What’s the best of all worlds?

Well, if you gotta work, and you gotta work for the government, make sure you pick an agency that isn’t constrained by pesky regulations that keep a lid on the value of pay and perks.

Although many rank-and-file feds don’t know it, employees at a number of agencies — especially those that regulate banks — march to a different drummer. That drummer, in most cases, pays better than regular federal agencies. Examples include the Federal Reserve, Comptroller of the Currency and the FDIC.

But the biggest independent of all, and the one agency that touches nearly all our lives, is the U.S. Postal Service. And while the USPS is composed mainly of relatively low-paid clerks and letter carriers, its officer corps does fine.

The USPS is run by a Board of Governors. Last year the Board (which tends to do things quietly) quietly voted for substantial raises for its top officers, including a nearly 39 percent increase for the Postmaster General. His pay went from $186,600 to $258,840. The raise was approved last May and made retroactive to January, 2007.

The pay raises were revealed in response to a Freedom of Information Act filed by Linn’s Stamp News. It tracks activities of the second largest federal agency (after Defense) and is widelly read inside the USPS and as a tip-sheet for more general publications.

Like us.

Bill MCAllister wrote that the deputy PMG got a 26 percent increase — to $235,000 — and that the pay of six other top officers also went up. The Board granted the increases after Congress gave it the green light to exceed the salary ceiling for the Vice President. Mr. Cheney is now paid $215,700 — less than the PMG.

McAllister said the Board took a look at the pay and compensation of top private delivery services, like FedEx and UPS. Their CEOs get $8.67 million and $3.1 million. That’s per year, not over a lifetime!

The bosses of overseas postal services, from Germany’s Deutsche Post to the U.K.’s Royal Mail to the New Zealand Post, also make seven-figure salaries.

Nearly Useless Factoid

From the things-we-wish-we-didn’t know department this contribution to our NUF secton. It goes as follows:

“OK Mike, you asked for it! On a recent cruise through the Caribbean, I was reminded of a ‘factoid’ that I had learned in SCUBA classes long ago. The diet of a Parrot Fish consists of the living part of coral and the algae that sometimes grows on coral. It bites off chunks of coral and grinds it with specialized mouth parts. What the Parrot Fish then deposits on the ocean floor is what most people call ‘sand’. Those in the know call it ‘Parrot Fish Poop’.

“I have actually witnessed this process — you can hear the crunching sounds of the fish eating the coral and see the cloud of ‘sand’ settle to the bottom as it is jettisoned from their ‘anal port’.” Rick

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