Humpday Happenings...
Middle of the week again, AND...the middle of a HEAT WAVE over much of the nation.
Well, it IS summer, right?
And our part of the globe DOES tend to WARM during this time of the rolling year, does it not?
But we won't get into the entire global warming SCAM...at least not today.
What we WILL be getting into will be none other than the "neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night shall stop these carriers from their appointed rounds" guys and gals...and the agency of out Government that employs them.

(but for how long?)
That's right...it's the United States Postal Service!
Now, if you've been following the news (and who the hell can;t help but hear something at some point during any day?), you might have heard that the USPS is thinking (always a bad thing for most all government entities to do when considering the citizens of the nation) about RAISING the cost of a first-class stamp to FORTY-SIX CENTS. It currently hovers at 44 cents!
It also wants to raise the cost of a POSTCARD to SEVENTEEN CENTS...!
Here's a brief history of the post office, courtesy of Wikipedia:
(( The United States Post Office (U.S.P.O.) was created in Philadelphia under Benjamin Franklin on July 26, 1775 by decree of the Second Continental Congress. Based on the Postal Clause in Article One of the United States Constitution, empowering Congress "To establish post offices and post roads," it became the Post Office Department (U.S.P.O.D.) in 1792. It was part of the Presidential cabinet and the Postmaster General was the last person in the United States presidential line of succession. In 1971, the department was reorganized as a quasi-independent corporation of the federal government and acquired its present name. The Postmaster General is no longer in the presidential line of succession.
*** The first stamp issues were authorized by an act of Congress and approved on March 3, 1847. The earliest known use of the Franklin 5c is July 7, 1847, while the earliest known use of the Washington 10c is July 2, 1847.
Remaining in postal circulation for only a few years, these issues were declared invalid for Postage on July 1, 1851.Congress finally provided for the issuance of stamps by passing an act on March 3, 1847, and the Postmaster-General immediately let a contract to the New York City engraving firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch,
and Edson. The first stamp issue of the U.S. was offered for sale on July 1, 1847, in NYC, with Boston receiving stamps the following day and other cities thereafter. The 5 cent stamp paid for a letter weighing less than 1 oz and travelling less than 300 miles, the 10 cent stamp for deliveries to locations greater than 300 miles, or, twice the weight deliverable for the 5 cent stamp.
*** On August 12, 1918, the Post Office Department took over air mail service from the U.S. Army Air Service (USAAS). Assistant Postmaster General Otto Praeger appointed Benjamin B. Lipsner to head the civilian-operated Air Mail Service. One of Lipsner's first acts was to hire four pilots, each with at least 1,000 hours flying experience, paying them an average of $4,000 per year. The Post Office Department used mostly World War I military surplus de Havilland DH-4 aircraft. During 1918, the Post Office hired an additional 36 pilots. In its first year of operation, the Post Office completed 1,208 airmail flights with 90 forced landings. Of those, 53 were due to weather and 37 to engine failure. By 1920, the Air Mail service had delivered 49 million letters.
Domestic air mail became obsolete in 1975, and international air mail in 1995, when the USPS began transporting First Class mail by air on a routine basis.
*** The Post Office was one of the first government departments to regulate obscene materials on a national basis.
When the U.S. Congress passed the Comstock laws of 1873, it became illegal to send through the U.S. mail any material considered obscene, indecent or which promoted abortion issues, contraception, or alcohol consumption.
The Postal Reorganization Act signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970, replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with the independent United States Postal Service. The Act took effect on July 1, 1971.
*** The United States Postal Service employs some 656,000 workers, making it the second-largest civilian employer in the United States (excluding the federal government) following only Wal-Mart. In a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Court noted: "Each day, according to the Government’s submissions here, the United States Postal Service delivers some 660 million pieces of mail to as many as 142 million delivery points." The USPS operates 32,741 post offices and locations in the US. In August 2009 the Postal Regulatory Commission(PRC) put forward a preliminary list of about 1000 it is considering closing to save money. Its employees deliver
mail at an average yearly cost of $235 per residence as of 2009.
*** The USPS operates the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world, with an estimated 260,000 vehicles, the majority of which are the easily identified Chevrolet/Grumman LLV (Long-Life Vehicle), and the newer Ford/Utilimaster FFV (Flex-Fuel Vehicle), originally also referred to as the "CRV" (Carrier Route Vehicle)
In an interview on NPR, a USPS official stated that for every penny increase in the national average price of gasoline, the USPS spends an extra $8 million to fuel its fleet. This implies that the fleet requires some 800 million gallons (3.03 billion liters) of fuel per year, and consumes an estimated fuel budget of $2.4 billion, were the national gasoline price to average $3.00. Some Rural Letter Carriers use personal vehicles. Standard postal-owned vehicles do not have license plates. These vehicles are identified by a seven digit number displayed on the front and rear.
*** The USPS is often mistaken for a government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak), but as noted above is legally defined as an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States," (39 U.S.C. § 201) as it is wholly owned by the government and controlled by the Presidential appointees and the Postmaster General. As a quasi-governmental agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail.

