I’d doubt few will care except those of us who have the mailed disc version of Netflix (since newer stuff isn’t on streaming) and want to send and receive them on Saturdays.
Apparently trying an end-run around an unaccommodating Congress, the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service says it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to disburse packages six days a week.
In an announcement scheduled for later Wednesday, the service is expected to say the Saturday mail cutback would begin in August and could save $2 billion annually.
The move accentuates one of the agency’s strong points – package delivery has increased by 14 percent since 2010, officials say, while the delivery of letters and other mail has declined with the increasing use of email and other Internet services.
Sounds like a good idea. Most of what I get delivered is junk anyhow.
“We are given no straw, but the slave drivers still demand, ‘Make bricks!’ ”
More evidence that Congress is functionally insane. But what hurts worse is that it’s more evidence that we are slipping as a country, culture, civilization. There has been a postal service in America since before there was a United States. At this rate, how much longer can it survive?
I think you might be blowing this a little out of proportion. What a waste of time, resources and adding pollution, just so we can get latest issue of our favorite magazine or some crap we ordered from china.
I agree. The only mail I seem to get other than the usual junk seems to also be BILLS! And I’m in no hurry to get them. Besides, aren’t UPS and FedEx delivering on Saturday for an extra charge? (Pssst! Let’s not give the USPS any ideas here.)
Fundamental story here is not the action itself but: “…trying an end-run around an unaccommodating Congress…”. Same as President Obama’s action this is the actual undermining of the Constitutional system of Government as we have it. Same as him, proper result should be arrest for treason. Our laws as is do not allow USPS to make it as they see fit. Through Congress they are responsible directly to us. Any end-run around Congress, be it by USPS or President or anyone else is end-run around US the People. By the time thick sculled people who “want things done”, just like in Nazi Germany and similar places realize that all these actions are in effect stealing power of the Government FROM them,… it will be too late. Welcome to the Fascist US where USPS office will be run on time.
Completely idiotic reply by a complete idiot.
NAME anything illegal the USPO is going to do. You CAN’T because they AREN’T.
Like all dittohead fantacists, you take a journalist slur and repeat it as if it were analytical and valid. Again… ITS NOT.
What you can read which is RIGHT THERE, is that the USPO is dropping a declining volume of services and keeping an increasing line of service.
eg==the USPO has had 365/yr delivery of Special Delivery mail since … long time. Is that an “end run” of note or just a valid business decision which is what the Mandates of Congress are supposed to encourage.
Shit for Brains is much too kind.
Just look.
Since I can’t decide which one of you two are crazy dipshts I’ll lmao at both of you. I’m anxious to see how strict Congress is going to fight this with the post office and whether they allow any flexibility of what to deliver on Saturday to meet requirements.
Geez, I thought my day was bad but you two take the cake.
Post office -> Congress -> Treason -> Nazi O.o -> extreme name calling to justify his post reply
“Nazi! Treason! Stealing! Germany ! Nazi ! ..”
Wow! All that for ending mail on Saturday?
Whaaaaaa. Whaaaaaa
I thought this would have brought some consensus here.
I’ll start believing in Obama if he drones you.
Talk about myopia. Did you buy your cemetery lot yet?You’ll need a second plot to bury your extreme paranoia.
Relax. I’ll just miss seeing the hot neighbor in her spandex at the mailbox on Saturday. During the week she stops on the way home from work and I don’t get a show.
Fuel bill for USPS will drop, aren’t conservatives about saving money? You’ll bitch about anything.
eBay shoppers will be happy.
People that write letters are dinosaurs like people that write checks.
Hey, my 94 year old Father in-law is no dinosaur, nor is my 75 year old Mom. There are millions of Americans still writing checks to pay monthly bills, and receive statements from their investment brokers. Not everyone is computer literate.
Let’s not forget the hours of pay that the USPS workers will lose. A job with the USPS used to be a great job. Now, your treated like a dog and walked every so often to make sure you are walking thru all the short cuts available. The letter carriers will now have to deliver more mail in less time. Expect more postal workers going postal.
Would a Netflix disk mailer be considered a package?
Why not just stop mail delivery in states where congressional representatives are unsupportive of the USPO?
