On Friday, Congressman Dennis Ross appeared on Fox Business News to talk about the US Postal Service. As we told you on Saturday, both he and his hostess had some difficulties getting their facts straight. Ross’s biggest whopper was telling the audience that the average postal employee paid $32.00 a month for health benefits. (This comes at about 5 minutes into the video). As we pointed out in our previous blog post, there isn’t even a single plan that offers premiums that low. Today the Congressman responded. Sort of.

OK Dennis- now that you’ve found the FEHB web site, try clicking on the links and see if you can find that $32 a month health plan. While you’re at it, find us the even cheaper plans that must be there- after all, you told us that $32 is the average premium- so there must be some that are even cheaper, right?

Update:- Ross posted this on his Facebook page this afternoon:

That’s $32 a pay period, which works out to $69 a month- and that’s more than double the number he gave out in his interview. We pointed out in our blog post that there’s an even cheaper plan available- but the most popular plan is the Blue Cross Standard Plan- which costs $322 a month for a family- over ten times what Ross claimed was the average premium.

Congressman Jason Chaffetz had this to say today in the Daily Caller:

If you’re collecting a federal paycheck, you should pay federal taxes. That’s the premise of a bill I introduced last week to require federal employees to pay their taxes or be fired.

Going after public workers has become fashionable among right wing politicians- they follow Muslims, Gays, Hispanics and African Americans as the latest scapegoats for whatever is ailing the country at the moment. But there is a certain logic to Chaffetz’s argument. He suggests working for the federal government is a privilege, and that in order to benefit, you should satisfy all your obligations to the feds. Fair enough- and Chaffetz goes so far as to say he would include federal contractors in the deal- don’t pay your taxes, your contracts get cancelled.

But I think Jason is missing something here- he says “No one who ducks a federal tax obligation should be eligible to benefit from federal funds.” But he only targets federal employees and contractors. How about all the other people who “benefit from federal funds”? Wouldn’t that include people receiving Social Security, Medicare, veteran’s benefits, crop subsidies, disaster relief, food stamps, small business loans, Wall Street bailouts, and all the rest? Come to think of it, exactly who in this country doesn’t “benefit from federal funds”?

So shouldn’t the law be rewritten to require that ANY employer terminate any employee who is seriously delinquent in their federal taxes? Or, at the very least, shouldn’t ALL of their federal benefits be terminated? Fair is fair, right?

Somehow I don’t think the Congressman will go that far- after all, a certain subset of the tea party types that he’s desperately trying to woo have a major problem with the very idea of the federal income tax. So I’d only suggest that the Congressman correct one other logical flaw in his bill. If you’re after people who “benefit from federal funds”, remember that the big agency that always gets mentioned first in these stories, the US Postal Service, doesn’t receive any!

via Federal employees | tax delinquency | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The five Members of the West Virginia Congressional Delegation today joined together to express to the Postmaster General their concern about the proposed consolidation of mail processing operations in West Virginia.

The Postal Service has proposed five Area Mail Processing (AMP) studies to consolidate mail processing operations in West Virginia – an unusually high number for one state. AMP studies are ongoing in Bluefield and Martinsburg, and have already been completed in Wheeling, Beckley, and Huntington.

The delegation expressed their concerns in a letter that was initiated by Representative Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) and signed by Senators Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin (both D-W.Va.) and Representatives Shelley Moore Capito and David McKinley (both R-W.Va.).

The text of the letter is below:

March 7, 2011

The Honorable Patrick R. Donahoe

Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer

U.S. Postal Service

475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW, Room 10804

Washington, DC 20260-3500

Dear Postmaster General Donahoe:

We are very concerned about the Area Mail Processing (AMP) studies that have been initiated in West Virginia.

The Postal Service has announced four AMP studies in West Virginia since last summer – in Beckley, Huntington, Martinsburg, and Bluefield – and already implemented a fifth study in Wheeling. The Postal Service is not pursuing any studies – not one – in twenty-two other states, and yet there have been five proposed consolidations in West Virginia alone. Of those states where studies are being pursued, only seven have had as many or more AMP studies than West Virginia, all of them states with significantly larger populations.

In addition, of the five studies in West Virginia, three have proposed moving mail processing operations out of the state – from Wheeling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; from Martinsburg to Suburban, Maryland; and from Bluefield to Johnson City, Tennessee.

The Postal Service is required by law to provide effective and regular mail delivery services to rural areas – even when it costs the Postal Service money and it has to run a deficit to do so. The people of West Virginia deserve the same level of service and the same fairness and equity afforded to the people of other states. We are rightly concerned about our mail services being disrupted and the impact on postal workers in our communities.

We would appreciate your providing us with a full report on why West Virginia is being made to bear a disproportionate number of AMP studies, and why so many AMP studies are being announced within such a short period of time.

We look forward to your timely response.

Sincerely,

via Press Releases – News – United States Senator Joe Manchin.

Twitter is a great source of information- of course, a lot of it is wrong- think of the thousands of teabagger types who apparently think the post office now decides when they can get to see a doctor. But even people who sound like they should know what’s going on come up with some pretty bizarre stuff- here’s today’s sample;

Now you’d think that dismissing a couple of thousand postmasters all at once like that would have attracted some attention, but apparently not! Thanks to DMA Cleveland for letting us in on that secret!