Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The financially beleaguered Postal Service suffered a setback in its plan to end Saturday delivery of first-class mail as Congress on Thursday passed legislation requiring six-day delivery. The Postal Service, which lost $16 billion last year, had announced last month its plan to switch to five-day mail service to save $2 billion annually. No law requires the Postal Service to deliver mail six days a week, but Congress has traditionally included a provision in legislation to fund the federal government each year that has prevented the Postal Service from reducing delivery service. The House of Representatives on...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark—A former Guantanamo detainee has been arrested in Denmark on suspicion of withdrawing $18,900 from other people's accounts using stolen debit cards and PIN codes, police said Thursday. Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, a Danish citizen, was released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in 2004 after nearly two years in captivity. Abderrahmane, 34, was arrested Wednesday and ordered held in jail for two weeks on preliminary fraud and theft charges, police said. He is suspected of stealing three debit cards—two corporate cards and one personal—and the corresponding PIN codes. Police did not say how he stole them. They said Abderrahmane,...

It's Saturday, and I went out on the front porch this morning after shoveling out from Nemo and got the mail as usual. There was an advertisement trying to get me to switch homeowner's insurance and a coupon flyer for the local grocery store. That sort of surprise waiting in the mailbox doesn't exactly get me all up in arms over the Post Office's idea to cancel Saturday mail delivery. Up until now, I’ve been assuming that the Post Office is simply an unprofitable enterprise and they may have to put trucks out on the road less often to reduce...

The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service announced Wednesday that it plans to stop delivering mail on Saturdays starting Aug. 1 — but will continue delivering packages. Unless forbidden to do so by Congress, which has moved in the past to prohibit five-day-a-week delivery, the agency for the first time will delivery mail only Monday through Friday. The move will save about $2 billion a year for the Postal Service, which has suffered tens of billions of dollars in losses in recent years with the advent of the Internet and e-commerce, officials said. “The American public understands the financial challenges of...

A government lawyer’s attempt to get dismissed nearly $700 in traffic tickets given to the U.S. Postal Service is being met with a hearty and humorous, Heck no. In a Jan. 22 letter sent to both the city of East Cleveland, Ohio, and the company that operates the city's photo-enforcement program, Postal Service attorney Jennifer S. Breslin says two school-zone speeding citations and five red-light infractions by postal trucks in December should be ignored. “In providing mail service across the country, the Postal Service attempts to work within local and state laws and regulations, when feasible,” wrote Breslin, after reminding...

After 63 years, U.S. Postal Service delivers calendar The 1950 Pennsylvania Railroad calendar never made it to James W. Flanagan, general manager of The Scranton Times. He would never need it: he died in December 1949. But on Friday, 63 years after his death, the U.S. Postal Service made a delivery. A mail carrier, with no explanation of where the package had been the last 63 years, handed it to Chris O'Hora at The Times-Tribune's front desk. The calendar, rolled in a long tube, soon made its way to the office of Bobby Lynett, a publisher of The Times-Tribune and...

The Federal-Postal Coalition -- a group representing more than two dozen federal employee unions -- pleaded with Congress on Monday to spare their members in any deal related to the "fiscal cliff." Federal workers, the coalition wrote in a letter, have contributed more than their fair share toward reducing the debt and are the only group that has been targeted so heavily. “Federal and postal employees and their families are hardworking, middle-class Americans who are struggling during these tough times just like other Americans,” the group wrote. “No other group has been asked to financially contribute the way they have,...

August 14, 2012 Exclusive Breaking: 1,100 Florida Voters Disenfranchised Today Christian Adams Election Law Center has learned that 1,100 Florida voters will not be able to participate in today's state primary because of snafus by the government. 300 absentee voters in Martin County (FL) and 800 in Indian River County (FL) did not receive their requested absentee ballots in time to participate in today's important primary election because the United States Post Office treated the bulk absentee ballot mailings as third class mail. The ballots were deposited by Martin and Indian River County election officials with the United States Post...

The ailing U.S. Postal Service is reporting quarterly losses of $5.2 billion. From April to June, losses were $2.1 billion more than during the same period in 2011. The mail agency said it is being hurt significantly by mounting costs for future retiree health benefits. Those expenses made up $3.1 billion of the post office's quarterly loss. Declining first-class mail volume also contributed to losses. The Postal Service for months has been urging Congress to pass legislation that would allow it to eliminate Saturday mail delivery and reduce the annual health payment of $5 billion. The post office defaulted on...

