Friday, August 12, 2011
Postal Service proposes cutting 120,000 jobs, pulling out of health-care plan
By Joe Davidson,
SEATTLE — The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is proposing to cut its workforce by 20 percent and to withdraw from the federal health and retirement plans because it believes it could provide benefits at a lower cost.The layoffs would be achieved in part by breaking labor agreements, a proposal that drew swift fire from postal unions. The plan would require congressional approval but, if successful, could be precedent-setting, with possible ripple effects throughout government. It would also deliver a major blow to the nation’s labor movement.
In a notice informing employees of its proposals — with the headline “Financial crisis calls for significant actions” — the Postal Service said, “We will be insolvent next month due to significant declines in mail volume and retiree health benefit pre-funding costs imposed by Congress.”
During the past four years, the service lost $20 billion, including $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010. Over that period, mail volume dropped by 20 percent.
The USPS plan is described in two draft documents obtained by The Washington Post. A “Workforce Optimization” paper acknowledges its “extraordinary request” to break its labor contracts.
“However, exceptional circumstances require exceptional remedies,” the document says.
“The Postal Service is facing dire economic challenges that threaten its very existence. . . . If the Postal Service was a private sector business, it would have filed for bankruptcy and utilized the reorganization process to restructure its labor agreements to reflect the new financial reality,” the document continues.
In a white paper on health and retirement benefits, the USPS said it was imperative to rein in health benefit and pension costs, which are a third of its labor expenses.
For health insurance plans, the paper said, the Postal Service wanted to withdraw its 480,000 pensioners and 600,000 active employees from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program “and place them in a new, Postal Service administered” program.
Almost identical language is used for the Civil Service Retirement System and the Federal Employees Retirement System.
The USPS said the programs do not meet “the private sector comparability standard,” a statement that could be translated as meaning that government plans are too generous and too costly.
“FEHB may exceed what the private sector does in certain areas,” said Anthony J. Vegliante, USPS chief human resources officer and executive vice president. “It may not meet what the private sector does in other areas. So cost may be above the private sector, while value may be below the private sector.”
Bills that would rein in employee benefits or have workers pay more for the benefits have been introduced in Congress and met with vigorous opposition from federal employee organizations. Intentionally or not, the Postal Service’s proposal provides support for such legislative initiatives.
The proposals are the USPS’s latest money-saving effort in a series of moves, some as recent as a few weeks ago and others stretching over a decade.
The Postal Service has reduced its workforce by 212,000 positions in the past 10 years and recently announced it is considering the closing of 3,700 post offices. It also has asked Congress to allow it to deliver mail five days a week instead of six and to change a requirement that it pre-fund retiree health benefits.
The USPS said it needs to reduce its workforce by 120,000 career positions by 2015, from a total of about 563,400, on top of the 100,000 it expects by attrition. Some of the 120,000 could come through buyouts and other programs, but a significant number would probably result from layoffs if Congress allows the agency to circumvent union contracts.
“Unfortunately, the collective bargaining agreements between the Postal Service and our unionized employees contain layoff restrictions that make it impossible to reduce the size of our workforce by the amount required by 2015,” according to the optimization document. “Therefore, a legislative change is needed to eliminate the layoff protections in our collective bargaining agreements.”
The layoff protection, however, does not apply to employees with fewer than six years of service, which presumably would include thousands of workers.
Postal union leaders quickly and sharply rejected the plans.
“The APWU will vehemently oppose any attempt to destroy the collective bargaining rights of postal employees or tamper with our recently negotiated contract — whether by postal management or members of Congress,” American Postal Workers Union President Cliff Guffey said.
“Our advisers are not encouraging us at all to even consider it,” said National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association President Don Cantriel.
“We are absolutely opposed” to the layoff proposal, he said. “We are opposed to pulling out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits plan.”
National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric V. Rolando said: “The issues of lay-off protection and health benefits are specifically covered by our contract. . . . The Congress of the United States does not engage in contract negotiations with unions, and we do not believe they are about to do so.”
How Congress will respond to the proposals, however, remains to be seen. Many Republicans, including those who have sponsored legislation that labor considers anti-union, may support the plan. Some Democrats, for which organized labor is an ally, could back union opposition. But the Postal Service’s critical financial situation could make some Democrats have second thoughts.
