USPS To End Saturday Services

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/postal-service-plans-to-end-saturday-delivery.html?_r=0

I don't think this has been posting, since most of you have been too busy wanking off about guns the last two months to post anything else. But in the spirit of constitutional revision that those subjects have brought up, I'd say if there's anything we could tweaking in there without pissing on anyone's rights, the postal service could be it.
[/quote]
More at the link.

With all the non-stop gun discussion, this story almost got lost in the mix, but if anything, the situation with the USPS is another good reason why I consider the Constitution to be a living document. Is there anything in the part about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" that entitles the US to pony up for our mail services? How much profitability can the postal service have went the bulk of correspondence takes place over the Internet and the majority of revenue comes through bulk ads that most people throw away anyway? And if cutting Saturday service reduces the deficit by 2 billion bucks, what about the other 13.6 billion?

Discuss.

Sounds great.

Allowing citizens to opt out of receiving daily mail would save billions more. Shutting down the US Postal service entirely would save $15.9 billion.

More than that it would save us the hassle of sorting through the mail everyday, you know the daily deluge of advertising spam, the offers for credit including personal info, realtor notepads . . .

Oh and before throwing it away, the recyclables need to be separated from the trash.

Worse still, [-]most everybody[/-] somebody has to pay for the unwanted waste to be picked up, processed, recycled or buried in a land fill.


So yeah, let's be done with the USPS in its current form.

The main reason that the USPS is losing money is that due to the internet there is just a lot less mail being sent (both bills which people handle online but also critically junk mail). So the USPS has about the same delivery structure as it had in 1990 but volume of mail is significantly down yet it is limited in what it can cut because Congress requires it to service every where including keeping rural post office which lose money open.

Next, we have what can only be called underhanded treachery out of the Republicans. You'll notice that in the last four years the USPS has actually had a $700 million operating profit but if its operations run a profit then why does the news report billions in over all loses? Simple, unlike any company in America and unlike any other government agency back in 2007 Republicans wrote a poison pill into the law with the design of deunionizing the USPS. They required that it pre-pay the next 50 years of pension benefits all in just 10 years which no other organization in the country has to do and that has cost tens of billions of dollars. Thus these massive pension costs (where as pension costs IN REALITY are the lowest of any government department in the US) which all have to be paid for by 2017.

There is not a single private company in the entire country which has had to pre-fund half a century's worth of pensions in just 10 years nor does any other government department. That bill was DESIGNED to bankrupt the USPS. Repeal this stupid, arbitrary, and capricious law and we'll see the USPS go back to the same profits they've had since 1972.

Just go to a Monday, Wednesday and Friday delivery system and only use part time workers (less that 30 hrs a week) and all will be fine financially sound. AND, it may cut down on workers going "postal". Where do those government employees GET those 'assault' weapons anyway?

From GunForge!

This means Saturday mail(ing) services will be picked up by FedEx & UPS then.

And really, if they'd actually not send anything Saturday, they'd probably actually save some money, but all they're doing is not sending letters but still sending packages. So they still have to have people on, and even though it won't take them as long to sort packages by themselves, they'll still have to be paid for a full shift because of their union contract, so they aren't saving any money, and they're making Tuesdays that much more shitty for people who throw mail. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if the union is the reason why they can't cut service on Saturday altogether.

Actually UPS doesn't send anything over weekends.

With the rise of email, USPS was pretty much doomed. It should be retooled as a shipping company to compete with services like UPS, DHL and FedEx. No more standard mail delivery, just small packages and documents that can't be delivered via email, such as legal documents.

I still use USPS extensively for work, but almost never for personal reasons. I suspect this is true of many people, and for a service that's more and more business-oriented (how many pieces of mail don't have a business on at least one end of the transaction?), the need for delivery outside the standard Monday-through-Friday work week seems minimal.

Yep. I can't remember the last time I had to mail an actual letter. Email is instant, less resource intensive, and much more flexible. I like sending and receiving letters, but mostly all I see are bills and junk mail.

Still, that occasional letter is nice. I remember writing the Dalai Lama. I could have sent an email, but the idea of my letter reaching the mountains of Tibet, and maybe receiving a letter in kind (which I did!) was too tempting to pass up. There's this sense, a connection with the other person when one sends or receives a letter like that.

Outside of boot camp, I hadn't written or received a physical letter since probably 1997 or so. Don't miss 'em, really.

Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution directs that the federal government (specifically, the Congress) establish post offices and postal roads. It is very clearly a federal responsibility.

Stopping letter deliveries on Saturdays sounds reasonable. Continuing package deliveries on Saturdays sounds reasonable considering it's their biggest money maker. The only reason I ever receive/send envelopes in the mail anymore is to have keep a record of my bills, which I can honestly do just as easily by switching to online billing. I still utilize their package delivery though. I've had one too many dummies working for FedEx or UPS dropping my package off at the wrong address. Not even on the same damn street.

Ideally, though, Congress needs to step up and fix what they fucked up in the first place. Unlikely to happen, unfortunately.

