Government Trickery and Deceit ... When Will It Stop?

The U.S. postal service reported a loss from operations of $5.1 billion for the fiscal year ended September 30.

The real loss was twice that, or $10.6 billion. I guess the post office officials and politicians didn't think the citizens could handle the truth. So they "obfuscated" instead of telling it like it is.

Postal Service Logs Loss in Billions tells the story in brief about the delay in contributing a required $5.5 billion into a fund for future retiree health care benefits.

See also Postal Service to Slow First-Class Mail and Next-Day Mail Faces Postal Service Cuts.

This omission of ~50% of the annual loss is yet another example of politicians failing to tell the truth to taxpayers. If a private company did this, its management would go to jail.

But government officials play these games regularly and hide behind the cash method of accounting, thus enabling them not to count liabilities in trillions of dollars when they report on the financial condition of our government.

In another example, Gimmicks Could Help Rescue Deficit Talks looks at some of the government accounting tricks used by members of both political parties to reach an accord during the recent failed debt reduction talks.

Here's what that article said about the lack of seriousness among our so-called public servants:

"With Congress's deficit-reduction supercommittee barreling toward a deadline for striking a big budget deal, both parties are reaching for accounting gimmicks to help reach their target of $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years.

Some tools are familiar to old Washington hands, such as massaging budget assumptions and painting rosy economic scenarios. Others include taking credit for "saving" money on wars that are ending and putting off until next year what lawmakers don't want to deal with now.

All told, none of these efforts make the fundamental policy changes needed for a long-term budget fix. "Suddenly everyone is talking not about deficit reduction but deficit-reduction gimmicks," said Stanley Collender, a budget expert and former congressional aide."

Why do we the people allow this trickery and deceit to continue? Are we really as unconcerned as the politicians obviously believe us to be? I know we're not that stupid.

In any case, truth telling should be the rule rather than the exception in what purports to be public service.

In all other endeavors as well.

Thanks. Bob.