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Democrats moved Thursday to give special relief to the financially strapped Postal Service, which would be allowed to defer $4 billion in payments due at the end of this month to cover retirement benefits for its employees. Republicans protested the bailout but made no significant effort to block the provision, which has now been attached to a stop-gap spending bill slated to come before the House and Senate in the next week.

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U.S. Postal Service Offering 30,000 Workers Buyout SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Postal Service said Tuesday that it will offer buyouts to 30,000 workers, or about 4.5% of its workforce, in an effort to cut costs. The one-time offer is expected to save USPS as much as $500 million next year. The agency said the buyouts are part of an effort to cut $6 billion in annual costs.

CHICAGO (AP) - You can find a bright spot in the recession as close as your mailbox: There are far fewer hefty catalogs, bulging coupon packets, unwanted credit card offers and glossy fliers clogging it up. Thanks to the economic downturn and rising shipping costs, junk mail volume was down 16 percent from last fall to this summer, on pace for the steepest annual decline in decades. Businesses that are still sending junk mail are sending less of it—shrinking their catalogs and using thinner paper to save money. It's a sign stores are still struggling, but it also means less...

Nicholas Moore, a postman who had two jobs, was so tired in the mornings that he habitually ran late and hid almost 6,000 letters and parcels rather than deliver them. Moore, 28, spent two years hiding the post in the boot of his car, in his mother's loft and in the basement of the shop where he also worked. Investigators were called in when one of his colleagues at his second job spotted shredded letters, which included bank cards, cheques and theatre tickets. When confronted, Moore admitted he had been hiding post for years. Moore told investigators: "Before I...

They are icons of the American mail service, but they may be about to go the way of the Pony Express. In villages, towns and cities across America, residents are waking up to find the familiar blue mailbox at the end of the road is gone. In the past 20 years, more than half of America's mailboxes have been taken out of service, leaving just 175,000 nationwide. It may make commercial sense, but it has dismayed letter-writing aficionados. "Mailboxes are like phone booths, that part of the scenery that you take for granted until one day you need one and...

Whatever possessed President Obama to mention the travails of the post office while discussing health care the other day, his timing was certainly apt. The Postal Service is headed toward a loss of $7 billion this year and another $7 billion in 2010. Naturally, Congress is planning another bailout rather than the kind of reform that would recognize how technology has transformed modern communications. Most mail today is delivered electronically via email. Traditional postal mail volume has fallen by nearly 20% since 2000, and the average household gets one-third fewer letters than a decade ago. But this is only the...

LIBERAL LIES ABOUT NATIONAL HEALTH CARE: FIRST IN A SERIESAugust 19, 2009(1) National health care will punish the insurance companies. You want to punish insurance companies? Make them compete. As Adam Smith observed, whenever two businessmen meet, "the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." That's why we need a third, fourth and 45th competing insurance company that will undercut them by offering better service at a lower price. Tiny little France and Germany have more competition among health insurers than the U.S. does right now. Amazingly, both of these socialist countries...

President Obama couldn't have been more right: The post office is struggling, and for good reason. While defending his government-funded health insurance option a week ago - a controversial idea that, at this writing, he appears to be willing to ditch - he said private insurers shouldn't worry about competing with the government. He said it is the U.S. Postal Service, not FedEx and UPS, that is struggling. To be sure, our quasi-government postal operation is on track to lose $7 billion this year. Why? In the Internet era, fewer people are mailing things. They're mailing even less during a...

Tossing pink slipper in health-care debate John Kass August 19, 2009 If only President Barack Obama had asked me about his wacky plan to force socialized medicine on unwilling Americans, I could have saved the poor guy weeks of political agony. All he had to do was to ask me about those three little magic words: Fluffy Pink Slippers. His poll numbers are dropping, and he's no longer feeding the multitudes with five hamburger buns and two filets-o-fish. Even liberal comic Jon Stewart -- reportedly the most trusted man in American news -- has commenced with the wisecracks. And Republicans...