Actually, it does not. It says that Congress "shall have Power" to do it, but it does not actually say they must be established.

And even the principle of interpreting the 1st Article, Section 8 as meaning that only Congress can do those things, in the case of the Post Office, it was decided long ago that that does not apply to everything the Post Office does, which allowed the establishment of businesses like UPS.

So not only does it not say Congress has to do it, even the exclusionary principle that is pretty much the whole idea Article 1, section 8 has been weakened in a very interesting way.

The real answer to Anna's question, then, is that, yes, there clearly is something in the Constitution that entitles the federal government to do it, but from there to directing them to do it could be open to serious discussion.

Given the way the language is written, especially in the context of the late 18th century, that line pretty much says the federal government will establish a post office. It also means the individual states can't establish their own.

Interesting aside . . . postal service was not at all certain or secure at the time. Letters were often intercepted and quite a few people wrote in simple codes under the assumption that someone other than the intended recipient was going to be reading their letters. The founders recognized the necessity of a reliable centralized postal service, and that's why article 1 section 8 is in the Constitution.

Probably because we've all grown up in an era when there were multiple ways of getting your information, its difficult for us to understand just how important mail delivery was when the country was founded.

Back then, the only means of communication were the newspaper (often published weekly or monthly), the mail, and word of mouth. Anyone from out of town walking into a tavern would immediately be beset by everyone else in the tavern for news. It got so bad in the days before the Revolution that Ben Franklin was said to walk into taverns and immediately announce that he had no news before the occupants had a chance to ask him a question.

If you read accounts from the Civil War (before mail was delivered to rural residences), one of the things you'll quickly notice is that if a parent got a letter from their son off fighting in the war, but wasn't at the post office to pick it up when it came in, someone at the post office would race to that person's house, bring them to the post office, then the entire town would gather round that person as they read the letter aloud.

I have the feeling that if the Founding Fathers were around today, they'd be appalled that we don't have gigabit fiber running to every home, business, and school in the country, with no data caps, and none of this bandwidth shaping bullshit we have to deal with today. I suspect they'd also take issue with the way the cellphone companies operate their business.

UPS Ground will not deliver on Saturday. Saturday delivery is one of the premium services. Also, USPS will not be stopping Saturday delivery for their premium services.

You're so into making partisan arguments that you see them even where they don't exist. Still, this is a classic example of you addressing someone who does know what the fuck they're talking about when you don't yourself. I throw mail in the evenings, mail which flies in from out of state into my state on a FedEx cargo plane. You obviously have no idea just how many first class letters and large envelopes get sent every day, because their weight is often 1/3 of the total weight of what gets sent, and is often more during holidays. Tuesdays are generally the heavy days anyway, as there's a one day delay on the mail we get (the stuff we handle on Sunday was actually mailed Saturday), so holding letters and nothing else will just mean we get more of them Tuesday, but that we'll still be sorting packages on Sunday, and our company isn't going to save any money and on down the line to the USPS.

I've never seen them move anything on Saturday. UPS contracts out to an air carrier called Encore and flies stuff out about 30 minutes after we start our sort on week nights, but never on week ends. And my roommate worked for them for a while and he also indicated that nothing happened at the UPS sort facility in town on weekends.

. And I have had dummies in USPS deliver important mail to someone other than me both on my street and on another street. (damn stupid cluster boxes...)

More info on how Republicans sabotaged the USPS being forcing them to pre-pay half a century of pension obligations which no other company or government agency has ever had to do.

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/In-The-States/How-Republicans-Crippled-the-United-States-Postal-Service
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/...ostal-Service-and-too-many-Democrats-go-along
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/19/546851/postal-service-default-congres/

USPS? Get rid of it.

I've paid all my bills electronically for years and there's little need to "write" to my friends and relatives when I can interact with them in real time over the Internet. Mail's just a huge hassle to deal with and the paper used in sending mail has got to have a significant environmental impact.

Need to send something physically? Call FedEx or UPS. Need to send a Christmas card or a thank you note? Use e-mail.

IT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION HATER!

IIRC, it is in the constitution.

but not in the constitution that the postal service has to be a government operation.

Absolutely. "Congress shall be empowered to" does not mean "Congress must." It just means that they have the power to put in place whatever is useful in terms of such a system. And "whatever is useful" in today's world is: not much of anything, really.

If it was stated as a right, as in "Congress shall not reduce the people's right to postal service," it would take an amendment to change it. But it isn't. It's much weaker than that, and there is nothing that requires Congress to implement a postal system.

So end it.

And I say that despite coming from a family that has been in the postal service for generations.

That sucks man.

I've been sending stuff left and right using USPS flat rate priority and never have a problem. I never have to worry about whether or not it makes it.

UPS and FedEx fuck me over constantly on delivery dates.

Oh well....

The exact text is...

There's nothing like

In any reasonable, plain-text reading of the Constitution, Congress has the power to create a postal service; it is not mandated to do so.

And by any interpretation that made it mandatory, we would also be constitutionally obligated to be constantly at war and in debt, according to paragraphs 11 and 2 respectively.