Post Office Nears Historic Default On $5-Billion Payment AP Jul. 31, 2012, 6:59 AM WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Postal Service is bracing for a first-ever default on billions in payments due to the Treasury, adding to widening uncertainty about the mail agency's solvency as first-class letters plummet and Congress deadlocks on ways to stem the red ink. With cash running perilously low, two legally required payments for future postal retirees' health benefits — $5.5 billion due Wednesday, and another $5.6 billion due in September — will be left unpaid, the mail agency said Monday. Postal officials said they also...

On this day in 1775, the U.S. postal system is established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its first postmaster general. Franklin (1706-1790) put in place the foundation for many aspects of today's mail system. During early colonial times in the 1600s, few American colonists needed to send mail to each other; it was more likely that their correspondence was with letter writers in Britain. Mail deliveries from across the Atlantic were sporadic and could take many months to arrive. There were no post offices in the colonies, so mail was typically left at inns and taverns....

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on Monday helped kick off a hunger strike of postal workers protesting what they say is an effort to privatize and dismantle the cash-strapped United States Postal Service. The strike — which includes 10 postal workers, union activists and supporters, but not Kucinich himself — is the latest in a long saga of efforts to reform the postal service as it faces a dim financial future. While lawmakers generally agree that postal reform is necessary, they disagree on the specifics.

Ten current and former postal workers launched a more than 3-day hunger strike Monday to protest looming cuts and closures at the U.S. Postal Service. Drastic? Yes. But organizers say desperate times call for desperate measures. The hunger strikers want the Postal Service to shelve its July plans to start closing or consolidating 48 mail processing plants. By the end of 2014, when the plan to shrink the postal network is completed, 229 plants will be consolidated or closed and 28,000 jobs will be gone. They also want Congress to eliminate a mandate that has been a major financial drag...

DETROIT (WJBK) -- Police say a man and his friend are in a lot of trouble for what they did to a Detroit postal worker. "Our postal carrier was in his vehicle, and two African-American males approached him. One had a gun," said Wiley Christopher with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The incident happened on May 1 around the same time you would expect to see a lot of government checks and food stamps in the mail. Police say the guys didn't get away with anything, but there is still an award for information leading to an arrest. "We find...

ORLANDO, Fla. — A postal worker says a mysterious leaking package from Yemen has left him seriously ill, but the U.S. Postal Service denies the package ever existed. The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, in a story printed in Sunday's Miami Herald and The Ledger of Lakeland, reported that Jeffrey A. Lill suffers from extreme fatigue, tremors, and liver and neurological problems. The symptoms are consistent with toxic exposure, problems that he said began after he handled the leaking package on Feb. 4, 2011. The center tracked down co-workers who said that they saw and smelled the package and that...

The U.S. Postal Service backed off from a proposal to close thousands of rural post offices, opting instead to cut opening hours in a bid to stem devastating financial losses. The postal service estimates that the new plan will save $500 million a year once it is fully implemented in 2014. The previous proposal would have closed more than 3,000 rural post offices to save $200 million a year. Under the plan outlined Wednesday, 13,167 post offices will open for two to six hours a day. A spokeswoman for the postal service said that no community would be required to...

A NYT article on the financial difficulties of the Postal Service concluded with a comment from Art Sackler, the chairman of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service: "They haven’t had a good track record when it comes to developing new lines of business." This organization is identified as "a mailing industry group that includes companies like FedEx, said the Postal Service." It might have been worth reminding readers that FedEx and UPS have in the past used their political power to limit the ability of the Postal Service to compete with them.

The U.S. Postal Service is often the butt of jokes, but there's nothing funny about the agency's bottom line. The USPS is losing up to $25 million dollars a day. Until now, taxpayers have not been on the hook for its mounting losses, but that could be about to change. A bill recently approved by the Senate would appropriate $34 billion in federal money. "If the post office was a business, it would be in bankruptcy," said Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla. "It's insolvent." Ironically, however, Congress shares much of the blame. For years, the Postal Service begged Washington for the...

WASHINGTON — With financial losses mounting, the nearly bankrupt U.S. Postal Service is urging the House to quickly pass legislation that would give it wide authority to close thousands of low-revenue post offices, reduce labor costs and end Saturday delivery. At its meeting Friday, the Postal Service's board of governors said that a bill passed by the Senate last week doesn't go far enough to give the agency the latitude it needs. That bill would provide the Postal Service with an $11 billion cash infusion to help pay down ballooning debt but halt the immediate closing of up to 252...

Technology’s rapid advance over the past few decades has brought an era of unprecedented communication among Americans. With video chat, people separated by thousands of miles can interact as if they’re in the same room. Small business owners can pay bills with the click of a mouse. The original online communications technology—e-mail—has become so much more. And there’s a government agency that is not happy about this The U.S Postal Service is in crisis. Mail volume peaked in 2006, and they have been losing business—and more importantly, money—ever since. As an arm of the federal government, taxpayers should be worried...