The Hill: A public (or "government-run") healthcare option for Americans would function similarly to the way the post office does, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) suggested Tuesday night. Jackson, in an appearance on CNN, said that just as the government-run post office keeps private mail carriers honest in their prices, so would the public option keep insurers honest. "Look at it this way: There's Federal Express, there's UPS, and there's DHL," Jackson told CNN host Larry King. "The public option is a stamp; it's email. And because of the email system, because of the post office, it keeps DHL from...

Last week, Barack Obama tried to reassure people that the government could compete with the free market in health care by using the post office as an example: Now, the only thing that I have said is that having a public option in that menu would provide competition for insurance companies to keep them honest. Now, I recognize, though, you make a legitimate — you raise a legitimate concern. People say, well, how can a private company compete against the government? And my answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public...

Stamp Malfunction The Postal Services created a stamp with a picture of President Obama on it. The Postal Service noticed that the stamp was not sticking to envelopes. This enraged the President, who demanded a full investigation. After a month of testing and $1.73 million in congressional spending, a special Presidential commission presented the following findings: * The stamp is in perfect order * There is nothing wrong with the glue *People are spitting on the wrong sidea

United States Postal Service Photo--Copyright United States Postal Service. (CNSNews.com) - The U.S Postal Service faces a net loss of $7 billion in fiscal year 2009 even if it succeeds in cutting its costs by $6 billion, according to testimony provided to a Senate subcommittee last week by the Government Accountability Office. The Postal Service is expected to end the year with $10.2 billion in outstanding debt. Meanwhile, USPS faces continuing high overhead in the form of employee wages and benefits fixed by collective bargaining agreements, as well as declining use of the service by its customers. “It is safer...

Obama's Hoof-In-Mouth Disease Larry Kudlow Wednesday, August 12, 2009 It’s hard to know why President Obama said what he said at Tuesday’s health-care town hall in New Hampshire. He actually stated, “If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” Oops. Freudian slip? Subliminally speaking, was the president inferring that private health insurers are doing just fine? Government insurance is what’s in trouble today. Medicare is in the hole by about $40 trillion on a discounted present-value basis over the next 40 or 50 years. And if we’re going...

Speaking to a town hall of mostly ObamaCare supporters on August 11, 2009, the President compared the money-losing U.S. Post Office as an example of how a government-run program can compete with private enterprise. Oops!

Let's make one thing perfectly clear: Barack Obama without his teleprompter is like a trapeze artist without a net. That was likely never more apparent than at the President's healthcare town hall meeting Tuesday when he actually said: I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about, if you think about it, um, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. Right? The, uh, no they are. I mean, it's the post office that's always having problems. Yep. The supposedly most intelligent person ever to be in the White...

President Obama at his Tuesday town hall: "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It's the Post Office that's always having problems."

The U.S. Postal Service is having major financial problems, and could shut down as many as 1,000 branches, and possibly cutting back on home delivery. The Post Office is heading toward a $7 Billion loss this fiscal year. Competition from the internet and other delivery companies are being blamed for the problem, along with the recession. . . . . . (Watch Video)

The agency is facing a nearly $7 billion potential loss this fiscal year, despite a 2-cent increase in the price of stamps in May, cuts in staff and removal of collection boxes.

As the use of first-class mail plunges, the U.S. Postal Service has a huge overcapacity, but it needs Congressional approval to cut back. NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The U.S. Postal Service is losing money so quickly you'd think it somehow got mixed up in the subprime mortgage business. It's on track this year for an operating loss of between $6 billion and $12 billion, debt surpassing $10 billion, and a $1 billion cash shortfall. For any business, those are some ugly numbers. And yet the USPS is not quite a typical business, and therein lies the problem... But many experts...

Bedroom communities across the country have been reading and hearing similar headlines in the last few weeks: Leawood post office will close in September -- Kansas City Star USPS moving operations out of Winchester -- WHSV in Winchester, VA Univ. of Oregon could lose post office branch -- KVAL in Eugene, OR Black Eagle residents upset over post office plans -- KXMB in Bismarck, ND USPS will shutter Freehold Borough facility -- Colts Neck News in Freehold, NJ The news of U.S. Postal Service (USPS) closures has been trickling out in local communities. But a closer examination behind the reports...

