Postal Service Posts $3.8 Billion Loss

That's the good news. The projections for 2010 show the loss could be double that, up to $7.6 billion. You have to love government efficiency.

The U.S. Postal Service reported a $3.8 billion net loss for its fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, as some $6 billion in cost savings were not enough to keep pace with plunging mail volumes.

But don't worry, people. If this was a private business they would be trying to either figure out how to become profitable or they would be filing for bankruptcy, but since they have an inexhaustible source of money--your tax dollars--they will continue on. In fact, Congress passed legislation which allowed them to fudge the numbers just a little bit.

The loss would have been worse except for legislation which allowed the agency to postpone the recognition of billions of dollars in prefunded retiree health benefit payments.

Once again we see the adverse impact of union retirement plans on government agencies at all levels from city and county all the way up to the federal level. It isn't just GM that has all of these sweetheart retirement packages rammed down the throats of taxpayers, although to my knowledge GM is the first wholly privately-owned business that was able to use taxpayer money to fund their packages.

The CFO of the Postal Service tried to put his best spin on it.

The agency cut 115 million work hours in 2009 to match the reduced mail volume. "That's the equivalent of 65,000 full-time employees," Corbett said.

They didn't lay anybody off, mind you, they just cut their hours, which means all of the people stay on the roles adding to the debt being racked up in this retirement plan that is driving them into the ground. I'm sure this shows up somewhere in the White House's fantasy of "saved or created" jobs.

Amtrak loses $476 million.

Medicare suffers $60 billion a year in losses due to fraud.

A Social Security program which nobody can seem to agree on when it will run out of money, they just all agree it will.

Hell, they couldn't even manage a cafeteria.

This is definitely the guys I want running my healthcare.