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To put it in perspective, that opening is worse than what Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 did.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 17:32 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 09:59 |
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MY STEEL. YOUR TRAINS.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 17:38 |
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Every time I listen to Alex Jones he claims he's been losing a ton of weight. Every time I see Alex Jones he's fatter than ever.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 18:10 |
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Ray and Shirley posted:Every time I listen to Alex Jones he claims he's been losing a ton of weight. Every time I see Alex Jones he's fatter than ever. The illuminati (camera) adds twenty pounds, or something.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 18:35 |
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Rush Limbaugh- Liberals are adding germs to morning after pills so that they won't work on fat women!
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 18:41 |
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Radish posted:I like how to these fundie types there's always this huge untapped market of people that desperately want banal, Christian themed pablum but Hollywood is just too dedicated to promoting sin that they don't want that easy money. Actually there is a big market for that, the problem for Rick Santorum is that it's black and Tyler Perry already cornered it.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 18:49 |
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Slightly Toasted posted:Rush Limbaugh- Liberals are adding germs to morning after pills so that they won't work on fat women!
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 19:15 |
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"When will the big government stop it's war on fatties?" Alternate universe where gov. brings up concerns:"Why doesn't Obama's government want fat people to reproduce? Are they next for the death panels?"
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 19:17 |
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Lycus posted:If there are honest libertarians out there, I haven't met one. All the libertarians I've talked to are hypocritical in some way. Maybe the wealthy ones are honest. Libertarians see the slightest problem with a complicated government-run-or-subsidized system as a fine reason to throw the whole thing away, especially if it personally inconveniences them. I know a dude who angrily tweets at the mass transit union whenever his bus is late -- instead of, you know, thinking about the many variables that can affect traffic in a massive city not really designed for cars.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 19:48 |
bobservo posted:Libertarians see the slightest problem with a complicated government-run-or-subsidized system as a fine reason to throw the whole thing away, especially if it personally inconveniences them. I know a dude who angrily tweets at the mass transit union whenever his bus is late -- instead of, you know, thinking about the many variables that can affect traffic in a massive city not really designed for cars. I once spent a good half hour standing in line at the post office listening to a tax attorney complain about how all the post offices were closing and running shorter hours and he couldn't get his client's filings submitted properly, and how he never had those problems with FedEx or UPS. Of course the USPS cuts are entirely a result of funding cuts, and his entire practice consisted of people paying him hundreds of dollars an hour so that they could pay as little in taxes as possible . . .
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 20:02 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Of course the USPS cuts are entirely a result of funding cuts, Actually, the USPS service cuts are because the USPS was mandated by Congress to shovel billions of dollars every quarter into a gigantic pension/healthcare plan. I don't have a link on me but I remember last time I checked that the amount USPS was obligated to remove from operational funding every year was larger than the combined yearly net profit of both FedEx and UPS.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 21:39 |
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poor nose posted:Friday as I was driving home I was listening to Hannity like I always do but this episode he had Rick Santorum who was promoting his new Christian Christmas movie, "The Christmas Candle". You see after America wasn't ready for a Christian candidate like Rick he moved on and became CEO of a Christian centric movie studio to fight back against the Devil in Godless Hollywood. He went on to explain to Sean while they verbally stroked each other off that people don't want to see this garbage and filth but there just aren't good wholesome movies available to them to watch with their families. I really like santorum's gimmick. He always gets just within reach of acceptance and success and then manages to alienate everyone and fail spectacularly. I'd almost feel bad for him if he wasn't such a loving creep.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 21:52 |
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Actually, the USPS service cuts are because the USPS was mandated by Congress to shovel billions of dollars every quarter into a gigantic pension/healthcare plan. I don't have a link on me but I remember last time I checked that the amount USPS was obligated to remove from operational funding every year was larger than the combined yearly net profit of both FedEx and UPS. Yep, Congress is making them throw $5.5bn annually into a pot that is already overflowing, while at the same time mandating they continue the same level of service. It's a naked attempt to get rid of them once and for all.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 21:56 |