Two members of Congress who have introduced separate postal reform bills were noncommittal on the USPS plan.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) said, “He is particularly interested in learning whether these proposals would be fair to employees and effective in reducing the Postal Service’s costs.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said: “These new ideas from the Postal Service are worth exploring. Options for reform and cost savings that will protect taxpayers from paying for a bailout, now or in the future, need to be on the table.”
AFP:
Electronic skin tattoo has medical, gaming, spy uses
A hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday. The micro-electronics technology, called an epidermal electronic system (EES), was developed by an international team of researchers from the United States, China and Singapore, and is described in the journal Science.
"It's a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology," said co-author John Rogers, a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"Our goal was to develop an electronic technology that could integrate with the skin in a way that is mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user."
The patch could be used instead of bulky electrodes to monitor brain, heart and muscle tissue activity and when placed on the throat it allowed users to operate a voice-activated video game with better than 90 percent accuracy.
"This type of device might provide utility for those who suffer from certain diseases of the larynx," said Rogers. "It could also form the basis of a sub-vocal communication capability, suitable for covert or other uses."
The wireless device is nearly weightless and requires so little power it can fuel itself with miniature solar collectors or by picking up stray or transmitted electromagnetic radiation, the study said.
Less than 50-microns thick -- slightly thinner than a human hair -- the devices are able to adhere to the skin without glue or sticky material.
"Forces called van der Waals interactions dominate the adhesion at the molecular level, so the electronic tattoos adhere to the skin without any glues and stay in place for hours," said the study.
Northwestern University engineer Yonggang Huang said the patch was "as soft as the human skin."
Rogers and Huang have been working together on the technology for the past six years. They have already designed flexible electronics for hemispherical camera sensors and are now focused on adding battery power and other energy options.
The devices might find future uses in patients with sleep apnea, babies who need neonatal care and for making electronic bandages to help skin heal from wounds and burns.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium
"It's a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology," said co-author John Rogers, a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"Our goal was to develop an electronic technology that could integrate with the skin in a way that is mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user."
The patch could be used instead of bulky electrodes to monitor brain, heart and muscle tissue activity and when placed on the throat it allowed users to operate a voice-activated video game with better than 90 percent accuracy.
"This type of device might provide utility for those who suffer from certain diseases of the larynx," said Rogers. "It could also form the basis of a sub-vocal communication capability, suitable for covert or other uses."
The wireless device is nearly weightless and requires so little power it can fuel itself with miniature solar collectors or by picking up stray or transmitted electromagnetic radiation, the study said.
Less than 50-microns thick -- slightly thinner than a human hair -- the devices are able to adhere to the skin without glue or sticky material.
"Forces called van der Waals interactions dominate the adhesion at the molecular level, so the electronic tattoos adhere to the skin without any glues and stay in place for hours," said the study.
Northwestern University engineer Yonggang Huang said the patch was "as soft as the human skin."
Rogers and Huang have been working together on the technology for the past six years. They have already designed flexible electronics for hemispherical camera sensors and are now focused on adding battery power and other energy options.
The devices might find future uses in patients with sleep apnea, babies who need neonatal care and for making electronic bandages to help skin heal from wounds and burns.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Europe to lead the financial collapse of the West?
by J. D. Heyes(NaturalNews) In case you haven't noticed - and, in lieu of the press generated by the recent battle royal over how much to increase the U.S. national debt, most of you probably haven't - Europe is on the brink of financial collapse. But before you shed too many tears for the Mother Continent, save a few for America because at the pace we're going, we're next.
Expert economists, who have watched the financial situation in Europe deteriorate over the past year, have watched its politicians and policymakers make one bad fiscal decision after another, each of which has served to perpetuate, if not accelerate, the continent's impending economic collapse.
Though Europe's fiscal problems are systemic, they first began to manifest in Greece, Portugal and Ireland, where the global economic downturn badly exposed these nations' habitual overspending. Most of it was on social benefits and entitlements that they haven't been able to afford for years, but they were able to buy mostly by borrowing against their future (sound familiar?).
