Postal Service plans to keep rural post offices, cut hours

Los Angeles Times ^ | May 9, 2012, 6:43 p.m. | Ian Duncan, Washington Bureau

[Olog-hai]

The U.S. Postal Service backed off from a proposal to close thousands of rural post offices, opting instead to cut opening hours in a bid to stem devastating financial losses.

The postal service estimates that the new plan will save $500 million a year once it is fully implemented in 2014. The previous proposal would have closed more than 3,000 rural post offices to save $200 million a year.

Under the plan outlined Wednesday, 13,167 post offices will open for two to six hours a day. A spokeswoman for the postal service said that no community would be required to close its post office, although they could chose to do so and opt instead for home delivery.

"We've listened to our customers in rural America and we've heard them loud and clear. They want to keep their post office open," Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a statement. "We believe today's announcement will serve our customers' needs and allow us to achieve real savings to help the Postal Service return to long-term financial stability."

The plan for shorter hours has to be reviewed by the Postal Regulatory Commission. Communities will be invited to respond before opening hours are changed.

The postal service loses $25 million a day and in February published a comprehensive plan to restore itself to profitability, which included measures to eliminate Saturday delivery.

The Senate last month passed legislation that would curb those plans, delaying a decision on Saturday delivery for at least two years and making it harder to close post offices, particularly in rural areas.

The Senate plan would refund $11 billion the postal service overpaid into a federal retirement benefits account, and let the service use the money to encourage as many as 100,000 workers to take buyouts. …

[Viking2002]

'It’d be easier to start with a blank canvass than try to “fix” the problems with government, post office, schools etc etc'

I entirely agree with that assessment. Start with bare earth. Now let's at least find a healthy plurality who would sacrifice what's needed to implement it. This almost-defunct society is woefully short of field generals who could rally the troops to that end.

"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

--H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

[GeronL]

The enemy has too many ways to distract and divide for anyone to rally a good strong plurality it seems.

[wideminded]

Agree with everything you said.

I kind of like the Post Office. It doesn't seem like an extravagant spender to me. As I understand it the Post Office is not subsidized by taxpayers. And the price of a stamp has exactly followed inflation for many decades.

[Viking2002]

The enemy is made up of multiple factions of single-issue malcontents, all herded towards a common goal - a hive mentality devoid of individual will. It's that angle which must be exploited, but never is. There's a fundamental difference that puts us at a disadvantage, as painful as it is to admit: in their little Utopia, they don't have any guiding moral or ethical compass governing their decisions. It's expected of each sub-group of the hive to systematically attack the church, heterosexuality, capitalism, white European historical culture, etc. with the anticipated result of marginalizing it through propaganda as the primary oppressive force behind preventing Homo Sapiens from 'evolving'. We, on the other hand, moan and bitch and snipe at each other over which candidate is more of the walk-on-water, Reagan-esque savior we all want to 'deliver' us, and who simply doesn't exist (sorry, Peanut Gallery, Reagan is dead and he ain't coming back - GET A DAMNED GRIP ALREADY!); we debate about how to try to be more 'inclusive' to those who don't want a damned thing to do with us, and realistically shouldn't be allowed in our homes; we cow ourselves more and more frequently - publically and privately - while taking some measure of moral and spiritual solace behind standing up for our Christian ethics, and the conceit that 'being better people' than them is going to win the day. It all must be tossed to the wind, and we'll need to - imperatively must do - use the same gutter tactics, but on a level that they can't fathom, nor will be prepared for. They lit the fuse; if the keg ignites, we have to be prepared to retaliate in ways that send them screaming en masse back to the sewers. Then we have to have to fortitude to flush out the sewers. Let them cry racism, fascism, sexism, or whatever izzzzm they've taken linguistic hostage, and let it fall on our deaf ears. What we're looking at in 2012 is the culmination of smug 'high road' apathy on our parts. From the Obama regime to the Black Panthers to the TSA to the ACLU to Obamacare to every other point on the chart, we've allowed it to happen by being the 'nice guy'. If conservatives are the so-called 40% plurality in America, then we have a duty to put the so-called 20% of hard-core liberals in a position of perpetually crapping their pants when they joust with us. Liberalism, in any form - Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Humanism, Atheism - is by it's own definition incompatible with a constitutional republican form of government, and God-fearing men like Washington and Hamilton didn't fret over how the Almighty might view them if they put a stout club over the skull of anybody who threatened their concept of independence.

"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

--H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

[snowsislander]

Why not just raise the postal rates to what other first world nations charge?

In both much smaller Britain and Japan, it costs almost $1 to send a first class letter. I would rather pay more for better service here rather than this endless race to the bottom. Indeed, I already pay far more than $1 to have mail that I care about sent and received.

[BfloGuy]

It is absolutely necessary to cut those offices and facilities and go to a reduced delivery schedule to make the USPS competitive

Not really. What's necessary is for Congress to reverse its decision of several years ago requiring the Post Office to prefund its pension account. If the USPS could fund its pensions like every other company in the US, it would save some $6 billion a year.

The rest could then be achieved by cutting office hours (say, from 8 to 6 hours a day) and through buy-outs of expensive employees replacing them with new, cheaper personnel.

