Neither Sleet, Nor Rain Nor Congress Will Stop Those Saturday Mail Deliveries

A few weeks ago, Postmaster General John Potter (no relation to Colonel) revealed that the US Post Office was thinking about eliminating Saturday delivery of mail, or in the case of most Americans, Netflix and junk mail. Most Americans think it’s fine, according to a Rasmussen Poll, 50% prefer cutting days to funding budget shortfalls with tax dollars.

The post office, according to Potter, projects a ten year shortfall of 238 billion dollars, which apparently is because most people keep those unwatched Netflix DVDs instead of mailing them back in to get new DVDs that will be unwatched. That leaves junk mail as the number one delivery item, and even so last year 12.7% or 25 billion fewer items were delivered.

Any proposal to cut delivery days will need to be approved by Congress. Which should take, oh about 3 years, a reconciliation vote and four staged tea party protests complete with an effigy of Ben Franklin. Campaign 2012 is shaping up nicely, Mayans predict End of World, World of Warcraft harms kids and mail delivery shouldn’t be run by the government. Insurance companies will lobby for direct mail tax payer subsidies –how else will they market to the mandated must buy coverage peeps?

Potter estimates that cutting Saturday deliveries will save about $40 million a year. The postal workers, I mean the post office workers union is opposed to Saturday cutbacks. The last time there was a cutback in delivery days was 1913, when Sunday deliveries were stopped. That same year, Western Union figured out how to transmit eight messages simultaneously over a single telegraph wire (four in each direction). In 1957, Saturday was eliminated from delivery service, but Congress restored six day delivery after a one day trial. Back then Congress knew how to enact legislation quickly, they actually read the bills they voted on.

Meanwhile more Americans will be texting, Tiger may be still be sexting, and email volume will go down by 12.7% as spammers switch to Twitter. Today, globally,  more people have mobile phone service than fixed line phone service. But most Americans still have to receive credit card offers through the mail, six days a week.

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  • BLARNEY SKANK

    Is this the Post Office that is run by the same government that wants to run our HEALTH CARE, and make it lower the national debt?

    Sort of like
    Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid which are also run by the same efficient government

    You have got to admit that is hilarious.

  • OLD TIMER

    The postal service is a creation of government that used to be “run”, and subsidized, by our government. It has run as a business, without government subsidy, but still controlled by congress, for the last 30 years. Like a lot of businesses, mistakes have been made in setting rates and projecting expenses. Millions of customers have switched to email or other competition, junk mail gets moved for next to nothing, bulk mail from incumbent congressmen is moved for nothing (franking privilege), while the price of a postage stamp keeps increasing. Management should get higher rates for junk mail, accept the changes in the need for service, and adapt to them. They have already eliminated some “unprofitable” business, and service to some remote places cannot possibly be justified as often as in cities, but should be maintained at a reasonable rate. Eliminating Saturday regular mail should not be much of a hardship.

  • Barnstorm

    Nice try Blarney. If you want to send a document to say, California, you are free to use the private companies like FedEx or UPS. They’ll charge you between $24 and $28 dollars to do so. Then again, you COULD use that evil government-run socialist Postal Service. They’d only charge you 44 CENTS.
    So much for that government monopoly, eh?

    For the record, the Postal Service is mandated to break even. They recieve NO tax dollars from the Federal government except to finance free reading matter for the blind. All their revenue comes from stamps and services.

    As far as Jack Plotter (also no relation to the wizard Harry), the main reason why the Postal Service is in such a financial mess is the top-heavy bureaucracy that runs it. While the actual workforce has been cut by over 100,000 people over the past 10 years, Postal headquarters in Washington has actually grown by 34%. What real company actually needs 35 Vice Presidents? You can visit the USPS’s own website if you don’t believe me.

    PMG Potter has been engaged in a campaign to dismantle the Postal Service for quite some time now. While preaching the future of the USPS, he has been steadily reducing service and raising prices. No wonder his business is going elsewhere. Of course, next year is a contract year for the various unions so naturally he’s crying poverty. Management has pulled this same stunt every time the contracts have to be negotiated. Those in the know in Congress aren’t buying Potter’s line of bull. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has been one of his few vocal critics . Potter told Congress last year that cutting Saturday deliveries would be his LAST option, but he has been relentlessly campaigning for it ever since. He not only gets a larger salary than the President of the USA, but I guess he feels that his $837k retirement package isn’t big enough.

    Congress ought to throw him and his entire BOG to the curb. Maybe then the American public could get the kind of mail service they deserve back again.

    • BLARNEY SKANK

      You are so out of date. You scan the document, convert it into a PDF file and attach it to an E Mail to the party.

      COST = 0 = NADA= NOTHING

      If you were stupid enough to send it by USPS without Signature Confirmation, receipt requested, for tracking and think for 44 cents you are off the hook you must be living in LaLa land.