In Greece in particular, the overspending has put the national debt at about €300 billion, or $413 billion, which is larger than the country's entire annual GDP. Worse, though Greek lawmakers and European Union officials tried to implement austerity measures, they were vehemently opposed by the nation's entitlement generations. In response, workers across the country staged strikes that closed airports and government offices, courts, schools and other public offices.
Even better-than-expected employment data in the world's biggest economy for last month doesn't seem to stem the river of bad vibes concerning Europe's future. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor sparked a short run into positive territory for American and global stocks when it released a much anticipated report showing job growth in July was, at 117,000, higher than expected.
But lingering doubts among investors about Europe's ability to pull itself back from the economic abyss took over and left markets dazed and staggering by day's end. In fact, markets in France, Germany and Great Britain - the continent's strongest economies - all ended the day on a negative note.
At this point, maybe the most savvy investors and politicos have already seen the writing on the wall, and the markets are reflecting that realization.
"We are less than three years away from where Greece had its debt crisis as to where they were from debt to GDP," David Walker, former chief Comptroller and head of the Government Accountability Office, told CNBC in an interview Aug. 2.
The negativity is justified. Remember that Greece's debt is already more than 120 percent of its entire annual GDP (gross domestic product, the sum of income from all goods and services). The U.S. just hit that level of debt this week after Congress authorized, and President Obama signed, another increase in the government's debt ceiling. Worse, economic growth in the U.S., like Europe, is also floundering.
See the parallel?
"The fact of the matter is that government has grown too big, promised too much and waited too long to restructure. Our problem is overwhelmingly a spending problem," Walker says.
And while that would appear to be obvious, lawmakers set the entire country up for failure when they, some time ago, forgot about stewardship (taking care not to injure or harm the next generation of Americans) and instead focused on buying loyalties here and now using the U.S. Treasury as a personal piggy bank.
European leaders have done the same thing. The only difference between Europe and America is that they appear to be closer to being swallowed by the coming fiscal tsunami.
God will take care of His people who trust in Him. So we have no fear.
USA loses AAA credit rating as S&P downgrades due to runaway debt and government spending
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor(NaturalNews) The USA lost its long-coveted AAA debt rating late Friday as Standard & Poor's downgraded the nation's debt to AA+, citing out-of-control government spending and record budget deficits. This is something that key members of the Obama administration promised would never happen (http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/156747-geithner-no-risk-that-us-loses-its-top-credit-rating).
They were wrong, of course; just like the entire cabal of useless bureaucrats in Washington is wrong about what's going to happen next. This downgrade of the debt rating by S&P, you see, is what NaturalNews and other alternative media leaders have been predicting and warning about for years. The U.S. government's runaway debt spending, we warned, was entirely unsustainable. The risk of default is not merely high, but it's actually so high that if S&P had any honesty, it would have downgraded U.S. debt to junk status years ago. (The fact that it's still at AA+ is a mathematical joke.)
The flight away from US debt
Why does this debt rating matter? Consider, for starters, why S&P waited until after the markets closed on a Friday to even make its announcement. This gives Washington the weekend to try to figure out some kind of rescue plan before Monday morning when institutional investors around the world will begin what can only be called the mass flight away from U.S. debt. The great selloff will begin in earnest, and this will flood the open markets with toxic US debt that no one in their right mind would dare purchase.Institutional investors, you see, are frequently bound by rules that require them to invest solely in AAA-rated debt sources. With S&P's downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt, these institutions (which include some of the largest investment funds in the world) must, by their own rules, sell off 100% of their US debt holdings. This will all be happening at virtually the same time when the week opens on Monday.
The impact of all this is that the US will need to pay higher interest rates to issue new debt. It will be more expensive, in other words, for the US to find buyers of its debt, and this will be very quickly reflected in the compounding debt burden tacked on the total national debt, which is currently at $14.5 trillion and counting (http://www.usdebtclock.org/).
Since every administration in the White House absolutely refuses to cut government spending -- and the Obama administration wants to INCREASE it! -- the government is forced to keep issuing more debt at higher interest rates.
This brings me to the rule of 72.
