Sign Me Up For The Postal Service
By The Pajama Pundit | Related entries in News
Say what?!
At a time when the U.S. Postal Service says it is experiencing a financial crisis, it purchased a $1.2 million home from an employee so he could relocate, a CNN investigation has found.
Postal Service spokesman Greg Frey said the home will be resold, as others have been.
“It’s not like we threw away a million dollars,” Frey told CNN. “We are hoping it’s going to go for the appraised value.”
But a real estate agent in the area said the home could be a tough sell in a depressed housing market — and the USPS said it lost an average of more than $58,000 on the 500-plus homes its relocation program bought and sold in 2008.
The 8,400-square-foot, six-bedroom home on Lake Wateree, about 30 miles north of Columbia, is likely to be the last million-dollar home purchased by the Postal Service. A $1 million cap on homes eligible for the relocation program took effect in February, Frey said.
But the program has raised eyebrows among critics and is under scrutiny by the USPS inspector-general’s office in the wake of a CNN investigation.
The South Carolina home belonged to Ronald Hopson, the former postmaster in Lexington, South Carolina, and his wife, Evelyn. The property includes five acres, four bathrooms, two half-baths and an indoor swimming pool.
This begs two questions:
1. What is going on with the U.S. Postal Service? You may remember that I have my doubts about this government institution — but this has nothing to do with whether or not the agency has become obsolete. This has everything to do with the management of said agency. What are the higher-ups thinking? Buying an employee’s home, in a market where one must ASSUME that they will not get the asking price when trying to re-sell.
2. How much money does a postmaster make? If someone in that position can afford a $1.2 million home — then give me an application to be a postmaster!
[cross-posted at ThePajamaPundit.com]
This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Hey I know!
Based upon this awesome example of government being good stewards of our tax dollars, let’s put government in charge of:
- Healthcare!
- Pensions!
- Energy creation!
- Job creation!
- Running banks!
- Everything!
March 6th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
“How much money does a postmaster make? If someone in that position can afford a $1.2 million home — then give me an application to be a postmaster!”
Probably not more than 70K a year. But thanks to the Fed flooding cash into the mortgage markets, until 2006 he probably bought this place with no money down on an ARM.
And now, even if he’s in forclosure, a bankruptcy judge will abrogage the terms of the LEGALLY BINDING MORTGAGE he signed (Ha!), and rewrite the terms of his mortgage in more favorable terms! Voi’la!
All you suckers who played by the rules and lived within your means are SCREWED!! Ha! Ha!
March 6th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Is the U.S. Postal Service the only organization doing this? Probably not. How many private corporations are doing the same thing? I doubt we know. Easy targets do not make valid criticisms.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
“Easy targets do not make valid criticisms.”
And yet we always point our immaculately clean fingers at corporations who are just doing what they do and say “How dare they!”
Minnesota Fats, the pool player, (remember him?) once said something to the effect of, ‘If you take the easy shots first, then there aren’t any hard ones left.’
So yeah. Easy targets are the targets in play. If there weren’t easy targets, then we’d have nobody to blame for letting all this happen, would we?
March 6th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Certainly not. All federal civil jobs do this kind of thing. IRS, FBI, DEA, DOE.
Their going in argument is that because the government is transferring someone, it automatically falls to the government to pay them “fair price” for their McMansion.
At tax-payers’ expense, of course. You don’t mind, do you?
March 6th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Private corporations are not wholly part of the executive branch of the US Government, possessed of sovereign immunity, eminent domain, treaty powers, and wielding monopolies.
8400 sq ft? Just how much does a small-city postmaster make?
March 6th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Making assumptions without knowledge of the wife’s income seems pretty half-cocked to me.
I’m not troubled by any org providing a relocation package to someone if the relocation is at company behest. But buying their house seems to be something best either avoided or managed on a case by case basis so the org doesn’t get screwed. Cheerfully granted.
Tully, where you been? Bucyrus.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Yeah, man. Let’s form a blue-ribbon committee and look into it for the next 18 years….kzzzzzz….nnghzzzz……kkzzzzz…..
March 6th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
On a lighter note, the Dow’s down 100 points!
Poor people and middle class people are getting more equal every day!
March 6th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
FYI – in private and public companies, this type of relo package is very common. I am not condoning it, and I am surprised by the fact that the USPS does it. But it is extremely common.