Tales From the Public Sector
1st August 2012
Shrinking rapidly, it would seem.
Once upon a time conservatives agitated to privatize the U.S. Postal Service. But hardly anyone on the right cares about the Post Office any more for the simple reason that technology has enabled us to go right around it: we use faxes and emails to transmit documents, pay our bills online, and send packages by UPS or FedEx. (By the way, when the fax machine was first being brought to the market about 30 years ago, the Post Office petitioned the FCC to require that fax machines could only be placed and used in post offices, on the perfectly consistent bureaucratic rationale that since fax machines could transmit letters, the post office’s legal monopoly on first class mail swept the devices under their authority. Fortunately the FCC was not persuaded.)
What happened to the Post Office is starting to happen to public education; in a few more years conservatives may stop agitating for school choice and gnashing their teeth about teachers unions, for the simple reason that fewer and fewer people will be sending their kids to public schools. I saw Rupert Murdoch hold up an iPad at a meeting last year, and declare, “This is what is going to defeat the teachers union.”)
Now, if we can just get them out of our wallets, life will be much better. But … don’t hold your breath.
Meanwhile, Solyndra—remember them? the company Joe Biden promised was producing “good, permanent jobs”?—has released its Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan. Of the $527 million Solyndra received from taxpayers, they’ll repay . . . $24 million. I’m sure the Obama Administration will take small bills. Easier to use as walking around money on election day in November.
Your tax dollars at work. Sort of.