Stamped out

John Auito of suburban Detroit seemed like a budding entrepreneur. He found a profitable niche and made a few bucks using the Internet.

So is he a good nominee for Small Businessman of the Year? No; it’s more like Felon of the Month.


You see, Auito is a rural postal carrier, and the product he was selling was postage stamps. Which he sort of stole from shipments at the Post Office he worked at. And that is not entirely legal.

As with most crooks, you wonder how long Johnny thought he would get away with this scam. He would contact people who bought rare stamps on eBay and sell them current postage for a 15 percent discount. This is not keeping a low profile.

And what about his customers? Didn’t they have a teensy suspicion that the stamps might have been hot? I mean, stamps don’t have an expiration date, the real Post Office never has sales on ’em.

Whatever; Auito will soon switch his Cliff Clavin-postal uniform for an orange jumpsuit and have a different government job, like something having to do with making license plates.

Thank God he was caught before he drove the U.S. government into bankruptcy. … What’s that you say, the president and Congress are already doing a nice job of that? Oh, right.

One last point: The price of stamps went up to 44 cents on Monday. And Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States.

Coincidence … or conspiracy!