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Leave it to Fox to do the bidding of the House Republicans and their allies, who are doing their best to try to destroy the U.S. Postal Service. Never mind the damage that would be done to the elderly who rely on the mail to receive their prescriptions, small businesses and Americans who live in rural areas with shoddy Internet service and the thousands of Americans who earn a decent middle class living from being employed there.

No, in the view of the majority of the panel members on this Saturday's edition of Cashin' In, that's a terrible thing that those people are gainfully employed and heaven forbid have union representation and it's all their fault that the Post Office is in financial straights. And par for the course with these "business block" shows of theirs, the only voice of reason was the one, poor, lonely outnumbered "liberal" Christian Dorsey, who did actually tell the truth about one of the problems -- which is that Congress has "forced the USPS to pre-fund 75 years’ worth of pensions for its employees, a requirement not made of any other public or private institution."

Instead we were treated to the rest of them screaming that we need to privatize the Postal Service, lying and telling the audience that other industries would provide the same services less expensively and ignoring, other than Dorsey again, that they have a mandate to serve all Americans which those other companies are not bound by. It really just boiled down to another shameful exercise in union bashing, which is what these Saturday shows on Fox do week, after week, after week, or at least when they're not attacking the poor and demonizing liberals in general.

Here's more on what's really going on, counter to the nonsense being pushed in the clip above: Do You Want To Live Without The Postal Service?:

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Ed Schultz talked to USPS letter carrier and Rep. Joe Walsh constituent Melissa Rakestraw about her encounter with Walsh at a recent meeting he had where he basically melted down and started screaming at Rakestraw and some of the others who were unfortunate enough to be attending that event.

Susie's prior post on this here at C&L focused on the fact that Walsh was defending the banks and Wall Street. If anyone's got the stomach for it, there's also an almost hour long video of that same meeting posted on line, and Wall Street and the banks were not the only subject that came up during that meeting.

Walsh also confronted Rakestraw about the Post Office and whether private industry can do a better job of delivering our mail, with Rakestraw rightfully pointing out to him that if left to their own means, private industry will not serve rural areas and make sure that everyone can afford to have mail delivery at a price that doesn't do things like force seniors to pay so much for their drugs being delivered that they just can't afford it anymore.

As Ed Schultz rightfully pointed out, the Republican Party "thinks public jobs are disposable and not worth anything." Rakestraw called out Walsh for getting as aggressive and obnoxious as he did with his own constituents, but said she didn't feel threatened by how he acted during that public meltdown that so many of us have watched. Rakestraw said she was a lot more concerned about his "anti-worker ideology and his total disregard for facts."

She was a whole lot kinder to Walsh than I would have been had I received the same treatment and after him going on the air and just chalking his behavior up to too much coffee and an empty stomach.

I just have to wonder how this union member who obviously understands how important her job is with making sure we have affordable mail service to everyone in the country and who gave the arguments she did here against the nonsense Walsh was spouting can call herself a Republican when her party has fallen so far off the cliff they obviously don't believe in a lot of the same basic values she does and ones that would mean she keeps her job. Had I been in Schultz position, that's one of the questions I would have asked her during this interview.**

What's sad and really just a shame is the fact that we don't have as many Democrats as there should be out there speaking so clearly and plainly on the issues Rakestraw addressed here when it comes to whether the private sector would ever give rural communities affordable mail delivery and why privatizing that business and leaving it to the private sector is really just a horrible idea.

Regardless of her party affiliation and whether she ought to rethink it or not, it was nice to hear someone who is just your average working person like Rakestraw call Walsh out for his nonsense and it's too bad Ed Schultz got caught on a hard break with her at the end of the show and that his producers didn't allot more time for the interview. She was just in the middle of making some really great points when he had to cut her off since the show was over and out of time.

** [Editor's Note: Melissa Rakestraw identifies herself as a progressive Independent, not a Republican. We apologize for the error.]

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From this Saturday's Forbes on Fox, more attacks on labor unions and calls to privatize the United States Postal Service. Host David Asman opened the segment talking about the postal union's decision to hire Ron Bloom, one of the advisers that helped steer the auto industry out of bankruptcy.