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Actually, the USPS service cuts are because the USPS was mandated by Congress to shovel billions of dollars every quarter into a gigantic pension/healthcare plan. I don't have a link on me but I remember last time I checked that the amount USPS was obligated to remove from operational funding every year was larger than the combined yearly net profit of both FedEx and UPS. It'd be pretty fair to say the pension requirements are a way to cut the USPS's effective funding.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 22:00 |
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Actually, the USPS service cuts are because the USPS was mandated by Congress to shovel billions of dollars every quarter into a gigantic pension/healthcare plan. I don't have a link on me but I remember last time I checked that the amount USPS was obligated to remove from operational funding every year was larger than the combined yearly net profit of both FedEx and UPS. IIRC: The USPS has 5 years to fully fund the pensions of people who haven't even been hired yet.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 22:16 |
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Hasters posted:Yep, Congress is making them throw $5.5bn annually into a pot that is already overflowing, while at the same time mandating they continue the same level of service. It's a naked attempt to get rid of them once and for all. This has been public knowledge for years. The Dems have been horrible at getting the message out.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 22:21 |
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That Irish Guy posted:But yeah, I guess what I'm saying is: at least (actual, internally consistent, and not simply conservatives hiding under a lovely guise of "neutrality") Libertarians find problems with conservatives, at least they have enough critical thought to not be drawn in by that ideology. Hieronymous Alloy posted:An actual ideological libertarian is a lot closer to socialism than they are to the modern Republican party, just because they're already thinking about politics in economic terms. Some of them come to realize the flaws of the libertarian economic model and others don't. BrotherAdso posted:I dunno, it's worth noting that Libertarians, especially young libertarians, do have a leg up on traditional conservatives. Their media (Personal Liberty, various PaulTard sites) is better, too. For only one simple reason: their libertarianism usually extends in a consistent way to social and personal issues. Joementum posted:Ah, but it sounds like neither you nor your friend know the actual Libertarian argument for abortion rights: evictionism! Here's Walter Block explaining it at the Ron Paul rally in Tampa last year. fade5 fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Nov 25, 2013 |
# ? Nov 25, 2013 22:23 |
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beatlegs posted:This has been public knowledge for years. The Dems have been horrible at getting the message out. To be fair "Everyone hates the post office, they suck!" is probably the original meme and has been absorbed by almost everyone in America, regardless of political affiliation.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 22:32 |
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Install Windows posted:It'd be pretty fair to say the pension requirements are a way to cut the USPS's effective funding. Not to mention that mass mailings (I.e., junkmail) are heavily subsidized by ordinary people who pay full price for services, who probably don't even want damned junkmail anyway. Yet another instance of corporate welfare depleting the public purse and nobody saying a word. Hasters posted:To be fair "Everyone hates the post office, they suck!" is probably the original meme and has been absorbed by almost everyone in America, regardless of political affiliation. Which is idiotic. The USPS is one of the best services the US government offers. A postal service that works, and doesn't routinely steal your mail is a mark of a civilized nation.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 22:42 |
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Hasters posted:To be fair "Everyone hates the post office, they suck!" is probably the original meme and has been absorbed by almost everyone in America, regardless of political affiliation. Which is odd given that the USPS is probably the most well-run gov't service ever. e: beaten
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 22:42 |
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SnakePlissken posted:Not to mention that mass mailings (I.e., junkmail) are heavily subsidized by ordinary people who pay full price for services, who probably don't even want damned junkmail anyway. Yet another instance of corporate welfare depleting the public purse and nobody saying a word. Haha what? No, it's the other way around. Those junkmail companies get discounted rates but provide consisntent, predictable, and large flows of mail, all of which is perfectly sorted and addressed and coded before hand if the companies want to get the discounts, and the discounted rates they pay are still a lot more than what they actually cost the USPS, they're the USPS' cash cow. Meanwhile, a lot of regular person letter mail is susceptible to being of unpredictable demand, rarely is addressed and labeled in the precisely sortable standardized ways the USPS requires for bulk mailers to get discounts, and so on. That stuff really can often cost much more than the base postage rate to actually send, particularly if it gets rejected by the machines and instead has to be person-sorted.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 22:51 |