Indeed, in 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the USPS was not a government-owned corporation, and therefore could not be sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The U.S. Supreme Court has also upheld the USPS's statutory monopoly on access to letterboxes against a First Amendment freedom of speech challenge; it thus remains illegal in the U.S. for anyone other than the employees and agents of the USPS to deliver mailpieces to letterboxes marked "U.S. Mail."
*** Competition from e-mail and private operations such as United Parcel Service and FedEx has forced USPS to adjust its business strategy and to modernize its products and services. First Class mail volume (which is protected by legal monopoly) has declined 22% from 1998 to 2007, due to the increasing use of e-mail and the World Wide Web for correspondence and business transactions. In 2008, a general economic slowdown also affected mail volumes, especially advertising. Lower volume means lower revenues to support the fixed commitment to deliver to every address once a day, six days a week. In response, the USPS has increased productivity each year from 2000 to 2007, through increased automation, route re-optimization, and facility consolidation. ))
Well, kids...that's the NUTS AND BOLTS of this operation...
And here's the link to the official USPS site:
http://www.usps.com/
Now, I suppose this is where I have to ask a really OBVIOUS question. And I'm sure you probably are pondering the same thing.
IF the USPS is SO damn "efficient", and are keeping up with technology in order to facilitate our getting the mail, then WHY are they SO far down the crapper in DEBT that they have to almost CONSTANTLY raise the prices?
Hey, maybe they're thinking like the Obama administration...SPEND your way outta debt.
Remember, those wacky Dems still believe that REAL WEALTH COMES FROM REAL DEBT.
(W-T-F ???)

Yeah, and I've got some REALLY nice homes to sell you in a beautiful part of my neighborhood for less than $100K
(you'll have to fill your own bullet holes in the siding, however)
MY thought on this cost increase is that maybe it might be time to consider PRIVATIZING this entity. I know that goes against it's establishment in our own Constitution, but with our President tossing BILLIONS around like it's confetti (and with a devaluing dollar, it soon WILL be) after lame-ass agendas, he can't find his way past sending some moolah over to the USPS?
He's already cutting funding for NASA, charging them instead with making friends with Muslims....I don't make this crap up, people.
Just read Leo Morris's blog (Opening Arguments) from yesterday.
This president loves to further HIS ideals, while all but ignoring the law of the land, when it comes to maintaining something as rudimentary as a POSTAL SERVICE. That should be a no-brainer, in my opinion.
Our Federal government is there to SERVE it's people, and PROTECT us from harm, both foreign and domestic.
I don't know, but being fleeced by the USPS sounds like domestic harm to me.
Sure, electronic mail beats the hell outta snail-mail, but there will ALWAYS be things you just NEED to send through the post...like Christmas presents to people elsewhere. I'm not into using UPS or Fed Ex for such things...I like using my own COUNTRY'S mail system.
Well, I used to like collecting stamps, too.
The USPS can surely be able to get the money from the FEDS...somewhere. (maybe they need PELOSI or REID to ramrod something through - they're both good at that)
In the meantime, I'm afraid we're going to continue this vicious cycle of price raises, less bulk mail going through the USPS, cuts to the agency, more layoffs, more raises to stamps and postcards...and so on.
Man, how I miss those days of 2 cent postcards...and 12 cent stamps.
Made keeping in touch a LOT easier, and it made sending away for those cereal box prizes a lot more fun.
(ah, the old self-addressed stamped envelope gig - sending an envelope IN an envelope)
Was a time when at Christmas, the number of cards my folks received were sufficient to cover the entire banister down our stairs...but it WAS cheaper to send cards in those days.
Today, at Christmas, I can count the number of cars we receive on two hands...no one likes to send cards that cost (at least) 44 cents per card.

I also used to recall putting letters in the street-corner mailbox (either on a pole or free-standing) for my parents ages ago. You'd be hard-pressed to find ANY such boxes in wide use today (thanks to vandalism).
I will also contend that part of the reason the USPS falls on "hard times", is because we, as a society have become less "personal" with our correspondence.
Face it...WHEN was the last time you sat yourself down and WROTE a letter and then stuck a stamp on the envelope and MAILED it, hmm?
We have supplanted the art of writing with TYPING (and the typos that go with it), and forsook stamps for a "server".
Sure, it's cool, and in some ways a bit "novel", but it's just NOT as intimate as a letter.
When you read letters from soldiers in our Civil War...how can anything typed and emailed TODAY compare to the emotive nature of such prose?
Short answer - It simply cannot.
Maybe the USPS will go the way of the Passenger Pigeon...maybe it will indeed become privatized, or maybe it will fold like a riverboat gambler who can't bluff...I can't say. I don't think anyone can at this time.
But I think we DO need it, otherwise the Founders of this nation would have never made such provisions to maintain such an agency within out government.
I like to think they knew their collective....."stuff".
I believe the USPS can be "saved"...can be reinvented, and become the government agency it was meant to be, and has been in the past.
But it has to start at the TOP, and not the bottom.
Be well, write a letter to someone today, make a difference and...
Stay safe out there, America.