USPS ‘Honors’ Sen. Byrd with Plant Consolidations

To understand how Congressional leaders exert influence over the supposedly independent U.S. Postal Service, consider the agency’s mail-processing centers in West Virginia. As long as the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, sometimes known as the Prince of Pork, ruled the Senate Finance Committee, the 11 mail-processing centers in his home state were safe. Though West Virginia had more such centers per capita than nearly any other state, the Postal Service’s efforts to consolidate its processing network somehow bypassed the Mountain State.

But all that has changed in the past five months, during which the Postal Service’s AMPS program