Posted on 09/19/2011 12:33:59 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Obama's Postal Service plan would cut Saturday mail By Emily Stephenson 15 mins ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) The Obama administration's plan to rescue the U.S. Postal Service would allow the agency to end Saturday mail delivery and sell non-postal products, according to documents released on Monday.
The plan, introduced alongside a deficit-reduction package, also would restructure a massive annual payment to prefund retiree health benefits and refund $6.9 billion the mail carrier says it overpaid into a federal retirement fund.
The White House says its plan would save the Postal Service more than $20 billion in the next few years.
"The administration recognizes the enormous value of the U.S. Postal Service to the nation's commerce and communications, as well as the urgent need for reform to ensure its future viability," the White House document said.
The Postal Service has watched its core business of delivering mail erode as consumers send email and pay bills online. The agency has said it needs to downsize drastically or it will be unable to deliver mail by the end of next summer.
The agency has said it needs to reduce payrolls by about 220,000 by 2015 and is studying thousands of post offices and about 300 processing facilities for possible closure.
(Excerpt) Read more at old.news.yahoo.com ...
The USPS is obsolete and is of no use to a modern society.
Other than things like birthday and Christmas cards, the mail is of no use.
UPS and FedEx do a far better job delivering packages and they do it at the same price or less.
I get just about all of my bills emailed as it is.
Now there’s an idea I like!
You can't e-mail a physical object.
“What can the USPS do today that cannot be done via the Internet?”
Mail my wife shoes she buys.
Deliver to rural areas that are not covered by UPS or FedEx.
The Post office was established in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8). I believe it would take an amendment to the Constitution to get rid of it.
This is what I remember from my 1949 Civics 101 class.
-——What can the USPS do today that cannot be done via the Internet?——
Deliver a check from my client that lacks the will to learn how to transmit money electronically.
Saturday is exactly the wrong day to cut. Think about weeks with a Monday holiday. The mail will not move for three days at least — and we know how fast things move after a long weekend.
If they have to cut a day, let it be Wednesday. No one would even notice.
I wonder how much money that would be saved if junk mail was eliminated or if not, make them pay full price like everyone else. This is especially so for companies like Advo and Red Plum that litter our mailboxes with trash couple times each week. In fact for the newspaper trash that gets put in, they should be required to be in envelopes it is easy to toss and not have to look through to see if you have important mail in the pile !
> The people who will be really unhappy with these changes are the bulk mailers who stuff your mailbox with taxpayer subsidized garbage every day.
“The Post office was established in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8). I believe it would take an amendment to the Constitution to get rid of it.”
Yup.
http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Constitution.html
I have a few friends who are USPS letter carriers. Based on their stories, they could film a reality show there - it would be fascinating.
While many people aspire to some sort of success level in their careers, it appears to me that the biggest aspiration at the post office is to get yourself put on "light duty".
I bet if you went into any decent sized post office branch, there are at least 10% on light duty or disability.
The letter carriers should work 3 days a week, 12 hour shifts, to deliver and pick up mail M/W/F. The individual post offices should be open 1/2 day M -F. Bulk mail centers should operate T/Th/Sa, 2, 12 hour shifts. Any Post Office with less than 10 current full time employees should be shut down or combined. The “managers” in Washington should be reduced by 75% and redeployed nationwide. All pay grades above janitor should be frozen until financial solvency is returned, including payments to the retirement system. The retirement and health benefits reworked after Obamacare is fully repealed, assuming the Republicans have the gonads to do it after the 2012 election.
I would have no heartburn with having only two days of delivery a week. Most people that I work with....feel the same way. This might shock the postal folks and the politicians.
We aren’t living in the 1940s anymore. I remember my dad (a rural mail carrier for thirty years)...having people desperately show up at the mail box on the day which their social security check was supposed to arrive...standing there in hostile feelings when he simply didn’t have the check in his bag. And if this was two days late....there would be significant chat about why it was late...always delaying him on the route. He always noted that social security mail-day was the worst day of the month for him. Today, folks all get the check in their bank-account...right on time.
Out town doesn’t have any mail delivery, so I don’t care if it gets cut to once a month. We also don’t have any cops, so my pitbull doesn’t have to worry about getting shot by wannabe swatsters.
I’m sure they’ll lay off carriers because of this....not....what they need to do is fire the damned counter apes and mail sorters that push carts from location to another....they aren’t doing anything but delaying automatically sorted mail anyway....
I'm sure they assume cutting a weekday would hurt businesses and economic activity more than cutting the weekend entirely. They may be wrong. It would be interesting to see the analysis supporting elimination of Saturday delivery over some other day.
No cops? Is law enforcement handled by sheriffs?
If it helps save the postal service I can certainly go without Saturday delivery.
I have a P.O. box. The post office where it is located jacked up my rent by a lot early this year. If they jack it up any higher, I may just give up the box.
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