Ron Nixon: "The Postal Service is expected to announced on Wednesday that it will stop delivering letters and other mail on Saturdays, but continue to handle packages, a move the financially struggling agency said would save about $2 billion annually as it looks for ways to cut cost." [NYT]

  • http://twitter.com/mikemcl mikemcl

    Think how much more it would save cutting those pesky Mon-Fri deliveries.

    • awjt

      Yes, make the jerks all have to hand-deliver their bills to me!  I’m tired of paying them!  No I will not hand-deliver my checks back.  Rot in hell, massive corporations.

  • Wowbagger_Infinitley_Prolonged

    I wonder how much it would save if they didn’t have to fully fund pensions for employees that aren’t even born yet.

    • chgoliz

      Exactly.  How this continues to be the law — as if it were part of the Bill of Rights or something — is inexplicable.  Especially when one considers franking: imagine if all the politicians in Washington started to have to pay private for-profit companies to send their required mailings to their constituents.  Are they really all that short-sighted?  (Yeah, I know…..)

  • bishophicks

    The richest country in the world and we have municipalities that can’t afford street lighting or paved roads.  Now we’re having trouble delivering the mail.

    Wowbagger, you’re sort of right.  The 2006 law requires that the Post Office pre-fund 100% future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years and gave them 10 years to do it.  It is a requirement that no other government agency or private business has to meet.  Why 10 years and not 20?  Why 100% and not the more common 30%?  It was designed to make it look like the USPS is losing money hand over fist so that people could point to it with a sad headshake and say, “See?  The government can’t do anything right.”  Then they’ll try to sell it.  Some group will get a sweetheart deal, some investment banks will get nice commissions, some executives and investors will get monster paychecks and we’ll get jacked up postage rates service will go into the toilet.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UWDFQHLRCTYZIOWFK3UZK223WI Rusty Shackleford

       While simultaneously destroying the postal employees’ union.

      • jimdigritz

        Well, there’s always a silver lining….

        • CrackWilding

          Yes, because what in this world is worse than low-skilled laborers having the opportunity to act collectively?

          • Boundegar

            Giving them a living wage and medical insurance.

    • scolbath

      Although this is the most commonly cited reason for the Post Office’s woes, I think it’s hardly the root of the matter.  If things had gone the other way, and the Post Office was in trouble, people would complain that they had defaulted on their retirement obligations just like the….  well, any of the companies that have gone bankrupt in the past 8 years did.

      The problem is that no one really wants what the Post Office is selling any more.  90% of what the Post Office delivers is unmitigated crap that you can’t get away from.  Even bills are delivered electronically.  They can’t survive on Mother’s Day cards, Ebay, and Netflix any more.

      • Boundegar

        And to hell with people in rural areas, and people who can’t afford internet access.

        • scolbath

          They could easily supply postal service to people in rural areas if they had a business model that didn’t involve carpetbombing the rest of the country with “Weekly Shopper” adverts.

          • AnthonyC

            I believe you are mistaken about what pays for what.

          • scolbath

            You are presumably alluding to the fact that junk mail subsidizes ‘the rest’.  But I believe the financial difficulties of the post office indicate that isn’t a winning strategy at this time.  It’s physical spam.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            You are presumably alluding to the fact that junk mail subsidizes ‘the rest’.

            Is that true? I had the impression that the USPS subsidizes junk mail by offering absurdly low rates for it.

      • C W

        Except again that this is the GOP plan to privatize and destroy the USPS. They would have been fine if not for the pension chicanery.

    • Brainspore

      People like to complain about costs but our postage delivery rates are actually pretty low compared to comparable countries. For example, sending a letter within Australia (a country of approximately the same size as the contiguous U.S.) costs about 20 cents more than it does here.

  • Ken Breadner

    Much ado over absolutely nothing. Canada has not had Saturday mail delivery for decades. Nobody misses it.