      FedEx’s profit doubled more than expectations, if the USPS was run by a private business, it would most likely break even in the worst case.
      Bye the way, how’s th at “hope & change” working out for ya?

  • Barnstorm

    I’ll take “hope & change” over fear and corruption any day thank you.

    As far as your “0=nada=nothing” comment, please inform the rest of us how you’ve managed to get free internet access. You’re paying for that pdf file somewhere, whether you realize it or not.

    Both FedEx and UPS have raised their profits because of one simple fact: They recognized the economy and adjusted their business to it. They got rid of excess management. The Postal Service has a much more lengthy process to go through in order to adjust to market trends, and they didn’t trim their fat; they added to it!

    UPS also sheds their older, higher-wage workforce in order to hire younger, cheaper labor. Although UPS is a Teamster shop, they are not exactly a shining example of what that used to mean. Just ask any driver/delivery person.

    If the USPS were privitized, you could kiss that 44-cent stamp goodbye and say hello to at least $1.00, which would send even more people scurrying to the internet. Then some 17 year old kid from Kyrzikistan could bring the whole world economy down with a few well-hacked keystrokes. How’d that work for you?

    Just be careful of what you wish for.

  • WRONG AGAIN

    FedEx made a huge profit because they ventured into the Asian/Pacific area where the growth is booming while the USA is pretty much standing still.

    So with your knowledge of that fact so wrong, I would seriously doubt anything else you claim.

    Sorry but to get the USPS back on it’s feet it would take a $5 first class stamp and a 500% increase in the cost of junk/bulk mail.

    Which would again force more people to go to other means.

    OH YES, There are plenty of free ON-Line services available if you want dial up. Using the monthly cost of a dial up connection to compare the 263 billion dollar loss of the USPS is kind of silly.

    But then again so is the Ponzi Scheme the Congress just passed. I bet you are in love with that, yes?

  • Barnstorm

    Free online services if you use dialup? And you call me “out of date”?

    OK, I’ll try to make it simple for you, since you can’t seem to see beyond your own smug attitude. If you are using dialup, I’ll assume you’re paying a phone bill. Of course that assumption goes away if you wear a cowboy hat and used to live on Wilson Point. But regardless, the phone line costs you something, which is in direct conflict with the term “free”.

    I would also point out that the $263 billion figure comes from a Postal Service projection and not any kind of real world fact. I can state without any fear of contradiction that the Postal Service has probably NEVER produced an accurate projection about anything they’ve EVER done. I can say that based on my 24 years of employment with that particular agency. What is truly silly is that you would try to equate the cost of one phone connection to the entire nation’s postal system. Fallacious reasoning at it’s best. I’ll wager your patron saint is Glen Beck. He likes to draw factual conclusions based on his own self-created premises.

    I’ll also wager that you consider the Healthcare reform legislation to be a ponzi scheme simply because you’ve heard one of your gasbag radio talk show hosts call it that, not because you yourself have actually read the legislation.

    • GRASPING AT STRAWS

      “If you are using dial-up, I’ll assume you’re paying a phone bill.”

      Wow! So you are saying that if I didn’t have a dial up ISP then I would not have a telephone?

      Using that line of thinking the if you have a “sink” in your house you don’t really need a toilet.

      PS

      Of course you on the other hand HAVE READ the legislation all 2300 pages, RIGHT?

      It remains to be seen who is the “Lemming” in this great piece of Social Engineering.

      Also when the IRS comes to you door to arrest you or garnishes your pay for not paying your fine for your decision not to want health care, what happens next does the government send you to Guantanamo or do they start to build concentration camps. Opps, I mean re-education camps.

      • Joe Vento

        In any case no matter what this legislation will eventually cost the taxpayer it will be the taxpayer who will have to foot the bill for the billions it will cost for the lawsuits that this legislation will generate over the next 2 decades.

        The taxpayer always pays in the end.

      • just asking…

        I wonder what the IRS uses for garnishes? Parsley?

  • Barnstorm

    Don’t think I haven’t noticed that my questions weren’t answered but instead were simply turned around and directed at me.

    I wasn’t saying you didn’t have a telephone if you had dialup. Your reasoning here is truly bass-ackwards. You again simply deflected my point and inserted a non-linear issue. My guess is you didn’t make the debate team in school because of this inability to stay on point.

    I’m not worried about the IRS or any other governmental agency coming to knock at my door. We pay our taxes and abide by the law. Only a true paranoid lives in such fear. This paranoia is what your talk radio gasbags like to promote. Please study the tactics of the Nazi party in Germany of the 1930′s to see what such hysteria-producing paranoid thinking does to the social structure of a country.

    Then we’ll see who the true “lemming” is here.