Why not just shut it down. It is all junk mail anyways and costs a tooth and a leg to maintain. A federal monopoly that is not profitable, lol. That is what the gov does, waste YOUR money.
Grant monopoly rights to a private company and it will be profitable from start. The USPS is just doing it wrong.
More complete kneejerk BS.
USPO costs taxpayers====zero.
Cost of US first class mail ANYWHERE in USA== 46 cents. I can wait 2-3 days for my bills to arrive. Overnight package is 50-60% of Fed Ex.
USPO==one of the BEST government services around. Thats too much competition for the For Profits–of course their paid for Congresscreeps want to kill this. Good jobs vs wage slaves.
Just look.
“Good jobs” = APWU
Ha!
These jobs at the USPS were great jobs. Back in the 70′s my letter carrier had so much extra time once his route was finished you’d find him down at the corner gin mill. Nowadays, your carrier could be delivering the mail in the dark.
The workers at the local Post Office are not happy campers. Crap pay with the boss on your back about why are you so slow. Faster, faster. I have first hand experience with the workings of the USPS.
Grant monopoly rights to a private company and it will be profitable from start.
Just what do you think the USPS and AmTrak are?
They aren’t getting their cheques cut by the treasury department. They are subsidized private corporations.
If you want to send something with a date-time stamp, return receipt requested with a for profit delivery service it will cost you a whole lot more. (Some departments don’t accept courrier deliveries. Some departments are located far from any courrier service.)
Try dealing with any government service without sending your correspondence ReturnReceiptRequested and you will discover that the mailrooms deal with your mail by ash-canning it.
The USPS and AmTrak aren’t supposed to be profitable.
The USPS has added capabilities which they don’t make full use of:
1) Franking privilege basically the power to issue legal currency*&**.
2) Non-lending banking so you could have the post office handle all of your personal transactions***.
*) In any denomination, like trillion dollar stamps, and holding onto a deposit. Its just as good as a coin would be.
**) Ever sent or received a USPS money order?
***) You could do the same as lots of people do in Europe and Asia for most of your running expenses and pay those through the post office.
Well, actually, the Post Office employees do in fact, get paychecks drawn on the US Treasury. Or did, back when the still got actual checks instead of direct deposit. I worked in a bank across the street from the PO back in the 1990s, and we would see them all the time.
And, the Post Office is not subsidized, but is required to break even. It WAS given authority to borrow from the treasury a few years ago, but that is different from a subsidy. The loan stays on their books as a liability until paid, and it is a very recent thing in any event.
Though not a government department as they once were (before the early 1970s) USPS does not operate quite like a private corporation and it is not subsidized.
Amtrak, on the other hand, or, more correctly, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak is a brand name they use) is indeed set up as a for profit corporation and does receive subsidies from the federal government. Unlike the PO’s borrowing, the subsidies that Amtrak gets are treated as revenue. There are private shareholders in NRPC, including the descendants of the railroads that existed in 1971 who got stock, Carl Linder, a private individual who bought up assets from bankrupt railroads. The federal government also holds stock and gets to install the CEO and set policy. Employees get (or used to before direct deposit) checks draw on the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, not the United States Treasury.
Amtrak IS supposed to be profitable (though it isn’t)
The Post Office is supposed to break even (though it has been losing money).
Good. I think we can do with 3 days per week, given the amount of junk mail received. The only losers would be advertisers – and they can pay more, or go via another delivery service.
Another way would be to outsource the whole bloated operation to a private business like FedEx or UPS.
“outsource the whole bloated operation to a private business like FedEx or UPS”
They don’t want the jellybean grandma letter market. They’re perfectly content skimming the top of the delivery market with packages.
That leaves the USPS to deliver the shit mail.
The question is, do the sheeple consider mail an essential service like it was at one time.
Yeah DUllass, do you consider the mail essential?
Idiot!
Sure, right after they declare internet access a basic human right and all have it regardless of income. What do you think would cost more, the USPS or free internet to the poor?
That’s always the idiotic slave response. Let’s privatize the USPS. Oh yea, great idea. Why not privatize the military, oh…we already did that. Cheney made a fortune off of that fiasco.
