This is a no-brainer. Charge bulk mail at a much higher (and fairer) rate; do away with Congressional franking privileges, they make enough money as it is.

We need to support the U.S. Postal service. It is an essential service for a society. As a senior, I can say, they have never lost one of my letters. 

I don’t begrudge any benefits postal workers receive. The compliants about beneifts is just plain backbitting.

I was dismayed when President Obama praised Fed-Ex and sort of dismissed the Postal Service in one of his early speaches.  The U.S. Postal Service has a completely different mandate.

Maybe we can have the military deliver the mail, there is plenty of funding for them.

Even when I was using USPS to deliver local marketing materials for my small business, I never spent that much on postage. Now that I’m back to mailing an occasional letter or paying a few bills via the post office (not many), I’m hardly spending any money on stamps or any of USPS’s other services. I’m amazed that they stay in business….EXCEPT FOR all the heinous advertising shit that’s out there. I swear to god, there’s a special place in hell for those who produce the Chase, BofA, Insurance and other advertising that is mailed to us. It’s all shit…........

There are a few ways in which the P.O. can cut costs. First, advertising on TV and other forms of media. How many millions of dollars are wasted there ? If I need to mail something, I do so. No amount of advertising will change that. As an on line seller I use the USPS for my customer orders and another costly, confusing and wasteful thing the P.O. does is constantly changing postal rates, box sizes, flat rate boxes being re-sized, designs on stamps always changing and it is not cheap to do this, several different postal rates i.e.first class, media mail,flat rate rate, parcel post and other mailing categories. Most other countries do not have all of these different selections for postal rates and do not have the problems we have here. Time to simplify the ridiculous shuffle game the P.O. plays in this country with different rates and designs and then they would not be running out of money.

Sorry, but the current laws mandate that the USPS does not make any profit.  If it does make any profits, it will need to turn it over to the Treasury Department.  BTW, the USPS made half a billion profit in the last quarter of 2010.

Raise the postal rates to a minimum buck a letter and especially raise the rates on junk mailers, how they get better rates than the U.S. citizen is corporistic.

Retirements start at 55 with a minimum of 30 years employment and a penalty up to 65.

Any profits go to pay off the national debt.

If you’re going to post articles, could you find ones that actually have information?  I’ve read elsewhere that Congress (I guess mostly Repubs) passed a law forcing only the Post Office to fund things that other agencies don’t have to fund.  That is resulting in the PO running out of money. 

I bet it’s another Repub plot to privatize every fucking aspect of our lives so they can get even richer.  Wake up, America—the conservatives don’t give a shit about you unless you have money.  Otherwise you’ll be paying $5 to mail a letter.

If it were a full government agency, maybe it wouldn’t have this problem.  All they have to do is to raise some taxes and use your tax dollars to pay for its bills….

However, since the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, I thought, the U.S. Postal Service had stopped being a full federal agency.  It is now a semi-privatized federal agency that is mandated to be revenue-neutral.  Yes, you heard right.  By law, the USPS is not allowed to make a profit even though they have a monopoly in certain areas.  Perhaps if the law changed so that the USPS is allowed to make a profit, there wouldn’t be a problem such as this?

“The difference is that US postal workers get government healthcare, and retirement benefits for licking stamps from 9-5, unlike many other vocations contributing to society that get nothing.”

So…we should just let the postal service die and leave the mail purely in privatized, corporate hands? There’s a lot more to it than just “licking stamps.” This is more of a wake up call to take back our basic services and stop turning them into casino playing chips for Wall Street.

It’s pretty pathetic that the most powerful country in the world can’t even keep the MAIL going.

“US Postal Service asks Congress for Help”

“American Taxpayers ask Congress for single payer healthcare”

The difference is that US postal workers get government healthcare, and retirement benefits for licking stamps from 9-5, unlike many other vocations contributing to society that get nothing.