As If We Hadn't Alerady Guessed That The Man Hasn't A Clue!

I just don't think President Obama has a clue. The more he talks, the more apparent this becomes. The latest, in what I consider a long line of proof, came about during a speech he delivered yesterday. He threw the United States Postal Service directly under the bus!

In his speech he states that:

"They do it all the time," he said. "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. ... It's the Post Office that's always having problems."

First of all, he says this while speaking of his health care plan. His thoughts are that if a private insurance company have a good product, and the government plan has to sustain itself through premiums and other non-tax revenue, private insurers should be able to compete with the government plan. As proof he stated the above.

Now, the postal service is enormous, and services every household in the nation with delivery for free. You only have to pay when you send mail. Not to receive it. Working in the shipping industry I can state with certainty, the UPS and FedEx do not service every household. The majority are serviced, but there are location they don't deliver to. UPS and FedEx do this because to some places they can't make a profit. When you compare health care to mail service in this manner the analogy fits. I am not disputing that, and that isn't the part that proves he is clueless.

I looked at the analogy as a whole. Every aspect of the analogy was scrutinized. Here is where his analogy and his proposed health plan scare me. Like the United States Postal Service, government health care will be huge, and like the postal service there will be service failures. Do you want service failures with your health care? I mean, mail is sometimes late, and other times lost, and with mail, that is annoying when it happens, but with health care it would be unthinkable. I am not delusional. I know that these thing happen in the private health care system we have now, just as they happen for UPS and FedEx, but the amount of occurrences will jump with the federal system due to volume alone, if we are true to the analogy President Obama used.

Now this wasn't the only aspect of what he said that made me think he was clueless. Does he realize that the US Postal Service is the third largest employer in the United States? Does he realize that he just potentially alienated over 760,000 American citizens? That doesn't prove to me a that a clue was grasped, and he did it in defense of a health care plan that polls show most Americans don't want anymore, and did so by throwing another institution that the government overseas under the bus for their lack of performance.

For the record, I admire the United States Postal Service. Many family members have worked there, or still do. Employees there are under a lot of stress trying to get all of the mail to all of the households in the United States. Sure, mistakes happen, and although Americans are very impatient by nature, sometimes mail is truly slow, lost, or destroyed. It isn't that bad though when you take the following into consideration (from Wikipedia):

The United States Postal Service employs over 760,000 workers, making it the third-largest employer in the United States, after the United States Department of Defense and Wal-Mart.

It operates 32,741 post offices and locations in the US.

Its employees deliver mail at an average yearly cost of $235 per residence as of 2009.

The USPS operates the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world, with an estimated 260,000 vehicles, the majority of which are the easily identified Chevrolet/Grumman LLV (Long-Life Vehicle), and the newer Ford/Utilimaster FFV (Flex-Fuel Vehicle), originally also referred to as the "CRV" (Carrier Route Vehicle).

In an interview on NPR, a USPS official stated that for every penny increase in the national average price of gasoline, the USPS spends an extra $8 million to fuel its fleet. This implies that the fleet requires some 800 million gallons (3.03 billion liters) of fuel per year, and consumes an estimated fuel budget of $2.4 billion, were the national gasoline price to average $3.00.

The Department of Defense and the USPS jointly operate a postal system to deliver mail for the military; this is known as the Army Post Office (for Army and Air Force postal facilities) and Fleet Post Office (for Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard postal facilities).

The last one, I know, UPS and FedEx do not do. Also, not listed on Wikipedia, is that certain mail is delivered to the blind for free, which is not done by UPS or FedEx, and United States Military Personnel deployed to a war zone also get free postage.

I also read this on Wikipedia:

The Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service sets policy, procedure, and postal rates for services rendered, and has a similar role to a corporate board of directors. Of the eleven members of the Board, nine are appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate (see 39 U.S.C. § 202). The nine appointed members then select the United States Postmaster General, who serves as the board's tenth member, and who oversees the day to day activities of the service as Chief Executive Officer (see 39 U.S.C. § 202–203). The ten-member board then nominates a Deputy Postmaster General, who acts as Chief Operating Officer, to the eleventh and last remaining open seat.

But the USPS is not a corporation. It is legally defined as an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States," (39 U.S.C. § 201) and is wholly owned by the government and controlled by the Presidential appointees and the Postmaster General.

So, President Obama, I ask you this. If the United States Postal Service is having trouble, but is controlled by Appointees of the Executive Branch, of which you are the head, do you think you can convince smart Americans that your national health care program is good? Seeing what I have seen, hearing what I have heard, and reading what I have read, you can't convince me that anything good will come of national health care that is governed by the Federal Government.

If, after all of this, any of you still feel that Obama can make national health care work, research VA Hospitals with their waiting lists, and ask those who have that as their means of health care what it is like. Then look to Medicare. Ask the same questions, and do the same research. I propose that we demand Obama try his hand at fixing both of those before he gets to even attempt any other health care reform or national health care plan.