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Cut the USPS and its parasitic unions free from the federal trough and let them sink or swim on their own merits (or, more to the point, lack thereof). My money's on their lunch getting eaten by FedEx, UPS, DHL, and even the half-witted bicycle messengers who race around NYC streets like maze-rats on speed and 'shrooms.

You might be surprised. Believe it or not, there's good conservative, people, many veterans who work in the USPS. If they were put in a sink or swim situation, freed from the labor-management bureaucracy, I'm sure they are quite capable of competing with The Fed-Exers and the UPS Teamsters.

Ideology sometimes tempts us into wielding a too broad brush.

If they really were as good as you suggest, and were motivated to earn through effort and merit, they wouldn't be at the post office in the first place - certainly not once they realized their strengths and then came face to face with the reality of unions and seniority.

I have no doubt that there are some decent folk there - that's the problem with unions, in fact: they consist of decent folk in the rank-and-file who have been lied to and deluded into thinking that the union, and the union leadership, have their best interests at heart, which neither has.

But all of that is neither here nor there until we put the pudding to the proof, shall we say, get the federal taxpayer completely out of the business of paying for something as archaic as a government-controlled national mail system, and then let the competition begin.

I rather doubt that FedEx, UPS, DHL, and the brain-addled bike messengers would be that concerned about the USPS becoming a truly private competitor - they already compete against the USPS with one hand tied behind their back because of the massive subsidies the USPS gets each year and still they're eating the USPS' lunch (hence the multi-billion dollar losses each year for years on end).