Sense and Nonsense

Postal Service

If you've been reading the newspapers with any care over the past week or two, you undoubtedly have noticed articles about the worsening finances of the United States Postal Service, which is projecting a $7 billion loss for the fiscal year.  Mail volume has dropped 12.6 percent over a nine-month period, continuing a sharp decline that began in 2007.  See articles here, here, and here.   (And if you want a longer treatise, albeit a somewhat dated one, on the U.S. Postal Service, see here.)

Sharply declining mail volume is not the only source of the Postal Service's financial woes.  Most of its financial problems are tied to labor costs, especially billions of dollars in required payments to prefund future retiree health benefits.  That's okay.  Lots of businesses, including public utilities, have to prefund future retiree health benefits.  Joe Nocera, in a fine column in Saturday's New York Times,  pointed out a special absurdity of the Postal Service's situation.  Discussing the financial pressures of the USPS, Nocera wrote:

Oh, and get this.  Every year between now and 2016, he [the Postmaster General] has to put aside over $5 billion to finance health benefits for future employees.  You read that right: future employees.  There isn't another business in the country that finances benefits for employees it hasn't even hired yet.

Totally crazy.  Why is that?  Because Congress controls the Postal Service, and members of Congress are craven and self-interested. They're cowed by the postal unions.

Valuing Science

Steve Benen notes the same thing I did in President-elect Obama's comments yesterday announcing his choice of Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, as Secretary of Energy.  Obama said: "His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science, we will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action."

Benen notes how refreshing that is after eight years of an Administration that ignored and devalued science.

Whooaaaa. POLICY MAP. Cooooool.

There's a fantastic new Internet tool called Policy Map.  Here's what OpenLeft says about it:

Basically, what Policy Map does is bring data and mapping to the masses.   Given its place as a lender and public policy research center, TRF has always accumulated all kinds of data.  About a year or so ago, they decided that they were going to try and put that data online, in a way that the general public could see it.  And from that, and many (many) hours of development, PolicyMap was born.  They mapped something like 4000 pieces of data, and then put it online in a format where anyone can map it.  And if they got the data free (ie, Census, etc), they give it away for free too.

For policy nerds, this is about as cool as it gets.

I agree.  It doesn't have all kinds of policy data. But it has over 4,000 indicators related to demographics, real estate, crime, money & income, jobs, education, energy, and public investments.  Pretty amazing!  Go to OpenLeft to see a few examples of what you can do with it.  Better yet, go straight to Policy Map and view the demo.

For those of you involved in public policy: note that those willing to pay for "Standard" or "Premium" subscriptions get enhanced functionality.  Those in the latter category can even upload their own data and plot them on the maps.