Save the postal service.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: VOX POPULIST

Journalism, which is supposed to help us make sense of our turbulent world, can't seem to make sense of itself.

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In addition to "news" (which involves reporting on stuff that's real) we're now getting "fake news" (stuff that's completely made up). But wait, the barons of corporate news are adding to today's tumultuous state of journalism by putting out feeds of "BS news" (stuff they know is untrue but reported as fact, because it advances their political agenda).

For example, the mighty Washington Post (owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, a laissez-fairyland promoter of privatizing government functions) keeps publishing a load of BS to denigrate our U.S. Post Office. The paper's latest pot shot was in an alarmist editorial declaring, "The U.S. Postal Service continues to hemorrhage red ink." Embracing their owner's anti-government ideology, the editors grumped that postal unions have made our mail service outmoded and insolvent, running up "a net loss of $5.6 billion" last year.

That is pure bovine excrement--and the editors know it. In fact, thanks to our amazing, innovative, and efficient postal workers, the nation's public post offices racked up a $610 million operating profit last year, and a $1.2 billion profit the year before.

The $5 billion in red ink that the paper's editorial propagandists touted is a deliberate bookkeeping hoax created by Congress to make the public think that our Post Office is a hopeless money loser that should be privatized.

In 2006, Congress piled an artificial "loss" on the Postal Service by decreeing that it must prefund the health care costs of future retirees, seventy-five years in advance. That includes retirees who are not even born yet! No other agency and no other corporation--including Amazon--could survive if Congress added a $5-billion-a-year fictitious loss to its books.

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Yet, in a shameful piece of BS journalism, the Post intentionally ignored the facts.

What the Post should have covered was this: While a half-dollar hardly counts as money these days, there is an amazing half-dollar bargain on offer: A first-class postage stamp. For fifty cents, you get the stamp, a penny in change, and so much more. Stick it on an envelope, drop your missive in a mailbox, and America's phenomenal...