That was followed by a call from panel member Dennis Kneale to just shut down the whole Post Office and allow FexEx and UPS to buy it and in his words to “chop it up.” Fellow panel member Victoria Barret, while disagreeing with Kneale that it's not possible to just “junk the whole Post Office” and said she still likes sending Christmas cards, but of course thought that the union contracts need to be ripped up.

Here was host David Asman's response to that:

ASMAN: Well Steve, you can send Christmas cards for free on the Internet now! I mean the Internet changes everything, doesn't it?

To which Barret and Forbes responded, “It's not the same.” Well, no it's not but how about someone reminding Asman that the Internet is not free?

Forbes continued with the fearmongering that if the Post Office is not privatized, tax payers are going to be on the hook for their pension funds and finally one of their panelists actually pointed out the real problem the Post Office is facing right now, which is that Congress has forced them to over fund their pensions to the tune of $75 billion and if some of that money was returned, it would solve their problems immediately.

Which was naturally met with scorn from the other panel members. When Asman also brought up the fact that shutting down the Post Office would likely harm services for those who live in rural areas, Forbes claimed that private industry would take care of the problem on its own and Dennis Kneale chimed back in and said if they're unhappy with not having service after the business is privatized, they can...get this... just move. So if you live in a rural area, according to Kneale you'd better suck it up and move to the city if you want to get mail service. What a guy. So much for those claims of “compassionate conservatism.”

Our own Kenneth Quinnell has been following this story which you can read about here:

New York Times Blames Workers for Postal Service Woes, Glosses Over Real Cause of Problems

here:

More Details Emerge in Republican Assault on Post Office and Postal Unions

and here:

The Plot to Kill the Post Office...And Its Union Contracts.

From Democracy Now -- Shock Doctrine at U.S. Postal Service: Is a Manufactured Crisis Behind Push Toward Privatization?:

Today, postal workers and their supporters are holding events across the country to press their demand for repealing the benefit-funding mandate and push back against calls for their workplace to be privatized. For months, Americans have heard dire warnings about the impending collapse of the United States Postal Service due to fiscal insolvency and a drop in the use of mail service. In early September, the U.S. Postmaster General told Congress that the USPS is close to default and unveiled a series of radical proposals to cut costs by firing up to 120,000 workers, closing several thousand facilities, scaling back deliveries, and reducing benefits for retirees. But many postal workers say the much-touted crisis facing the U.S. Postal Service is not what it seems. They argue the greatest volume of mail handled in the 236-year history of the postal service was 2006. They also point to a 2006 law that forced the USPS to become the only agency required to fund 75 years of retiree health benefits over just a 10-year span, and say the law’s requirements account for 100 percent of the service’s $20 billion in losses over the previous four years, without which the service would have turned a profit. Last week, Republicans introduced legislation to overhaul the USPS in response to a bill proposed by Democrats that would refund a reported $6.9 billion in over-payments to the USPS retirement plan, offer early retirement and voluntary separation incentives, adjust retiree benefits prepayment requirements, and preserve employee protections set out in collective bargaining agreements. We host a debate between Chuck Zlatkin, the legislative and political director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, and Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce in Washington, D.C.

And from Dave Dayden at FDL -- Postal Service “Crisis” Comes Entirely From Unorthodox Pre-Funding Mandate.

We’ve been discussing the imminent demise of the US Postal Service, and the potential loss of 120,000 good-paying jobs. But most of the near-term funding “crisis” for the USPS comes from an unusual pre-funding mandate for retiree benefits. James Parks explains:

And from Dave's post here's a new ad from the National Association of Letter Carriers, the American Postal Workers Union and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, explaining the cause of the "crisis."

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Thom Hartmann takes on the CATO Institute's Tad DeHaven over whether we should privatize the United States Postal Service. When I get a chance to catch Hartmann on my satellite radio, his daily segment such as this one, where he takes on these right wing think tank hacks are some of my favorite portions of his show.