Postal Service Delays Closures until Mid-May

MSNBC ^ | 12-14-11 | Msnbc.com staff and wire

[tcrlaf]

About 100,000 postal service employees can breathe a shallow sigh of relief. The U.S. Postal Service has agreed to delay shutting 252 mail processing centers and 3,700 local post offices until mid-May, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

SNIP - - - - - -

Last Thursday, a group of 18 Senate Democrats signed a letter to congressional leaders asking them to add language to legislation that would halt closings for six months.

[tcrlaf]

You'll note Democrats are desperately trying to push 100,000 Postal Service layoffs back until AFTER the 2012 elections.

Who cares how much it costs, it would devestate Obama, and we CAN'T EMBARRASS OBAMA! Gotta get that unemployment under 8% by Sept.Oct, or Obama is TOAST!

[null and void]

Ummm, wouldn’t this be 6 months before the election?

[ozzymandus]

Well, the PO is unionized. If I mail a letter to my next door neighbor, it has to make a 280 mile round trip to be sorted. How’s that for some green efficiency? My Dad was a mail carrier 40 years ago, and they were bound by ridiculous red tape even then.

[ozzymandus]

Sorry, that’s a 480 mile trip.

[muawiyah]

There's always something. That's why USPS has to pay to operate 28,000 otherwise USELESS small rural post offices.

You could save several billion dollars by bringing in rural carrier service and shutting the little ones down.

Democrats have always been against closing any post office ~ even those that've burned to the ground.

BTW, the biggest cost in those little post offices is MANAGEMENT, not UNION. The Postmaster is the only full time employee in most of them.

[muawiyah]

It's cheaper to transport your letter to the automated machinery than to bring that machinery to your neighborhood.

Live with it.

Your shoes are probably made in China; your underwear in Central America; your car in Alabama.

Sorting your mail is costly. Transporting it is cheap.

[Mackie_Messer]

OR....put upwards of several thousand frightened confused and angry ex workers on the street to help the occupy goofs re-elect obama.

[muglywump]

If the USPS is in such dire financial straits that it saw the need to close these offices now, from where will it get the funds to defer these closings for another six months?

[tcrlaf]

6 months before is the planned time, NOW.
Dems want it pushed off until AFTER the election.

[null and void]

Point conceded.

[mc5cents]

I live in Buffalo and the PO has declared that they will close the William Street mail sorting facility here and send all mail to Rochester to be sorted. So if I mail something to my Doctor 2 miles away it would have to travel 142 miles to get there. This is not smart folks, this is bureaucracy in it’s purest form.

[Mr.Unique]

If you send a FedEx package to someone in Rochester, it goes to Memphis first. Are you going to tell FedEx that their system doesn’t work?

[mc5cents]

Are you going to tell FedEx that their system doesn’t work?

Nope. I see your point and it's well taken. I just rail against the over supervised, bureaucratic type of organization that the postal service has become, that's all.