!

Limited choices for DVD rentals

Over two years ago I wrote "Netflix busts Blockbuster, or the Changing Economy". Over a year ago I wrote "Little box vs. BIG BOX (Videos)".  I meant to write some follow-on articles about little boxes vs BIG boxes, such as drug stores, hardware stores, book stores, camera stores, and others.  But I never did.  Now about the only little boxes left are hair salons and restaurants.  And the individual entrepreneurs in these have to compete with big chains.

I was also remiss in noting that almost every movie rental store in Duluth has closed.  The last convenient movie rental, Mr. Movies, closed because they could not renew their lease on their terms.  For me this was unfortunate because Mr. Movies had a good selection of foreign films, including some classics.

Now our choices for movies are DVD by mail or DVD by download.  I shied away from Netflix because I didn't see paying ten bucks for one or two movies a month.

I did try downloading from iTunes and some other sources, but that is a two-hour wait at a nominal 7Mbps rate (more like 4Mbps actual).  But at least twice, iTunes just hung up with 30 minutes or so left to download.  I could restart the download and it would pick up at the hang-up point, but one shouldn't have to babysit a download.

Oh, yes, iTunes movies have subtitles that can't be turned off.  Subtitles make it very hard to listen to the words being spoken.

We could stream DVDs, but that can be a jerky experience.  And we can't stream at all at our cabin which has only 24Kbps.  Even accessing the web has become a hassle at that speed.

We finally opted for Netflix, starting with the one DVD at a time program.   The service has been excellent; I wrote about it in "Why do people pick on the Post Office?"

My latest choice is "The Hunger Games", which was released Saturday.  I moved it to the top of our queue Sunday after I put the previous DVD in a mail box.  Netflix told me "The Hunger Games" has been shipped and I should be receiving it tomorrow.  That sure beats babysitting a download.

We do have a small problem.  My wife doesn't care for movies with any violence, including murder mysteries.  I wonder if she'll watch Miss Marple.  So, I have to schedule watching such movies when she is gone or I'll be at the cabin alone.  This, in turn, limits our shared watching.  That sucked me into upping our Netflix account to two DVDs at a time.  At about $12 a month, that beats one visit to a movie theater for both of us, or getting five DVDs a month from a store.

Has inflation changed the expression "nickel and dimed to death" to "ten dollared to death"?

I just hope this increased viewing doesn't reduce my book reading.

Why do people pick on the Post Office?

For some time it has seemed the fashion to claim the United States Post Office is a bad example of government services, that it is run by the greedy mail carriers' union, and that it should pay its own way.

From my experience, the United States Post Office has been run effectively, provided friendly and courteous service, and provided an essential public good.

I have often found that mail deposited one day is often delivered the next day within the state and often delivered within three days within the lower 48.  It almost always arrives in the same condition as it was deposited.

A case in point is the delivery of DVDs from Netflix.  I put a DVD in a box on Sunday, next scheduled pickup was 12:30 on Monday, at 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday Netflix sent me email that it had received my DVD, and on Wednesday around 10:00 a.m. I had my next selection.

Granted the return address for Netflix is Duluth.  But what would happen if the processing center was closed in Duluth and all local mail had to first make a 300-mile round-trip to the Twin Cities?

If the Post Office is so inefficient, why does UPS use USPS for the last-mile delivery of small packages?  Several times I've gotten small orders delivered by our mail carrier, but the shipper had originally given the order to UPS.  This hand-off happens because it is inefficient for UPS to deliver such small packages door-to-door.

Some have complained about surly counter service at the Post Office.  My general experience is that counter personnel treat every customer as the only customer.  They give alternative shipping costs and conditions and always ask "Anything else?"

The Postal Service seems to be the only government agency that Congress expects to pay its own way.  Is Congress going to insist that every Interstate highway be a toll road?  Is Congress going to insist that every homeowner whose house has been saved by U.S. Forest Service firefighters pay a fee?

The U.S. Constitution states: "Congress shall have the power … to establish Post Offices and post Roads."  The Constitution mentions nothing about how post offices and post roads should be paid for.  In fact, in recognition that newspapers were important for an informed populace, an early Congress determined that newspapers should be sent at a lower rate than letters.

The benefits and the costs of the Postal Service should not be examined as a direct cost/benefit problem but as a system cost/benefit problem.  It is not a question if the revenue of the Postal Services is meeting its costs, but it is a question of what benefits would not be realized if postal service were cut back.  For example, if all Duluth mail had to go to the Twin Cities to be processed, would the Netflix office in Duluth close, putting some local people out of work?

Efficiency vs. effectiveness, a simile

Many "limited government" or "low tax" proponents are calling for more efficiency in governments. Unfortunately, efficiency is not a poor metric for any job.

Consider that even with long lines at the post office, the clerks, at least in Minnesota, ask, "Anything else?" The "efficiency" proponents would demand quicker processing of each customer, but the effective clerks give better service to each customer and may sell more stamps and other things.

The "efficiency" proponents would probably buy a heating system that gave the lowest cost per Btu. However, that heating system may not put out enough Btus to effectively heat the building. And if that low cost heating system was in an office building, the office workers may be so uncomfortable that they are neither efficient nor effective.

Financing the post office, where are the strict constructionists?

Once again, with the changing means of communicating, the U. S. Postal Service is in financial trouble.  Many think it shouldn't be subsidized but privatized.  This can lead to some Constitutional fun.

The U. S. Constitution merely says that "The Congress shall have the power … to establish Post Offices and post Roads;…"

Does "establish" mean "set up" or "operate"?  How is it financed?  Should it be self-funded or are Post Offices" part of the "General Welfare"?

All we know is at the time of the writing of the Constitution, the only means of communicating were either face-to-face or putting words on paper and sending them to other people.  One of the means of putting words on paper was called "newspapers", and the Founders considered newspapers so important to having an informed citizenry that they subsidized the postal delivery of newspapers (Post Office Act of 1792).  So, from the beginning, the Post Office was not self-supporting and was not intended to be.

The writers of the Constitution did not foresee the telegraph, the telephone, the Teletype, radio, television, and the Internet; all means of expanding the distribution of information (or misinformation).  Maybe the Internet should be subsidized to have an informed citizenry.  Of course, it is subsidized in a way.  Government organizations from local to international provide websites for public access to information.  But these sites are maintained by government employees.

We do have a slightly subsidized Internet - it's called public libraries, many which have free, albeit limited, access to the Internet.  Of course, free libraries and free Internet require taxes, which we can have none of.

What a long way we've come from

“However firmly liberty may be established in any country, it cannot long subsist if the channels of information be stopped,” Massachusetts Senator Elbridge Gerry stated in his fierce defense of providing federal subsidies to newspaper postal distribution in 1792.

– "The History of Transparency – Part 1: Opening the Channels of Information to the People in the 18th Century"

BTW, we have the wish to limit information all over the political map.  The Obama administration want to get authority to eavesdrop on the Internet.  See "U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet", Charlie Savage, New York Times, 2010-09-27.

Again, where are the strict constructionists?