Of course, if the idiots in Congress would just let them raise the price of a stamp to 50 cents, instead of the stupid 1 or 2 cents at a time, they would be fine.
But, no. They’re too busy proclaiming National Used Kleenex Appreciation Day and so forth.
“National Used Kleenex Appreciation Day”
Har!
That’s my favorite drinking day, leave it alone.
I don’t think this is funny at all. “National Used Kleenex Appreciation Day” flaunts kleenex usage in front of all of us that are kleenex challenged.
They should stop delivering bills completely, it would save us billions!
Seems whenever I got some kind of refund in the mail. Whether of taxes, or some product rebate. It always was mailed out, to arrive on Friday or Saturday. That way the sender had at least two days before I could cash it in. Maybe without having the Saturday delivery, this will put a crimp in their evil plan, to gain extra days of interest income. Or make it three days until one can cash a refund check. And four on Federal holidays, like Columbus day.
Frankly, I’d rather they dropped Mondays. Who really wants mail on Mondays? And all the above refunders most be waiting until Wednesday, to mail out those checks. I’d be surprised if any major corporation does all that much paper mailing on Mondays, in America. The executives still have their heads on the Sunday golf game, to dictate letters to their secretaries.
Interest Income? Are you living in the 1970s?
One of the most amusing documents delivered by the Post Office is the American Express high yield saving account flyer. It pays a huge .9 percent.
Even more amusing is the bar graph on the flyer showing .9 to be many times higher than the .8 every one else pays. Apparently the base point of the graph is .79 percent.
I pay everything online and rarely get surprises. I’d opt out of mail if I could.
So I just get junk mail. I haven’t bought a stamp in 6 years. Other than mailing back Netflix movies in the past, I’ve mailed something out maybe 5-6 times in that same period of time.
The post office is mostly packages and junk mail these days and out of touch governments/corporations that like to mail stuff out of habit.
You anti USPO idiot are victims yourself. The USPO is a broad based honorable employment program that actually returns a service. You so called “business men:” whose gonna buy your products if they need two jobs to maintain a blue collar existence.
So short sighted.
Just cutting your own throats over some kind of percieved anti government ideology AS IF====> the government weren’t us.
Idiot Hooman Beings.
You are creating MORE THAN the death spiral race to the bottom, its the race to oblivion. Pull your head out of your ass and don’t make life harder than it is for someone trying to be a good citizen on $40K per year.
How stupid can YOU be?
Maybe in 5-7 years the rubber band will snap back and some of the ideas from 1880-1960 will come back into favor.
Like protectionism/tariffs, quality of life concerns, worker’s right and how maybe if we value humans as humans instead of worker bees to be abused/dictated to.
Still, I think the social fabric back then was facilitated by WWI and WWII where all the men got drafted and bonded together and created a sense of citizenry and brotherhood and common cause.
Today, we have severe social stratification.
But in any possible future, I don’t see the Post Office being a thing of the future except for packages.
Ernest Hemingway isn’t writing letter overseas these days and neither is anyone else.
The Post Office is a “blast from the past” that doesn’t serve much more purpose than the blacksmith or a milk man does in the modern world.
You touch on a fair issue: the USPO should flex to the volume of business it has. It should be run as a business and not as a target for Congressional Flacks.
But should be is defined by not being. Once again, we are simply doing it to ourselves: Crowing while we cut our own throats.
Society is being stratified. You see it in the unemployment rate of College Grads vs High School vs Drop Outs. Just what are the bottom half of the market supposed to do?
Why not have them deliver the mail? Much better than having them breaking into my house.
Or is it just me?
| Why not have them deliver the mail? Much
| better than having them breaking into my
| house.
I’m not sure having kids deliver the mail would keep them from breaking into your house.
Might make it more likely …
I suppose I could be a blogging butt fuck who doesn’t know the difference between USPO and USPS!
The USPS can evolve to be part of Obamacare. The newly licensed medical-postal worker can deliver mail but also check up on the aging sheeple population and maybe administer morphine when needed. This could go somewhere.
That way, you can make your mailman fantasies come true.
Get ready & start cleaning yourself.