The Washington Post reports that “in the past year alone, the Postal Service has seen the single largest drop-off in mail volume in its 234-year history…. That downward trend is only accelerating. The Postal Service projects a decline of about 10 billion pieces of mail in each of the next two years, going from a high of 213 billion pieces of mail in 2006 to 170 billion projected for 2010.” No, physical delivery won’t ever die. (Like a good newspaperman, I lie in headlines to get attention.) Indeed, we’ll get more ever deliveries of more stuff that used to be...

Four unions representing the nation's postal workers are pleading for a meeting with the White House to address possible funding shortfalls for workers' payroll and retiree health benefits, according to a letter obtained by CongressDaily. The letter alleges that USPS "may not be able to make payroll in October and will be forced to issue IOUs instead." Yvonne Yoerger, a spokeswoman for USPS, confirmed that the unions wrote the letter but disputed the claim that payroll deadlines will be missed.

Payback is fun!!!!!!!!!!!!! WRITE IT ON THE BACK OF YOUR ENVELOPES or front! WE THINK THIS IS A GREAT IDEA. WE'LL START WRITING IT ON THE FRONT OF OUR ENVELOPES, TOO! ! Including Bills You may have heard in the news that a couple of Post Offices in Texas have been forced to take down small posters that say 'IN GOD WE TRUST ,' The law,they say, is being violated. Anyway, we heard proposed on a radio station show, that we should all write ' IN GOD WE TRUST' on the back of all our mail. After all, that's our...

The U.S. Postal Service has cut its staff by 25,000 this year as it struggles to reduce massive deficits, Postmaster General John Potter said Monday. Postal employment is now below 635,000, Potter said, down from about 800,000 in 1999. Thousands of carrier routes have also been eliminated as mail volume declines, he said. "We have an infrastructure that, quite frankly, we cannot afford based on the income we're receiving," Potter said. The agency still faces a potential $6.5 billion loss this year, Potter said, and even with increased borrowing and other changes it could finish the year with a $1.5...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The post office has so much extra cash, it wants to give it to b. Hussein, so he can spend it on more social programs, Postmaster General John Potter told Congress on Wednesday. "We are swimming in money at historic proportions. We weren’t paying much attention to our receipts, and voila! found an accounting error that, when corrected, added an extra $2.8 billion to our coffers last year. We were thinking it might be useful to the president, or Speaker Pelosi, since we know they had to pull funding for birth control from Porkulus," Potter told a...

WASHINGTON – Postmaster General John Potter says that without help, the U.S. Postal Service will run out of money this year. Potter told a House subcommittee Wednesday the lingering question is: Which bills will get paid and which will not. He said he will make sure that salaries are paid, but also said other bills might have to wait. Potter is seeking permission to reduce mail delivery to five days a week and wants to reduce other costs. He said the post office is "facing losses of historic proportion. Our situation is critical." The post office was $2.8 billion in...

The U.S. Postal Service said Friday it will cut jobs, offer early retirement to tens of thousands of employees and close administrative offices, the latest round of cutbacks in the last year. The Postal Service plans to close six of its 80 district offices this year, and reduce administrative staff positions at the district level by 15 percent, including 1,400 mail processing supervisor and management positions at nearly 400 facilities around the country.

The U.S. Postal Service will be cutting more than 3,000 jobs and offering nearly a quarter of its work force early retirement as part of its efforts to streamline operations amid the worsening economy, the agency said Friday.

I received a nytimescorp. subscription sign-up in my mailbox last week containing advertisements about all the future news that would be available to me if I subscribed to their corporation news. It would contain, I assume Obama coverage (a little pic of him on the advert form).It also contained a return envelope that required no postal payment on my part. So……….. I started cogitating about the unsolicited paperwork I was forced to deal with, yes forced because you HAVE to do something with the paperwork. Trash it /open it /etc. If you did nothing, your mail box would fill up/...

