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Don Law bets on Union Square in Somerville

Vanyaland reports the Live Nation/Paradise/House of Blues/Brighton Music Hall guy is buying the old post office in Union Square, although he's yet to say exactly what he'll be doing with it.

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Somerville's historic main post office is shut down and a few months later, Don Law buys it for almost a million dollars below the property's assessed value. So who in Somerville City Hall does he know?

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The federal government (USPS) did.

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Yes, the USPS did own the building.
No, they are not the Federal Government.

Although authorized by the Constitution, and subject to Congressional oversight, they are an "independent agency" that has not received funding from tax payers in 30 years.

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The USPS is stealing funds by not properly funding their pension system in order to meet cashflow needs. The Federal Government guarantees the pensions through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. This is in indirect cost to all federal taxpayers today and will be an actual cost when the pension goes under.

Just because the Constitution authorized Congress to establish a post office (and to create postal roads) doesn't mean we need to keep it. All I get from it is junk mail and grocery flyers. They could just bundle that with the Globe Direct crap and throw it on my lawn.

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... to _over_ fund future pension benefits for several years now -- thus creating more of an appearance of a deficit than really should exist.

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I _think_ a national mail service is basically something you can't live without. Countries need:

  • An ability to receive / deliver mail sent from other national postal services. How, for instance, would a person send a normal "postal" letter via Royal Mail in the UK to a US address? The Royal Mail doesn't send stuff for delivery via the UPS or Fedex....
  • A "registered mail" service of record. Many contracts require that formal notices - e.g. of default, etc. - be sent via the national mail service of record in that country, with some form of Registered / Receipt mechanism. This _could_ be done by a Fedex, and many contracts provide for this. But most just generally say "use the mail service in the country, and use registered delivery" (or something).

The issue is that commercial services - UPS, Fedex, ... - can skim the profitable cream off the top of the delivery business, and USPS is left with the dregs. And USPS must provide daily delivery, so taking crap to deliver seems to be the only way to make it anywhere near sustainable.

Bummer. It would seem the sane way to do this would be to make the USPS be MORE subsidized, let it do its core mission without the reliance on garbage mail. But then again, I don't suppose I know what I'm talking about.

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A weekly magazine, a fortnightly magazine, a monthly magazine, a bimonthly magazine, and various monthly bills (utility and credit card)

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Is it 1978 again?

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Am I the only one who thinks of this whenever I see his name?

http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/408606/don-law.jhtml

Probably.

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