Compounding debt interest adds up quickly
The rule of 72 provides a simple way to calculate how long it takes for money to double when subjected to compounding interest. Simply take 72 divided by the annual interest rate, and that tells you the number of years necessary for the money (or in this case, the debt) to double.For example, if you loan me $10,000 and you charge a 7% interest rate, then using the rule of 72, I know that in roughly ten years, I will owe you double what you loaned me, or $20,000.
If you loan me $10,000 and you charge me a 10% interest rate, then I know I'll owe you $20,000 in 7 years.
At a 12% interest rate, compounding debt doubles every six years.
As compounding interest rates rise, the acceleration of the total debt owes grows very rapidly. So even a tiny increase in the interest rate on debt will result in a compounding accelerated growth in the total debt burden. With S&P downgrading the US debt rating to AA+, the interest rate the US Treasury will now be forced to pay on the debt will be higher than it was before, and this means we are now facing an accelerated financial blowout schedule.
A nation brought to its knees by government crooks and tyrants
The financial demise of the US government, in other words, is now significantly closer than it was two days ago. The fiscally corrupt American empire cannot survive without its false AAA debt rating. That's why this debt downgrade will accelerate the total debt default we've been warning about for years.The US government today, of course, is run by liars and thieves, crooks and thugs. Virtually every word uttered by the White House Press Secretary is a complete fabrication. Everything you're being told from official sources about the US debt is a bald-faced lie. The US debt is a giant Ponzi scheme that's about to come tumbling down in a complete financial wreck. We warned you this was coming, even as internet trolls claimed it was impossible for the US to default on its debt. Impossible? Then why did it nearly happen just last week?
People like Gerald Celente and Paul Craig Roberts have been right about the coming debt implosion, which is why the mainstream media largely refuses to talk to them. Only the alternative media has the guts to report the truth about the impending financial collapse the US government now unquestionably faces.
Even the US Postal Service has financially collapsed and has just announced it is in default (http://news.yahoo.com/us-postal-warns-could-default-222059604.html).
Do we even have two years remaining?
S&P says it will revisit the US debt situation in two more years and possibly downgrade the debt rating to AA at that time (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-06/u-s-credit-rating-cut-by-s-p-for-first-time-on-deficit-reduction-accord.html). Two years? Are you kidding? I'm not even sure the US government as we know it today will exist at all in two years. And even if it does, things can only get worse because the runaway debt spending will never be halted. Washington is in a spending blowout phase that looks a whole lot like the waning days of the Roman Empire as it tried to service its military imperialism even while its own politicians at home had all become deeply invested in corruption.As the US spirals into a total financial collapse, you can expect a rise of the police state just as we're seeing right now with the Rawesome Foods raid (http://www.naturalnews.com/033220_Rawesome_Foods_armed_raids.html). As any empire begins to collapse, it pulls out the guns to try to keep its citizens in line. Free Speech is stripped away from citizens (http://www.naturalnews.com/033244_Rawesome_Foods_gag_order.html) and law is abandoned in favor of total government tyranny against the People.
That's precisely what we're seeing in America today, with the ATF's illegal gun running (http://www.naturalnews.com/032934_ATF_illegal_firearms.html), the FDA's illegal raids on vitamin manufacturers, the USDA's total betrayal of public health as it conspires with GMO companies to unleash massive genetic contamination across our planet, and so on. We are watching the last desperate gasps of a dying corrupt empire -- an empire that can no longer survive by telling the truth so has turned instead to insidious lies and a total assault on freedom.
History will call this time "the beginning of the collapse of the American empire." You are living it, folks. It's a fascinating time to be alive. Just try not to get crushed when this once-great empire comes crumbling down all around you. Very few people are prepared for what's coming. Perhaps 99% of the American people are completely and utterly clueless about all this. They will not be happy when they wake up one day and find out the dollar has been devalued, abandoned or massively hyper-inflated. That's the day you don't want to find yourself thinking "Gee, maybe I should have gotten prepared a little sooner..."
My financial preparedness course published in March of this year warned about all this, by the way, and it provides numerous valuable solutions for protecting yourself from the coming debt collapse. Check it out at: http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Be_Prepared_Not_Scared_Financial_Preparedness__NN.htm
People who have already learned this information are ahead of the game and will be far better prepared for the massive financial collapse that's coming. Only people living in total denial can't see what's becoming obvious now: The financial end of America approaches.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
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