[bobzeetwin]

I just don't understand why so many Freepers have a problem understanding the difference between "lose" and "loose" and yheir derivatives.

My guess is that BOOBOO understands the difference. He may not have the same "formal" education you have, but he has the substance, just not the form you have. (btw, I didn't correct your typo)

[monocle]

Let me guess, the hours will be when most taxpayers are working and only welfare queens can use the postoffices.

[OldPossum]

Look again. BOOBOO’s language does not suggest a lack of education. My point—and I do have one—is that many Freepers, with varying amounts of “erudition,” make this same error and it just puzzles me why they do.

And bless thee for not correcting my typo. Actually, I had seen it just a second after posting and was too lazy to make a correction.

And one more thing. One does not need a lot of formal education to learn how to spell. You should pick it up in grammar school and high school.

[PapaBear3625]

This is a good decision. It would be a bad move to close rural post offices. We shouldn’t be making it harder for Americans to live in small towns and out in the country.

I would close the PO building, and make an arrangement to have part-time hours at the customer-service desk at the local supermarket. An intelligent post office would just hire one or two people who are already retired to work part time without benefits in the afternoons to accept packages and registered mail, and hold them in a secured area for the PO truck to pick up.

[blueunicorn6]

Come on people! Read the story. The Senate wants to “refund” 11 billion dollars to the postal service. This is a Democrat dream....more money, less work.

[cripplecreek]

They have their hands tied. The USPS needs a retirement ‘cushion’ that is, to my knowledge, more stringent than any other on the planet.

Wow, a FReeper who actually knows what they're talking about. That's gotta be a first.

Seems to me that few FReepers realize how much an an essential part of the community these rural post offices are. Closing them is one more blow to rural America. Maybe Obama's "rural Council" will come up with an effective method of distributing the mail that prevents us from talking among ourselves and replace it with some Obama approved gossip.

Seems kind of odd to me that so many FReepers are willing to blame the rural offices that might have 1 or 2 (conservative leaning) employees while ignoring the wildly overstaffed urban offices full of your typical urban union liberals.

Back in 08 I was at a friend's house in town when his Obama button wearing mail carrier pulled up in the Jeep. The second mail carrier sat in the Jeep while the first mail carrier walked around the block. He got back to the Jeep drove another hundred yards to the next block where the other carrier got out and walked around his block.

Personally I would ditch the big sorting centers and hand that duty off to UPS and FedEx which already have their own terminals and let them deliver to the local post offices.

Lets not forget that the postal service hires vets first, every time.

[GeronL]

BUMP!

That is some post to digest.

[bobzeetwin]

Look again. BOOBOO’s language does not suggest a lack of education. My point—and I do have one—is that many Freepers, with varying amounts of “erudition,” make this same error and it just puzzles me why they do.

I have returned from my days labor. No need for you and I to debate or discuss why some Freepers don't use the King's English in a manner suitable to you. I am not capable of battling with a polemicist who uses the word erudition instead of savvy. I was just trying to make the point that you understood what he was saying, even though you did not embrace his manner of saying it.

[OldPossum]

“Erudition” in that context is the correct word. “Savvy” would not be the word of choice. You can look it up.

And a good day to you, sir.

[bobzeetwin]

I looked it up as you requested. I used thesaurus.com

Main Entry: erudition  [er-yoo-dish-uhn, er-oo-] Show IPA Part of Speech: noun Definition: higher education Synonyms: bookishness, brains, cultivation, culture, enlightenment, intellectuality, knowledge, learnedness, learning, letters, literacy, lore, pedantry, refinement, savvy, scholarliness, scholarship, science, studiousness Antonyms: ignorance

[OldPossum]

I don’t know why I have to keep going over this same subject. “Erudition” (in the sense of “knowledge” and “higher education”) is precisely the word that should be used in my post. Look again at the list of definitions in your last post.

Here’s the post one more time:

“My point—and I do have one—is that many Freepers, with varying amounts of “erudition,” make this same error and it just puzzles me why they do.”

“Savvy” does not convey the meaning I had in mind.

Of course, I can understand BOOBOO’s post despite the misspelling. It’s just that I keep wondering why so many Freepers mistake “lose” and “loose.” These words, and a large number of other words that are spelled wrong, reflect badly on FR. They give the appearance of ignorance.

And why are you taking up his or her case? Why can’t he or she defend his or her case?

[Gasshog]

The small post offices in our rural area have just started migrating to this new shorter-hours system. I can tell you know this isn’t going to end pretty. At least not around here and I expect the nearest office to me will close before the years end.

First thing the managers did was push out all the permanent employees (postmasters) except carriers. Now, the offices are manned by contract employees, some who were previously Sat. only clerks. No insurance, no benefits, no incentive to stay either.

Believe me the unspoken objective is to CLOSE many of these rural offices. Putting inexperienced clerks in charge of these offices is not going to work. One person I know is already about to quit - they got the job b/c they only wanted a few hours of work a week. The former PM told me if they leave the managers will close the offices...Get the picture?

The carriers from three offices will be working out of a fourth which is no bigger than the other three tiny bldgs.

I just want to know when the all the fat-cat managers who thought up this brilliant idea, get the sack. Foolish move with no “Plan B” if these clerks decide to walk out.