'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
As the agency teeters on the brink of insolvency, leaders of the U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday once again took their pleas for help to Capitol Hill.
The head of the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service says the agency must be allowed to ease the terms of prepayments into a retiree health care fund and eliminate general mail delivery on Saturday.
The head of the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service says the agency must be allowed to ease the terms of prepayments into a retiree health care fund and eliminate general mail delivery on Saturday.
Bending to strong public opposition, the nearly bankrupt U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday backed off a plan to close thousands of rural post offices after May 15 and proposed keeping them open with shorter hours.
More than a quarter-million U.S. Postal Service workers are eligible for retirement, and a restructuring plan proposed Thursday relies heavily on getting many of them to quit.
The U.S. Postal Service lost more than $3 billion during the last three months of 2011 as continued declines in volume of first-class mail wiped out good news about the shipping and packaging business.
The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service announced plans Thursday to target more than 250 mail-processing facilities for potential closure, including eight in Virginia and Maryland, while allowing itself more time to deliver first-class mail in an effort to save billions of dollars and return to profitability.
CAMPAIGN
The Postal Service overstated its potential savings from eliminating Saturday delivery, a proposal that would slow delivery of about 1 in 4 letters, the independent Postal Regulatory Commission said Thursday.
The Republican-controlled House opened the envelope of postal finances on Wednesday and what it pulled out wasn't pretty.
Rummaging around for 1- and 2-cent postage stamps when postal rates go up is heading the way of the Pony Express. Beginning in January, all new stamps good for 1 ounce of first-class mail will be marked as "forever."
On the day before he was set to take over as the nation's 73rd U.S. postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe sought to explain to a Senate panel how he plans to reverse a string of multibillion-dollar annual losses and lift the Postal Service out of the worst financial crisis in its history.
Outgoing U.S. Postmaster General John E. Potter earned nearly $800,000 last year - an increase of more than $60,000 over the previous year - as the U.S. Postal Service faces the worst financial crisis in its history.
The Obama administration is set to announce approval of a 1,000-megawatt solar project on federal land in Southern California, the largest in a series of solar projects given the go-ahead in recent weeks.
"We are losing $25 million a day and we are on an unsustainable path. Our financial problems are due to the fact that we have restrictive laws that prevent us from fully responding" to its indebtedness, he said.
"This imbalance [between revenues and expenses] will only get worse over the coming decade unless laws that govern the Postal Service are changed," Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