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SnakePlissken posted:Not to mention that mass mailings (I.e., junkmail) are heavily subsidized by ordinary people who pay full price for services, who probably don't even want damned junkmail anyway. Yet another instance of corporate welfare depleting the public purse and nobody saying a word. I don't get it either, I love the USPS. I've never had them throw a box on the front porch from the driveway, FedEx, or lie and mark a package as delivered only to have it show up the next day, UPS. Plus Antoine is a cool guy, even though he's a Bears fan.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 22:59 |
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SnakePlissken posted:Which is idiotic. The USPS is one of the best services the US government offers. A postal service that works, and doesn't routinely steal your mail is a mark of a civilized nation. It's also one of only two services that the federal government is explicitly to provide the general public with that is listed in the US Constitution. Article 1, Section 8 posted:The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 23:03 |
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Well, it is obvious that the way to improve USPS is to contract out the profitable parts with a nice big minimum profit guarantee while the unprofitable but extremely popular parts, like having domestic rates for foreign military bases and having post offices in remote rural areas, are subsidized by the government (plus a nice little chunk for overhead costs). That way we can achieve the dream of paying more for the same service.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 23:15 |
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Install Windows posted:Haha what? No, it's the other way around. Those junkmail companies get discounted rates but provide consisntent, predictable, and large flows of mail, all of which is perfectly sorted and addressed and coded before hand if the companies want to get the discounts, and the discounted rates they pay are still a lot more than what they actually cost the USPS, they're the USPS' cash cow. I just recall the director of the USPS being interviewed on public radio a number of years ago citing both the pension fund and the bulk corporate mailers being heavily subsidized as the main handicaps against his agency. I'm not pulling it out of thin air. I think there's probably a lot to your argument here though, and maybe more nuance to argue, too, than I can delve into given my time considerations. How does it compare, what a piece of junkmail costs to send, compared to a single letter? When any residential mail truck is more than half full of junkmail, which I imagine they are often as not, the time saved on it being presorted seems like it may only be one of the smaller offsets to its overall costs. May reduce work for the manual sorters but puts more work on the deliverator, IMO, and more wear and tear on equipment to transport it. But I'm not an expert and it's probably a rather complex argument. Maybe somebody has discussed it more fully already elsewhere.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 23:28 |
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poor nose posted:Well apparently the devil won because the Christmas candle was a total loving flop. It's already taken in over 1.5 million in box office, plus it'll likely get another 5-6 million through dvd/vod/rental on what was probably a budget of 2-3 million. And even then it'll probably be written off as a loss as most films are.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 23:40 |
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SnakePlissken posted:I just recall the director of the USPS being interviewed on public radio a number of years ago citing both the pension fund and the bulk corporate mailers being heavily subsidized as the main handicaps against his agency. I'm not pulling it out of thin air. Junk mail senders are required by the USPS to essentially do as much of the USPS' work themselves before the mail enters the mailstream. Obviously if there was no discounts at all, the USPS would make even more off the arrangement, but the discounts exist in order to encourage the senders to do that work for them. Bulk mailings in general, of junk mail but also magazines, bills and so on constitute the vast majority of their profitable stuff, in addition to parcel sendings from major shippers.
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# ? Nov 25, 2013 23:49 |
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Install Windows posted:Junk mail senders are required by the USPS to essentially do as much of the USPS' work themselves before the mail enters the mailstream. Obviously if there was no discounts at all, the USPS would make even more off the arrangement, but the discounts exist in order to encourage the senders to do that work for them. Bulk mailings in general, of junk mail but also magazines, bills and so on constitute the vast majority of their profitable stuff, in addition to parcel sendings from major shippers. Well maybe it's just conventional wisdom that I've "inherited" from my dad or just absorbed from the media but the way I've heard it the postal service is subsidizing bulk mail senders, rather than the way you put it. I'd be willing to hear arguments to the contrary.