I can see it now:
“Ya. I go your ‘package’ right here! Want me to lick your stamp it too? Oh! That’s right. We don’t do that any more. We only HANDLE the things you like sticking in our SLOTS, SLITS and HOLES!”
What the fuck is your problem? While I don’t agree with everyone on here I don’t sit and wait for someone to post just to take shots at them.
That is for Pedro, no one else.
Thank you. It’s sad but if his IQ were 2 points higher he would be a rock.
It just wants attention.
some OF YOU MAY know this..
FEDX takes a week to deliver a package at $??
The USPS can send a priority package, for about $8 in <3days..generally, over nite..
Iv had companies send a package USPS free when I purchase $60+ in merchandise.. and its here in 2-3 days. INCLUDING the weekends.
The rest of the companies have LESS people, and COST MORE, and take longer. They SEEM to making TONS more money.
Iv suggested to the USPS to raise the Price of sending CRAP to my box.. but its pre-sorted and labeled and 1/2 the work is done for THEM.. so they dont.
Wow! You either don’t realize the markup of the crap you’re buying or don’t realize the horrible job the USPS usually does.
Have you even BEEN to a USPS post office lately? It’s worse than the DMV! On average there are 10 counters with only one open. And that one counter is almost always staffed by someone who takes 5 minute breaks every 5 minutes! They even removed all of their vending machines thinking it would somehow save money too. VENDING MACHINES! The only way you can now get postage stamps without a credit card (or online) is to actually talk to one of these surly sub human drones. And that’s assuming they speak ENGLISH!
So for me, I’ll will stick to getting my postage stamps from an ATM or at the grocery store. I’ll also try and support my local economy by trying to make my purchases at a local retailer too. The extra PENNIES I spend at the local brick and mortar stores seems to help keep deserving people EMPLOYED too!
They even removed all of their vending machines…
Not at my post office.
Reality doesn’t seem to be very evenly distributed…
MALE..
Umm,
Ever tried to goto the UPS office??
TRY and find it within 20 miles of your home..
THE POST OFFICE DELIVERS..
Go to their site and have FREE BOXES SENT..
Markup on my prices I GET?? with free delivery?
GO to the store and find 5HTP..its around $10..
I get it around $6 as well as a few other products, and keep the price above $60 and I get free shipping.. I AM very frugal.
PS..You can ORDER, PRE-POST MARKED-PAID envelopes OFF the net, and they will be delivered..FREE..
Actually that makes sense.
Wasting fossil fuel to deliver a piece of paper made from trees just doesn’t cut it anymore.
I feel sorry for all the folks who don’t want to use a computer, but that’s evolution.
Wellllll, for all the fossil fuel burned maintaining all the servers, switches, routers and air-conditioners to keep all this crap cool, somehow I get the feeling that the mail this infrastructure is displacing wasn’t using that much delivery fuel.
As for raising the price of delivery services, not a bad idea. I’ve suggested the same thing for the airlines and their “wonderful” service. Put the services back and raise those ticket prices, then flying would become a dignified experience again. A smaller business probably, but….
Those servers are a shared cost, they deliver all kind of stuff 24/7
Granted, most of the stuff they deliver is junk, but the increase rate of communication among people has brought us all the things we enjoy today. When was the last time you paid for direct dialing fees for an international call?
I haven’t gone thru the numbers but I suspect that the cost (in terms of fossil fuel) to deliver, let’s say, an online invoice are much much cheaper than the equivalent of a paper-based invoice.
If it wasn’t companies would still be sending paper-based stuff around, as they too are looking for cheaper ways to do business.
You may want to reconsider pissing off the USPS. I bet you didn’t know that certain members of the postal inspectors branch are ARMED! So maybe this shut down is a test to see if “they” can limit or close down some of our other armed services too. Hmmmm…
(I can just sense that comment sounding like a bullhorn to some people: “Calling all looney libs! Calling all looney libs! Someone mentioned guns! Someone mentioned guns! It’s time once again to “flame” the tea-publican bastard for wanting to remain armed or assert Constitutional rights that we, the enlightened ones have already decided he should not have.“)
I’ve always thought the idea of getting mail on a Saturday is uncivilised. Nobody should have to wake up to bills at the weekend.
Don’t worry guys, the checks in the mail.