    • franko

      like with the penny, and health care, once again Canuckistan is ahead of the U.S.

      • awjt

         It’s even cold there first.

    • darren_gough

       It’s the same in many countries around the world.

    • http://twitter.com/zeroanaphora แอ็ะปปี้

      This is only the first step. They’re not stopping until it’s privatized, they’re raking in the cash, and everyone is screwed. Rural delivery?!?!? Haha! Not profitable.

  • OldBrownSquirrel

    The GOP wants to cut the number of postal workers, since government employees other than police and military tend not to vote Republican.  Forcing the USPS to cut back its delivery schedule is part of their agenda, and I don’t think they’re nearly done yet.

    • jimdigritz

      FFS leave the partisan crap at the door.

      The truth is that the USPS is (just like the UK’s Royal Mail) is simply not fit for purpose. 

      If you are happy to be stiffed for a massive taxpayer bailout of teamster strongarmed pensions which CAN NEVER be funded through normal business operations then go ahead.

      • fuzzbo

        I think you should leave the partisan crap at the door and maybe take a look at why the USPS has to pre-fund those pensions. Whose bright idea was that? Who stands to benefit from a privatized postal system?

        • http://twitter.com/zeroanaphora แอ็ะปปี้

          Yeah, it’s hard to fund pensions 75 years in advance. That’s why NOBODY DOES THAT. Except the USPS. Because of a 2006 law. Designed to bankrupt them and open the door to privatization.

      • CrackWilding

        Yeah! Screw those people and their pensions! Why can’t they live on cat food like the rest of us?!

        • C W

          You really have no clue what you’re talking about.

  • http://newnumber6.livejournal.com Peter

    I live in Canada, I think I was well into my teens before I first learned that the US actually DID Saturday delivery.

    I just thought “you only get mail on Mon-Fri” was a standard thing (aside from special, more costlier delivery systems).

    • chgoliz

      When I lived in London in the mid-1980′s, there were two postal deliveries a day, and if you reacted quickly enough to the first post and got your response to the post box at the end of the street within an hour or two, your response would be delivered in the second post that day (anywhere in London).

      • Antinous / Moderator

        There’s a mention of next-day delivery to a distant part of the country in one of (I think) Jane Austen’s novels.

        • chgoliz

          And that was before trains even, when nothing went faster than a horse.

          When the Brits get something right, they really get it right.

  • http://twitter.com/zeroanaphora แอ็ะปปี้

    This is such a charade. Please, nobody fall for it. The USPS is not broke; this is just a scam to privatize their union. No reason for this, absolutely none. A 2006 law forcing it to fully set aside 75 years of pensions (ie FOR PEOPLE NOT BORN YET) within ten years is almost entirely the cause of its financial woes. Yes changing times mean it should find new ways to raise revenue, but Congress isn’t allowing any options besides “privatize it”.

    It’s a scam. Raise bloody hell over this.
    http://nalc.org/news/latest/2013_02_06-donahoe.html

  • relawson

    I wonder if this trick will work for saturday delivery http://consumerist.com/2011/10/18/the-styrofoam-cube-in-this-letter-serves-a-bureaucratic-purpose/

  • Mike Hathaway

    They should keep saturday and dump monday and tuesday. or maybe tuesday and thursday.  The government screwing with the post office is what is killing it.  They are also banned from trying to get in on any other type businesses.  Postal workers visit every house in the country on a regular basis there are so many other paid services they could offer.  Imagine paying for a postal worker to knock on the door and check on a elderly relative once a week.  Reading utility meters that are not reporting in properly.  What really kind of bugs me is the whole 3 or 4 fossil fuel powered vehicles rolling through my neighborhood every day.  Post office, UPS, Fed Ex, and some other generic express service.

  • http://twitter.com/Skyhawk1 skyhawk1

    GOP douchery to destroy what is still a better deal than UPS or Fed-Ex. It is not tax payer funded. People need to get smarter.