    I have health insurance, and I pay for my share of it too. Who thinks they won’t need health care at some point in their lives? You may not need it this instant, but you will. That’s as certain as death and taxes. I would rather see a smaller percentage of my taxes go up to pay for the uninsured than see my health care costs skyrocket because of an increasing number of irresponsible freeloaders who want health care but refuse to pay for it. I know people who have had their medical coverage dropped because they got laid off or suffered some other kind of financial hardship. They should not be denied coverage because of their circumstances.

    Joe, unfortunately I have to agree with you somewhat. The right wing in this country will spare no effort to make sure this is tied up in courts for as long as possible. Just like Kenneth Starr spent over $500 million of our taxpayer dollars to try and find something to hang Clinton for (and come away empty-handed), Obama’s foes will continue to obstruct and make life as difficult as possible simply because they can and know they won’t have to foot the bill for it. Karl Rove is alive and well, and pulling the puppet’s strings.

    But “Grasping” (or whatever name you decide is next) ,I wouldn’t recommend Guantanamo, but you sure seem to be in need of some major “re-education”…as in what most of us learned in the fourth grade.

  • NOT IN YOUR LIFETIME

    but you sure seem to be in need of some major “re-education”…

    You mean like in the Chinese Communist “Cultural Revolution” of the 1960′s

    You are stating to sound less like an American and more like a “Gestapo wanna be…………….”

    Go wash your mouth out with soap.

  • Barnstorm

    Make up your mind. Am I a Chinese communist or a German national socialist?

    I’ll give you a clue: I am 100% American, and damn proud of it.

    YOU seem to be the one who can’t handle dissent.That would make you perhaps a member of the teabag taliban.

    Now that the health care legislatuion has passed without the world coming to an end, I hope you are able to help your drug-addled buddy Rush pack for Costa Rica. Have fun!

  • 100% AMERICAN ARE YOU A NATIVE AMERICAN????

    I would say you are BOTH. You seem to be unable to handle dissent as the Tea Party Movement seems to annoy you.

    Lets see who is right at the next election.

    PS

    The health care debacle has not had enough time to end the world yet. As your god Obama said “I looked at the sky and did not see any giant meteor heading our way.”

    He just didn’t look long enough, I’m afraid as it will be arriving around NEXT NOVEMBER.

  • Secondhand Hosebeast

    When the Tea Potty sitters learn to express themselves without shouting (including ALL CAPS) and making threats, people with differing opinions might start to take them with a grain of salt. So tiresome, like listening to a cranky baby all day. Maybe child psychologists have some ideas about how to deal with them.

  • PANCY NELOSI RUNS A HOUSE

    “Tea Party Sitters” did you get that from Barnstorm? Funny he uses those catchy names himself like “Tea Party Taliban”, strange coincidence.

    Yes, I am sure like you they can’t wait to see how the new bill makes the USA a “Workers Paradise.” We can make May Day a national holiday.

    The left wing would never try to stifle anyones right to speak their opinions, as long as they are the same as theirs.

    When are you and your fellow travelers going to start burning books you don’t agree with?

  • Barnstorm

    The “left” doesn’t stifle anything. The “left” is not afraid to speak out, or debate the issues. It is the teabag taliban that feels defensive, can’t handle criticism, or feels threatened by opposing viewpoints.
    The “left” doesn’t put coffins on the lawns of legislators they disagree with, nor do they throw bricks or start fires. They don’t put “gun crosshairs” on those they disagree with. And they are not afraid of open debate.

    The “left” doesn’t believe in burning books. That’s for the “uber right” who hide behind the Patriot Act and call those they disagree with “un-American” or worse.

    I would never stifle your right to speak your mind or offer your opinion. Everyone has a right to display their ignorance. In this country you can spread your Limbaughger cheese on as many “crackers” as you wish. Mental midgets are a form of entertainment for us. Studies have shown a direct correlation between education and the teabaggers. The folks with the most intelligence and education tend not to ascribe to the tenets of teabaggery.

    Only a dittohead or Beckaholic would suggest the heath care legislation would lead to a “worker’s paradise”. The only advice I’d give here is to check the expiration date on those pills you’re gulping. McCarthyism expired over 50 years ago!

    • TO BARNSTORM THE COLLABORATOR

      In your case I have forgotten my #1 rule

      “Never argue with idiots, they will drag you down to their level, and beat you with experience.”

  • The Shrink

    Venting is good.

    Debate is good.

    Can we get more than 2 folks involved?

    Group hug?

  • Barnstorm

    The more the merrier Shrink, but I think this thread has strayed way beyond it’s original focus. I didn’t mean for it to become a bash-a-thon but it just got away from me. Those intolerant “nabobs of negativity” sure know how to push my buttons, but at least I keep my name consistent.

  • MY thoughts

    Just like to add that cutting sat. delv. will leave 40,000 + people without jobs, which alot are single parents, like myself. Having this job keeps me off welfare and others I work with. Not to mention alot of people that work Mon-Fri like to have Sat. to do their shipping, take that away the P.O. will lose business from the Sat. shippers.