Neither rain, sleet, snow nor strange address could keep Christmas card from its destination Rodney Annis jokes that he’s a bit of a redneck. He lives in Nictaux, a community three kilometres south of Middleton perhaps best known for the nearby falls and proposed wilderness area. It is so small it isn’t listed in the census by Statistics Canada, but even Mr. Annis and his wife, Juanita, were surprised to receive a Christmas card in the mail that was addressed to "Hick in the Woods." Not only that, but the envelope went on to give their address as: 1 tree...

BREA - The man who prompted the U.S. Postal Service to shoo away Salvation Army bell ringers says he just wants the law obeyed. Postal Service regulations prohibit any organization from soliciting on its properties. But Salvation Army bell ringers had been allowed to become a mainstay in front of the Brea post office during the holidays for 25-plus years. On Nov. 24, when Sean Thomas saw the iconic bell ringers at the Birch Street post office – staffed by employees of the Evangelical Christian Credit Union – he decided to speak up. The Salvation Army is a Christian organization....

THE ANNOUNCEMENT in late August that the U.S. Postal Service planned to transfer 162 mail clerks made no sense to veteran postal worker Nick Casselli. With hundreds of overflowing unsorted mail bins blocking passageways at the Southwest Philadelphia processing plant and a yearlong ban on overtime, Caselli said, he knew there weren't enough clerks to process the daily mail. As a new shop steward, Casselli set out to find out why. Using the "eyes and ears" of co-workers, Casselli was first to uncover the Philadelphia post office's dirty little secret. "I was shocked," he said. Senior managers allegedly were ordering...

Competition: For the first time in its history, the U.S. Postal Service is considering layoffs. Imagine that — a unionized work force passing into obsolescence.After 233 years of managing a government-protected monopoly, reality has struck the post office. The Federal Times is reporting that "Postmaster General John Potter told union leaders that as many as 16,000 employees" could be laid off. A Postal Service spokesperson said layoffs are not imminent. But that's only because the union contract makes layoffs difficult. An absence of urgency should not be taken as a sign of health. "We lost $2 billion and, like any...

(Very important information included in the comment for South Florida residents) Republican Party leaders are asking the U.S. Justice Department to monitor post offices as well as polling precincts, upping the ante in their allegations that postal workers might throw away ballots. The request for Justice Department monitors came hours after the National Association of Letter Carriers demanded an apology. The GOP is concerned that absentee ballot envelopes identify the voter’s party affiliation. Here’s a copy of the Republican Party’s press release: Download file

Signs posted in front and beside mailboxes at a post office location where I dropped off mail tonight. If it was at the headquarters of the unions, that'd be one thing. But in this case, would this be considered federal property? Would it be considered election engineering since this is where people will be dropping off vote-by-mail ballots? Should I bother complaining to the post office and registrar of voters? Should I post another vanity? Enquiring minds yada yada...

Post Office Requests Police Escort After Violence Stops Service For Two Weeks HARVEY, Ill. (CBS) ― Dozens of mailboxes remain empty after the post office suspends service in one south suburban neighborhood. Some people get angry when their mail is late. But in Harvey, people have been waiting for days and days. They're not getting any mail at all. CBS 2's Dana Kozlov reports that one mail carrier in Harvey feels threatened. The U.S. Post Office seems to think that this is one of the most dangerous blocks in the country. People who live on it say they haven't gotten...

Government mail carriers would deliver emergency supplies of antibiotics to people in U.S. cities in the case of an anthrax attack, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials said on Wednesday. The system has been tested in three large cities -- Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston -- and a pilot program is set to begin soon in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in Minnesota. HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said there was no evidence any attack was imminent but that it was important for authorities to have a quick distribution system ready. The U.S. Postal Service carriers who would bring the antibiotics...

WASHINGTON -- The Postal Service had a net loss of more than a billion dollars in the third quarter of the fiscal year, the agency said Wednesday.