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 02:22 |
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Mark Levin has become totally unhinged lately. I think the guy is close to a nervous breakdown. He bounces from "the evil Obama is forcing his will upon the people" to "Obama is an idiot and completely incapable of doing anything right". It's truly amazing. His most recent talking point is that Obama has destroyed America's historic support and application of the Monroe Doctrine. loving really? The Monroe Doctrine of all things. In Levin's world, reaching an agreement with Iran and letting China declare military flight restrictions over some lovely islands in the China Sea are both examples of pissing on the Monroe Doctrine.
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 02:29 |
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SnakePlissken posted:Well maybe it's just conventional wisdom that I've "inherited" from my dad or just absorbed from the media but the way I've heard it the postal service is subsidizing bulk mail senders, rather than the way you put it. I'd be willing to hear arguments to the contrary. We are in fact subsidizing them, they're also the USPS' biggest profit center at the same time. The discounts they get encourage them to send large volumes of mail, and the requirements they have to meet to get the discounts ensure the USPS is still getting more money from them they would if they were sending things like regular people. Just take a look at the next piece of junk mail you receive. Notice that the postage on it was pre-paid under a specific permit number, where the sender pays as much as months in advance for all of their mail. Notice it has that POSTNET barcode preprinted by the sender as well as an address in perfectly formatted for automated mail sorting format. All of these things both help the USPS plan out when things are gonna be sent, as well as do much of the work for sorting the USPS otherwise has to do. You can get access to some of the discounts yourself by simply arranging to send mail online with preprinted labels. For regular people, this discount doesn't apply to plain letter mail, but most other services will have it vs. buying the postage and getting it set up direct at the post office.
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 02:34 |
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radical meme posted:Mark Levin has become totally unhinged lately. I think the guy is close to a nervous breakdown. He bounces from "the evil Obama is forcing his will upon the people" to "Obama is an idiot and completely incapable of doing anything right". It's truly amazing. His most recent talking point is that Obama has destroyed America's historic support and application of the Monroe Doctrine. loving really? The Monroe Doctrine of all things. In Levin's world, reaching an agreement with Iran and letting China declare military flight restrictions over some lovely islands in the China Sea are both examples of pissing on the Monroe Doctrine. Listening to Master Shake fly into unglued rants about lefties and Obummer is possibly the most entertaining thing on the radio.
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 02:45 |
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radical meme posted:Mark Levin has become totally unhinged lately. I think the guy is close to a nervous breakdown. He bounces from "the evil Obama is forcing his will upon the people" to "Obama is an idiot and completely incapable of doing anything right". It's truly amazing. His most recent talking point is that Obama has destroyed America's historic support and application of the Monroe Doctrine. loving really? The Monroe Doctrine of all things. In Levin's world, reaching an agreement with Iran and letting China declare military flight restrictions over some lovely islands in the China Sea are both examples of pissing on the Monroe Doctrine. What about this is new? Levin has always been conservative radio's weirdo uncle with histrionic personality disorder and a pathological liar.
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 02:47 |
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radical meme posted:Mark Levin has become totally unhinged lately. I think the guy is close to a nervous breakdown. He bounces from "the evil Obama is forcing his will upon the people" to "Obama is an idiot and completely incapable of doing anything right". It's truly amazing. His most recent talking point is that Obama has destroyed America's historic support and application of the Monroe Doctrine. loving really? The Monroe Doctrine of all things. In Levin's world, reaching an agreement with Iran and letting China declare military flight restrictions over some lovely islands in the China Sea are both examples of pissing on the Monroe Doctrine. Mark Levin is great because you can tell he was picked on real hard as a kid and could just never let it go. Now his whole existence is about getting as much leverage as he can over people and grinding them down with every chance he gets. You can hear it in his voice, though, that he's never more than a few steps away from still seeing himself as that nasally fat kid everyone made fun of in middle school.
