Well, the Post Office has been putting money aside for pensions for years, and some accountant finally added it all up and discovered they had stashed away $28 Billion more than necessary.

You would think Congress would be outraged. And they were. One Congressman yelled, “For all that money, just think how many new post offices I could have built in my District.”

I guess it was an honest mistake. You might remember back when whoever won the election got to hire all the Postmasters and mail carriers. If the country changed hands every four years, it can add up to a lot of employees, and all of them expecting a pension. Well, we finally wised up and told ’em, “We’re not gonna let you quit work after four years just because we boot your brother-in-law out of office.” But the Post Office kept on squirreling away the pension money, like they were expecting these millions and millions of retirees.

Now you might think the Post Office would find a way to give some of that $28 Billion back to us. Maybe sell stamps for 25% off through Christmas. Or give us one day a week when all letters can be mailed free. At the very least give us penny post cards for a month, just for old times sake.

But no, there’s no rebate, no roll back, no sale on stamps for the holidays. All they promise is they won’t raise prices for 3 or 4 years, or until the $28 Billion runs out. They happily announced they expect with steady postal rates businesses will be mailing more advertising flyers, catalogs and solicitations.

So here’s what we get out of the deal. We overpaid $28 Billion, and in return, instead of receiving five pieces of junk mail every day, we can expect ten.

I think the Post Office owes the American people an apology as much as Trent Lott does.

Historic quote from Will Rogers:

“Say, you talk about a prosperous town (Beverly Hills). We can’t find a Republican poor enough to be Postmaster here. Even Democrats got money in this town and won’t take the job.” DT #126, Dec. 30, 1926