Never underestimate the power of a politician.

Forget that boast about rain, snow and dark of night — a pack of like-minded politicians can stay those stalwarts of the U.S. Postal Service from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Or at the very least raise hell with them.

So it is with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and his band of Republican accomplices, whose main purpose, it appears, is to privatize the handling and distribution of mailin the USA, a duty some of us thought was granted to the Postal Service by Congress in 1788.

That was a long time ago, long before Congress became infested with the likes of Issa. Today, the Postal Service — an icon, to use an overworked cliche — is fighting for its life against FedEx, UPS, Fox News bloviators and just plain enemies of public service.

The Postal Service, we’re told, is losing money at an unsustainable rate. That’s true, in part, because it isn’t designed or allowed to make money. Never was and never will be as long as there are Republican opponents. It’s also true because in 2006, Republicans in Congress pushed through a bill requiring the service to prepay 75 years’ worth of retiree costs. No other government agency — no private company, for that matter — must do that.

If I may employ a sports analogy, it would be like the International Olympic Committee requiring swimmers representing unfavored countries to wear lead belts around their swimsuits.

To meet that outrageous retirement fund goal, the Postal Service is closing offices and not replacing retirees. So what’s it to me, you may well ask? Simple — I am a postal service fan and a one-time letter-carrier.

During my college years, I worked as a substitute carrier for the Binghamton office. It got me out of college a few days ahead of my colleagues and enabled me to make a few bucks. And I loved doing it.

I was assigned each year to a route on the city’s South Side, where all the streets run uphill. Or so it seemed after a day’s duty: Mill Street, Corbett, Sherwood and Park avenues, Hotchkiss Street and South Mountain, among them.
During those years, I met countless householders, all of them friendly, and countless dogs, most of them unfriendly and fortunately — for me — fenced in or otherwise restrained. One house, on upper Park Avenue, was patrolled by a fat Chow dog that had no use for visitors. The nice lady who lived there, who would come out whenever she heard the beast barking, would assure me each time that the animal was really harmless. I took her word for it.

On all the routes I worked, the regular carriers were popular. “How’s Mr. Rayburn?“ or “Is Mr. Slocum all right?” a woman would ask upon finding a stranger on her porch, and she’d be pleased to learn that the regular was well and enjoying a brief vacation.

It didn’t take me long to learn that the mailman — there were no female carriers then, at least on the routes I carried — was an integral and welcome part of the neighborhood fabric. I suspect it was much the same all over.

And I hope it still is and will stay that way, despite the efforts of Issa and his ilk.

THIS IS WHY YOU MUST GIVE TO COPA!!!!!!!!!!