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 03:03 |
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Install Windows posted:We are in fact subsidizing them, they're also the USPS' biggest profit center at the same time. The discounts they get encourage them to send large volumes of mail, and the requirements they have to meet to get the discounts ensure the USPS is still getting more money from them they would if they were sending things like regular people. Thanks for your helpful and informative post.
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 03:56 |
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Wow, it's really weird when you see something published that's 100%, no loving around, fingers-crossed-behind-the-back lying. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/11/25/fox-blames-obamacare-for-fictional-layoffs-at-c/197048 quote:Fox News reported that the Cleveland Clinic was instituting "massive layoffs" due to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, but when asked about the reports, a Clinic spokesperson told Media Matters, "We're not." For the record, I work with the Cleveland Clinic often and while they can be some money-grubbin jerks sometimes they are honestly one of the more respectable private institutions I've ever been associated with. A while back I recall their CEO suggested we should tax tobacco out of existence which tickled me. Still though, how the gently caress do you get "We are offering retirement packages to older employees" = " we are laying off grannies due to ACA" gently caress conservative media in its loving weird varicosity-dense rear end in a top hat
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 04:51 |
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Rexicon1 posted:Wow, it's really weird when you see something published that's 100%, no loving around, fingers-crossed-behind-the-back lying. If you huff enough cat pee, and squint just right, you can see the "its cheaper to offer a retirement payment and deal with the up-front cost rather than maintain that position" as a layoff due to added costs. It's still not that same as "WELP, Obamacare--here's two weeks pay, clean out your desk."
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 06:36 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I once spent a good half hour standing in line at the post office listening to a tax attorney complain about how all the post offices were closing and running shorter hours and he couldn't get his client's filings submitted properly, and how he never had those problems with FedEx or UPS. Of course the USPS cuts are entirely a result of funding cuts, and his entire practice consisted of people paying him hundreds of dollars an hour so that they could pay as little in taxes as possible . . . I have a similar story. A boomer-aged lady was complaining about how bad the service was, except someone asked her why she was using the post office instead of UPS/Fedex if they were better, and she said it was because they cost too much
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 06:36 |
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And the portions are so small!
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 06:44 |
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Install Windows posted:We are in fact subsidizing them, they're also the USPS' biggest profit center at the same time. The discounts they get encourage them to send large volumes of mail, and the requirements they have to meet to get the discounts ensure the USPS is still getting more money from them they would if they were sending things like regular people. This guy is right. I used to work at a print shop a couple years ago and I'd prepare the stuff for companies wanting to send out bulk mailings. The amount of sorting and weighing that you have to do beforehand is insane, but when the mailing is submitted to the post office all they have to do is load it up for delivery. Now they also have the EDDM stuff, where you can blanket all the addresses in a certain zipcode for even cheaper than standard bulk rates. I hate getting junk mail, but I kinda accept it as the cost of having the postal service.
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 15:05 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 09:59 |
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Smile posted:This guy is right. I used to work at a print shop a couple years ago and I'd prepare the stuff for companies wanting to send out bulk mailings. The amount of sorting and weighing that you have to do beforehand is insane, but when the mailing is submitted to the post office all they have to do is load it up for delivery. Now they also have the EDDM stuff, where you can blanket all the addresses in a certain zipcode for even cheaper than standard bulk rates. I'm glad to see anyone else weigh in on this. It was my quasi libertarian upbringing, maybe, that gave me the idea we were merely subsidizing corporations. That and I really thought I heard the director (or whatever he's called) of the USPS say that on the radio back in the 90s. Admittedly, things have changed a lot since then too. I mean your argument has a feeling of having some validity. Had you mentioned what you were paying per envelope, that would have helped make your point a little more substantial. I'll probably have to look this up.
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# ? Nov 26, 2013 16:55 |