Mailbox master key theft enables massive ballot theft

Mailbox master key theft enables massive ballot theft: The United States Postal Service and mail thieves are both getting better at their trade.  The USPS now saves time by delivering mail to one master mailbox serving an entire neighborhood, apartment building, or other centralized location.  The problem is that this supposed increase in mail efficiency also makes it easier to steal dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of mail-in ballots.

New definition of 'Forever'

Columnist: Privatize the postal service

George F. Will on why the U.S. Postal Service is doomed:

Labor costs are 80 percent of the USPS' costs (53 percent of UPS', 32 percent of FedEx's), in part because it has negotiated very friendly union contracts. The postal service did that because it is free from the tiresome need to make a profit and its competition is limited by law, which forbids anyone else to deliver a letter that is not "urgent."

Mail volume has declined 20 percent in five years and the decline probably will accelerate, in spite of the odd USPS ads seeking customers by saying letters "don't get lost in thin air," and "a refrigerator has never been hacked. An online virus has never attacked a corkboard." Surely privatization beats depending on the USPS for delivering the intellectual light that irradiates the republic.

Read the full column at the link below:

Privatize the postal service - pottsmerc.com

Postal Service Proposes Price Changes

The U.S. Postal Service wants to increase the price of a first-class stamp by 2 cents to 46 cents starting January 2011.

And if you're wondering how the Postal Service will get away with raising prices after conning the American public with its "Forever Stamp" concept, there are plans to come out with new "Forever Stamp" designs that cost more.

From a Postal Service press release:

Faced with plummeting mail volume traced to the recession and increased use of the Internet, the Postal Service is projecting a deficit of nearly $7 billion for the next fiscal year. Despite eliminating 1 million work hours and reducing expenses by more than $1 billion every year since 2001, a budget gap remains.

The proposed price changes, if approved, will raise about $2.3 billion for the first nine months of 2011. Postmaster General John E. Potter said he does not want customers to bear the burden of dramatic price increases. Instead, Potter announced in March that pricing would be one in a series of solutions the Postal Service is pursuing to become financially sound.

"There is no one single solution to the dire financial situation that the Postal Service faces," Potter said. "These proposed rate adjustments are moderate and part of a fair and balanced approach to ensuring mail service for all Americans well into the future."

Other actions outlined in March included changes to delivery frequency, restructuring prepayments of retiree health benefits, creating a more flexible workforce and expanding access to products and services to places more convenient to customers.

Postal Service Proposes Price Changes