SUTTON ISLAND, Maine - This offshore island, one of five islands that make up the town of Cranberry Isles, has no year-round residents. It doesn’t even have any roads to speak of, which is one reason it has had a peculiar seasonal mail delivery system to serve the occupants of 25 or so seasonal homes. Residents say that since at least the 1950s, and perhaps longer, mail has been delivered to the island by a private passenger ferry service, leaving packages, postcards, letters, bills, and whatever else had enough postage in a specially marked trash can on the float at...

Dallas murder suspect arrested in Zanesville Law enforcement, firefighters and postal investigators respond to the scene of a shooting at the Dallas Post Office Friday afternoon. The road around the post office was closed for hours. POST OFFICE IS CLOSED Following the fatal shooting Friday, the Dallas Post Office will be closed today and until further notice, postal officials said late Friday. Post office box customers at the Dallas Post Office can pick up their box mail at the Valley Grove Post Office, 3470 National Road. Mail delivery for Dallas customers will be conducted as normal, officials said. DALLAS, W.Va....

HR4774 On March 5th, the US House of Representatives unanimously approved the naming of a Post Office after Cyndi Taylor Krier. Normally, a vote like this would not make news in The Daily Congressional. This, however, is a special case. According to The Washington Post“One of Washington’s minor traditions is to name post offices after heroes, usually recently deceased. A lot of them have been named recently for service members killed in Iraq. But Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) has taken a new approach. He’s pushing to name a post office after a prominent, very-much-alive lobbyist. And that’s not all. His...

Stamps to Cost a Penny More February 11, 2008 By Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press Writer Mailing a Letter Will Cost a Penny More Starting in May WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mailing a letter will soon cost a penny more. The cost of a first-class stamp will rise to 42 cents starting May 12, the U.S. Postal Service said Monday. The price of the Forever stamp will go up at the same time, meaning those stamps can still be purchased for 41 cents but will remain good for first-class postage after the rate increase takes effect. The post office has sold...

This is one of the kindest things I've ever experienced. I have no way to know who sent it, but there is a kind soul working in the dead letter office of the US postal service. Our 14 year old dog, Abbey, died last month. The day after she died, my 4 year old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey. She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her. I told her that I thought we could so she dictated these words:...

Should troop display remain up? Yes, it's a show of support for our troops No, such a display is inappropriate for a federal office

We've received many requests from freepers requesting that other freepers not post to them. There are several problems with this. 1. It's impossible for us to enforce.2. We don't have the time to enforce these requests.3. We don't have the software to keep track of these requests.4. Thick skin helps.5. Ignore the poster, if you don't reply, they won't reply. Free Republic does not need a bozo filter, bozo filters are for wimps. Final note: Trolls, troublemakers, disruptors, forum pests, malcontents, RINOs, liberals, stalkers, et al, would continue posting to (harassing) someone after being asked to stop. Conservative FReepers would...

The U.S. government now pays for and controls half of the health care in America. That is up from less than 10 percent forty years ago. Government spending on health care has increased at a rapid rate as its share of health care has increased. Yet those who complain about the total amount of spending on health care in the United States to justify complete government control never discuss how much of the current spending is attributable to or mandated by government programs. During a recent interview, a talk radio host told me that all private health insurance should be...

Dogs Bite Mail Carriers Most In California (May 17, 2007)--It looks like mail carriers have a better chance of being bitten in California than any place else in America. As Dog Bite Awareness Week kicks off Thursday, the Post Office is releasing information on where the biggest problems are for carriers, and noting safety tips for dog owners. The New York metropolitan area had no record of a mail carrier bitten last year. Santa Ana, Calif. had the most: 96. In fact, of the top-five most likely places where mail carriers are bitten, three are in California. One carrier in...

Get those cards and letters into the mail this weekend while those 39-cent stamps are still enough to get your correspondence out of town. Come Monday, postage for a first-class letter will rise to 41 cents. The last increase also was a 2-cent bump in January 2006. For Mary Bermudez, 67, standing in line at the downtown Post Office Thursday, mailing is her communication method of choice since she isn't computer-savvy. "The first stamp I can remember was a 3-cent stamp," Bermudez said. "It has gone up so many times. It's really ridiculous. Oh, well." Bermudez had come to buy...