Berkeley councilman suggests email tax to fund Postal Service

[bat1]

more taxes coming...

A Berkeley city councilman is proposing an email tax to help the cash-poor United States Postal Service stay afloat.

Gordon Wozniak suggested that using email, which is partially responsible for killing off demand for letter-carrying services, could save “vital functions” of the post office, the news site Berkleyside reported.

“There should be ... a very tiny tax on email,” he told the City Council. “There should be something like a bit tax. I mean, a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollar a year.”

The problem is, such a levy wouldn’t be legal unless the Internet Tax Freedom Act is allowed to expire in 2014.

Many people have taken to Twitter to scoff at the idea, Wozniak's proposal isn’t the first time the idea of an email tax has been kicked around. The United Nations more than a decade ago took a look at how such a tax could raise billions to fund a "global communications revolution." Others have suggested that charging money could tamp down on rampant spam.

Wozniak’s proposal is one of many ideas for how to save the faltering postal service, which announced last month that it plans to stop delivering mail on Saturdays later this year. And about 200 post offices around the country may be auctioned off in the coming years to raise money. There has even been talk of a clothing line.

[blakpadi]

NO!!!!!!! Just tell Republican Congressman that are lobbied by UPS and FED EX -BIGTIME to stop sticking sticks in the USPS spokes and fucking up an institution that certainly has had problems with waste,but with Republicans making business decisions for their own special interests that will really-REALLY hurt small and mid-size business-that is the first step!

[trish]

The GOP, in a long term effort to dismantle the postal service, pushed through Congress a bill that requires the post office to make inordinate advanced payments into the pension system. No other agency is required to meet such obligations. Until the passage of this bill the post office was an efficient service that was provided six days a week and was completely self-sustaining. It is the only government agency that is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Yet certain members of the GOP would rather privatize the mail, than follow the Constitution.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/07/20/how-congress-is-killing-the-post-office/

[giovanni_hotel]

NO!!!!!!! Just tell Republican Congressman that are lobbied by UPS and FED EX -BIGTIME to stop sticking sticks in the USPS spokes and fucking up an institution that certainly has had problems with waste,but with Republicans making business decisions for their own special interests that will really-REALLY hurt small and mid-size business-that is the first step!

+100.

The USPS was financially solvent and paying its bills without a penny from taxpayer dollars, before the 2006 Postal Accountability Act was signed into law by Dubya Bush and pushed through both the House and Senate by the GOP. The law requires the Postal Service to PRE-FUND retiree benefits 75 years into the future...in just TEN YEARS. That means they have to fund retiree benefits for employees that haven't BEEN BORN YET.

Without the prefunded pension requirement, the USPS would have a $1.5 billion surplus.

This law was specifically designed to break the Postal Service on behalf of private mail carriers like UPS and FedEx.

Any other talk about the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the USPS is just smoke.

If you forced any business to prefund pension liabilities 75 years into the future, they would go bankrupt.

This is the biggest scandal in Congress and if it isn't resolved during Obama's presidency, I'll consider it the greatest failure of his administration.

It's disgusting the way this story is rarely accurately reported in the media.
THe spin is always, the Postal Service is inept and a bloated government agency that needs to be cut.

[trish]

+100.

The USPS was financially solvent and paying its bills without a penny from taxpayer dollars, before the 2006 Postal Accountability Act was signed into law by Dubya Bush and pushed through both the House and Senate by the GOP. The law requires the Postal Service to PRE-FUND retiree benefits 75 years into the future...in just TEN YEARS. That means they have to fund retiree benefits for employees that haven't BEEN BORN YET.

Without the prefunded pension requirement, the USPS would have a $1.5 billion surplus.

This law was specifically designed to break the Postal Service on behalf of private mail carriers like UPS and FedEx.

Any other talk about the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the USPS is just smoke.

If you forced any business to prefund pension liabilities 75 years into the future, they would go bankrupt.

This is the biggest scandal in Congress and if it isn't resolved during Obama's presidency, I'll consider it the greatest failure of his administration.

It's disgusting the way this story is rarely accurately reported in the media.
THe spin is always, the Postal Service is inept and a bloated government agency that needs to be cut.:iagree: Good post. Thanks for providing the details I was too lazy to look up at this time of night. :claps

[BigDF]

+100.

The USPS was financially solvent and paying its bills without a penny from taxpayer dollars, before the 2006 Postal Accountability Act was signed into law by Dubya Bush and pushed through both the House and Senate by the GOP. The law requires the Postal Service to PRE-FUND retiree benefits 75 years into the future...in just TEN YEARS. That means they have to fund retiree benefits for employees that haven't BEEN BORN YET.

Without the prefunded pension requirement, the USPS would have a $1.5 billion surplus.

This law was specifically designed to break the Postal Service on behalf of private mail carriers like UPS and FedEx.

Any other talk about the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the USPS is just smoke.

If you forced any business to prefund pension liabilities 75 years into the future, they would go bankrupt.

This is the biggest scandal in Congress and if it isn't resolved during Obama's presidency, I'll consider it the greatest failure of his administration.

It's disgusting the way this story is rarely accurately reported in the media.
THe spin is always, the Postal Service is inept and a bloated government agency that needs to be cut.Thank you for this post, as I've been too lazy myself to look this up. This points to one of the biggest problems our government faces today; the guy with the biggest checkbook usually ends up running things. Except for when the American people are directly involved. IMHO the reason Barack Obama got re-elected is that a lot of us who were pre-disposed to vote for a moderate Republican were so disgusted by the attempts of billionaires to subvert the government for their own selfish purposes decided to deny them that particular office. I am still so disgusted by the actions of the GOP that I will not vote for any member of that party again until they get themselves under control. :geek:

[Prospero]

Interestingly, a British newspaper columnist made a similar suggestion today - that all email should be charged on a sliding scale. 10p (about 15 cents) for a personal email and a far larger such for spam and advertising. Surely think this is a retrograde step for everybody. You could seen how quickly those rates would begin to rise. The ISPs and others make huge fortunes already to provide us with access to the web.