RUSH: Here’s Bruce in Tallahassee, Florida. Bruce, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. It’s nice to have you here.
CALLER: Nice to be here. What a pleasure and an honor it is to be here. I’ve been a long-time listener since when you shared airtime — or airspace, I guess, — with Chuck Harter many years ago. But my question or my thing today is that yesterday when you were talking about the letter carriers and the postal system, you kind of made a statement as to, you know, the taxpayers getting screwed again with the contract, and they didn’t.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got some angry e-mails about this.
CALLER: Yeah, well, just to set the record straight, I believe — and maybe some of my fellow carriers will correct me on this — but the Postal Reform Act of ’73 or ’74 made the Post Office a semiprivate organization still connected with the government. However, no taxpayers’ money are involved in anything that the Post Office — the postal system — does. That 41¢ stamp you buy to put on a letter is what funds everything the post office does, and you can still send a letter from Key West to Anchorage, Alaska, for 41¢.
CALLER: And it might get there, probably 49 out of 50 times it will, and probably better average than that.
RUSH: All right, so… (laughing) You know, I want to thank you for this economics lesson. You have straightened me out. You really have. I learned something I didn’t know.
CALLER: Okay, again, it’s, uh…
RUSH: I didn’t know that stamps — the sale of stamps and the cost of other postage, deliveries and so forth — was what funded your salaries, of the Letter Carriers Association. Who buys the stamps, by the way, Bruce?
CALLER: Well, pretty much everybody, carriers, citizens, you, uh, you know, the express mail.
RUSH: Taxpayers! Taxpayers!
CALLER: Taxpayers.
RUSH: Taxpayers, right? So when the stamp goes up to 55¢, it’s going to be because you guys got a raise. I’m not complaining. I want everybody to make as much as they can.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: I was wrong in saying that when you get a new contract, the taxpayer gets screwed again, but that’s, in a direct sense, I was about 20% incorrect there.
CALLER: (Laughing.) That’s not a percentage judgment on your accuracy.
RUSH: Yeah, won’t affect it, because, again, only the opinions are audited. People do not understand this. Only the opinions end up being audited. Thanks for the phone call out there, Bruce.