Although most of us take it for granted, America’s postal service is an amazing bargain.
Buy one 48-cent stamp, and postal workers will deliver your envelope to any address in the country by plane, train, bus, boat, truck, car, bike, push-cart, mule, on-foot, – or, all of the above. But to really get your money’s worth, mail something to someone in this zip code: 48222.
That’s the only floating zip code in the US. It’s a 45-foot mail boat that has been a registered US Post Office since 1948. Named the J.W. Westcott II, this postal boat is the mail box for crew members working aboard the giant freighters hauling grain, iron ore, and other commodities across the five great lakes. Except for loading at one port, then unloading hundreds of miles away, these long-haul merchant ships never stop, with crews stuck on board for weeks.
So the Westcott, based near Detroit, chugs out to deliver letters and packages as each of the freighters passes by. The skilled pilots of the mail boat maneuver it right up against a steep steel side of the moving freight vessels, keeping perfect pace with the big ships’ speed.
Then, in a very low-tech (but highly-efficient) delivery technique, someone on the freighter lowers a bucket tied to a rope down to the Westcott. The mail boat pilot puts a bag of letters and packages addressed to people on that ship into the bucket, which is pulled back up, and then the little boat peels away from the freighter. Now that’s service!
The official motto of the 48222 zip code is “mail by the pail.” It’s all part of our public Post Office’s amazing commitment to deliver service to all – not just to the rich and the easy-to-reach. To learn more – and to fight schemes by corporate profiteers to privatize and downsize this public service – go to www.AGrandAlliance.org.
“A Mail Boat Stays Afloat,” The New York Times, August 21, 2016.
“The Post Office is not broke–and it hasn’t taken any of our tax money since 1971,” The Hightower Lowdown.

It’s greed that fuels this
CEO’s “grit”

Heather Bresch regards herself as a self-made corporate success story – a woman who came out of hard-scrabble West Virginia and scrambled to the top as CEO of Mylan, a leading pharmaceutical corporation. As she puts it, “There is a work ethic and grit about [West Virginia] that allows me to help make a difference.”
Well, yes, grit, hard work – and being the daughter of the state’s former governor and current US Senator, Joe Manchin III. Take the MBA degree she got from West Virginia University, an academic credential bestowed on her 10 years after she left the school, having completed only about half of the coursework required to get a degree. The state university later conceded that Bresch was awarded the MBA because… well, because her father was governor at the time, overseeing the school’s budget.
It’s this sort of ethical “grit” that Mylan’s chief exec has employed to pick the pockets of thousands of vulnerable customers who rely on EpiPen, the life-saving medical treatment for deadly allergies that her corporation monopolizes. She has ruthlessly hiked the price of EpiPen by some 600 percent, while jacking up her own multi-million-dollar annual pay by nearly 700 percent. She certainly is helping to “make a difference” – by helping herself, that is.
Bresch’s greed has sparked a furious public backlash, but several top advocacy groups for allergy patients are curiously silent about her gouging of EpiPen patients. Why? Perhaps because she has doled out millions of dollars in “partnership” grants to them, effectively buying their allegiance.
Meanwhile, Congress does nothing, for Mylan and Big Pharma are major campaign donors. It’s not grit and work ethic that makes today’s drug makers so rich – it’s their unrestrained greed, bribery dollars, and systemic ethic of corruption.
“The strange history of the EpiPen, the device developed by the military that turned into a billion-dollar business,” Business Insider, August 27, 2016.
“The Story if the EpiPen: From Military Technology to drug-industry cash cow,” Timeline, August 24, 2016.
“Awkward Target for Lawmakers Outraged by EpiPen Prices: A Senator’s Daughter,” The New York Times, August 25, 2016.
“Another Drug Pricing Ripoff,” The New York Times, August 25, 2016.
“Villain? Mylan’s Chief Says She’s No Such Thing,” The New York Times, August 27, 2016.

How can a CEO feel good about being vile?

Corporate price gouging is never nice. But gouging people on the price of medicines they rely on to stay alive is worse than not nice – it’s predaceously evil.
And if you think corporate morality can’t go lower than that, how about gouging people on the price of a life-saving medicine in order to jack-up the personal pay of a drug maker’s CEO? That’s the level of grotesque immorality where Heather Bresch dwells. She is chief executive of Mylan, a pharmaceutical profiteer that markets the EpiPen medical device, which literally is a lifesaver for people who suffer deadly allergy attacks.
For years, a two-shot packet of EpiPens cost under $100, but Mylan bought the rights to the injectable drug in 2007, gained monopoly control of the market, and in 2012 suddenly began sticking dependent patients again and again with drastic price hikes. Now, the two-pack averages more than $600, with some paying above $900!
Drug makers routinely claim they must charge high prices to recoup their cost of developing their products – but Mylan didn’t develop the EpiPen, we taxpayers did. The original research was initiated by the Pentagon back in 1973. Today, the device and the medicine in it cost Mylan only a few dollars to produce, and the product itself is essentially unchanged from when Mylan bought it. So the company’s only real contribution to the EpiPen has been to raise its price by more than 600 percent – a shameful act of sheer profiteering that rips off hundreds of thousands of users and endangers the lives of severe allergy sufferers  who simply can’t afford Mylan’s extortion price.
But one thing has risen higher than EpiPen’s price: CEO Heather Bresch’s paycheck. It’s up by 671 percent since 2007, and last year alone she pocketed $18.9 million! But I wonder – is that enough to make her feel good about being so vile?
“The strange history of the EpiPen, the device developed by the military that turned into a billion-dollar business,” Business Insider, August 27, 2016.
“The Story if the EpiPen: From Military Technology to drug-industry cash cow,” Timeline, August 24, 2016.
“Awkward Target for Lawmakers Outraged by EpiPen Prices: A Senator’s Daughter,” The New York Times, August 25, 2016.
“Another Drug Pricing Ripoff,” The New York Times, August 25, 2016.
“Villain? Mylan’s Chief Says She’s No Such Thing,” The New York Times, August 27, 2016.