Do you believe that the GM government bailout was a good thing?

Funny, if we were really a private corporation, we would have been dead already. I read the entire bill that has come out of committee which I'm sure not that many people have done. It's never pretty when you have to be the adult in the room and come up with real solutions. It's like having to tell your children that you have to pay the bills instead of taking them to Disney World. It's not really popular but in the long run it's the viability that is important.

Unlike the liberals who think the money is unlimited and you can kick that proverbial can down the road without a worry in the world, I live in the real world. I haven't spent a night worrying that I'll lose my job. If it happens, I'll survive. I've never taken anything for granted. My daughter just lost her job because government contracts have been cut back. She is an engineer that programmed flight simulators for the Marines and the Navy. She's a smart girl with two engineering degrees and I'm sure she'll find another job. That's just the way life goes and there are never any guarantees. You always need a back-up plan. I have a plan if I need it and I'm now eligible to retire but I can only get my retirement, not my TSP or SS, so I need to continue working.

My plan has always been to never live beyond our means, and by that I mean if only one of us is working. We haven't lived in the biggest house or driven the most expensive cars but we have more than we need and we don't have all that nagging worry people have to maintain their lifestyle. We have some rentals and my husband has a small business on the side. So, if USPS goes away tomorrow, so be it.

Well, I'm pretty sure that if you have a pension, you want it funded. It's a complicated matter and it depends on who you talk to about the truth of the matter. The more I research it, the less I know. They aren't funding future healthcare for employees yet to work there though, that I'm sure of. From what I can tell it's catch up payments and that's why they have such large payments in such a short time. There is a dispute between the Feds for the employees that retired under the CSRS and their time was split between the Post Office Department and the newer USPS. They made an agreement about what the Fed would be responsible for and now the USPS says it wasn't fair. They say they couldn't control future raises and blah, blah and more blah! The USPS is saying that they've overpaid the CSRS and they want their money back. The Feds say they lived up to their agreement and they're not getting it.

I'm not sure any of the money is really anywhere. What I do know is that if you work there the decrease in mail is extremely obvious. The postal service did a lot of stupid things and are still doing stupid things despite being in this predicament. I'm making more money than ever because I'm working overtime while some people are going home early without pay. We just got a new district boss and it's a woman. My supervisor is worried, as he should be. You can't have undertime and be paying overtime, it's just very poor management.

I can't help the people who are going to get stuck there. We're supposed to be supportive of keeping Saturday delivery so the younger employees won't get cut but everytime I'm there on Saturday, I see that the younger ones have either taken a vacation day or have called in sick. I'm a little over worrying about their futures when they care nothing about themselves, mine or the USPS.

That's just the way I see it.