The Postal Service's Facilities Division does not seem to be working for us

Peter Byrne has just published "Going Postal", which is billed as the results of a year-long study into a privatization scheme that has enriched the powerful and robbed ordinary Americans.  

Based on the introduction published on Alternet, Byrne thinks that the Facilities Division of the Postal Service is acting not in our interests but in the interests of the 1%.  Whether his conclusion is justified is up in the air.  However, the Post Office does not help its case as it is not at all forthcoming in responding to requests for or simply providing information about its activities.

We all know that the Post Office is not in good financial shape.  Many attribute this to the rise of e-mail.  Byrne claims that eighty percent of the deficit is caused by a law passed by Congress in 2006 that requires it to prepay retiree health benefits 75 years into the future. No other government agency has such a rule, nor do most rational companies.

Byrne gives a few examples of Post Office executives' waste of our money:

• The inspector general reported that high-ranking Postal Service executives have charged home mortgages and European vacations to their government credit cards.  
• Facilities Division expense reports reveal that staffers have purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of expensive dinners, online gift cards, inspirational literature, and even toys with their government-issued credit cards. 
• The division's chief, Tom Samra, has billed the deficit-ridden Postal Service for flying first class to Europe, even though he personally is worth as much as $98 million.

His real bete noire is the Facilities Division dealings with CBRE,  the world's largest commercial real estate firm. The chairman of the firm is Richard C. Blum, who is the husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  

Byrne's list of the questionable deals:

• CBRE appears to have repeatedly violated its contractual duty to sell postal properties at or above fair market values.
• CBRE has sold valuable postal properties to developers at prices that appear to have been steeply discounted from fair market values, resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars in public revenue. In a series of apparently non-arm's length transactions, CBRE negotiated the sale of postal properties all around the country to its own clients and business partners, including to one of its corporate owners, Goldman Sachs Group.
• CBRE has been paid commissions as high as 6 percent by the Postal Service for representing both the seller and the buyer in many of the negotiations, thereby raising serious questions as to whether CBRE was doing its best to obtain the highest price possible for the Postal Service.
• Senator Feinstein has lobbied the Postmaster General on behalf of a redevelopment project in which her husband’s company was involved.

There is a lot more.  You really should read at least the Alternet excerpt.