In 2006, a republican-dominant congress passed a bill that G.W. Bush would sign into law, requiring The United States Postal Service provide health care, retiree benefits and pensions to it's 600,000 work force. At the time the USPS was running "in the red", a mere 2 million annually.
But the package congress wrote mandated a program - pre Obamacare - that pushed them not 2 million a year in the red - but 2.2 billion a year. In fact, one might wonder if the 109th congress actually signed the bill in red ink.
Clearly, when Congress "hamstrung" the United States Postal Service with a annual $2 billion 'financial obligation', the ultimate demise of our traditional mail system was their intention.
As deputy postmaster general Ronald Stroman points out (Some Postal Pains 8/21 Oregonian), "the Postal Service is looking for ways to extract new sources of revenue from it's national delivery system".
It may seem like an unlikely alliance, but Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who is a proponent of allowing the Postal Service to deliver beer and wine, could instead lobby the Obama Administration to allow the USPS to deliver medicinal marijuana in all 21 states including the District.
If Obama were really concerned with all of the issues legal marijuana has spawned, he would not focus his attention solely on dispensary banking, but to also include protections for the people who we have been changing the law to accommodate: the consumer, the patient, the client.
It is the client that is left holding the bag when it comes to transporting legal marijuana in the U.S. If marijuana is in the vehicle and alcohol is present on the driver's breath, nearly every single state have laws that categorize these conditions as an open-shut D.U.I. conviction. Transporting marijuana - as a medicine - is not safe anywhere.
By permitting marijuana USPS delivery service, such exclusively generated revenue could conceivably propel the Postal Service into a manageable portfolio - and quite possibly defy congressional condemnation.
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