Cook: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor congress

photo David Cook

To get involvedContact your federal elected officials in Washington or attend today's 3 p.m. rally at the Shallowford Road plant.• U.S. Sen. Bob Corker: 202-224-3344.• U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander: 202-224-4944.• U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann: 202-225-3271.• Email addresses may be found at www.congress.gov.

The U.S. Postal Service isn't dying.

It's being killed.

Like Judas, the betrayal came from someone close: Washington.

"The only people that can save the Postal Service is the general public," said Judy Stocker, president of the local American Postal Workers Union. "If it's left up to the GOP, it's over."

Don't fall for the urban myth of a failing Postal Service, slowly creaking along with all its 20th centuryness -- awww, snail mail, how quaint -- while this brave new world of emails, e-vites and online checking roars by.

"On average, an American household receives twice as many pieces of mail a day as it did in the 1970s," the New York Times said in 2005.

Not long ago, the Postal Service was galloping. In 2005, revenue exceeded costs by $1.5 billion. (In 1995, it was $3.5 billion.) In 2006, the Postal Service handled more mail than ever before.

Then, the Brutus moment.

In 2006, Washington passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required the Postal Service to pre-fund -- in advance -- the next 75 years of health benefits for retirees.

"That's right," Allison Kilkenny wrote in Truthout.org. "Congress was demanding universal health care."

And it must be funded by 2016.

"It's a self-made plan for destruction," Stocker said.

It's millstone politics: The act yoked the Postal Service to roughly $5.5 billion in payments each year, effectively robbing it of any profits it may earn and creating a schizophrenic climate in which the Postal Service performs well but loses money.

In 21 of the last 23 quarters, the Postal Service has lost money. Yes, first-class mail revenue is declining, but notice this: Those two quarterly exceptions came during a time when the Postal Service didn't make its pre-funded retirement payments.

"No other business or government agency is burdened with this mandate," U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told the Washington Post.

It's the first taste of hemlock. Washington has poisoned the Postal Service to hasten its demise, allowing private industry to swoop in and clean up the mess.

"Without the $5.5 billion [retiree benefit payments], they would be in the black," Stocker said, "and all these cuts would be unnecessary."

In 2015, the processing and distribution plant on Shallowford Road is scheduled to close, which would remove 265 jobs -- sturdy, middle-class jobs, held by many veterans -- and $5 million from our area, Stocker said.

It will also gum up our daily service: A Christmas card mailed from East Ridge today makes a Red Bank mailbox tomorrow. After the Shallowford Road closure, that same letter will travel to Nashville or Atlanta and won't hit Red Bank until two, maybe three, days later.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: Cutting distribution plants will lead to less mail. Then, daily delivery is cut. Then, individual mailboxes are turned into cluster boxes, sort of like a PO box centrally located somewhere near your neighborhood.

The end of the post office, brought to you by Washington.

Across America today, postal unions are rallying. This afternoon at 3, there's a protest at the Shallowford Road plant, sponsored by the local postal union and Chattanooga for Workers. Stocker hopes as many folks as possible will call or email (yes, I see the irony) their representatives in Washington and deliver a loud message.

"The Postal Service belongs to the people and not a handful of congressmen," Stocker said.

Birthed from the beautiful vision of Ben Franklin, the Postal Service is a civic treasure. Delivering 22 million pieces of mail on average every hour, the Postal Service runs a delivery system unlike any in the world, and doesn't use one cent of tax money.

From passports to business contracts to Crayola-letters from grandkids, it traffics in love, economy and citizenship. Nothing else left in America has the power to connect every last one of us like the Postal Service.

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.

Upcoming Events