US P.s.

Yes, quite. I did have a half thought that I had stuck my foot in my mouth a bit too far with that statement as indeed I have.

I apologize to all concerned.

I don't think anyone claims constitutional postal service. But a reasonable, fair and equal delivery system for all conceived back in the 19th century was certainly very idealistic and forward thinking at the time, and is what helped build the country (and world) for many decades.
There are so many crossroads here.

How does the system stay sustaining (NOT profitable) and carry on during such a force of technological change is the challenge. Of course, there will be changes (citizens don't expect mail delivery 5 times a day as they may have once had it back in 1800s big cities, but it doesn't entirely have to be scrapped.

Obama just released his plan for how to save the post office. And it's good. It involves refunding the USPS money they paid for employee benefits they haven't hired yet, and to start paying quarterly for only the employees they currently have on hand. See the article in Linns about it.

huh wha?

What a shell game! It's time the politicians bite the bullet and do what needs to be done. In 1971, the USPS was born out of the USPOD, a cabinet level government agency. The whole idea was that the USPS could fundd itself, if it had the chance to get away from all the cronyism which was rampant within that department. It was believed that taking out all the government appointees and replacing them with top notch people who were specifically hired to do a job would allow the department to function quite well as a quasi-government agency. For a number of years, it looked as though the USPS was a shining example of what could be done right with such an organization. Slowly, though, the labor unions kept jacking the cost of labor higher and higher (sound familiary Detroit?). Now, we have an organization which is cash strapped - partially because of some pretty strange funding requirements from Congress - and who's hands are tied by red-tape created at the bargaining table with the postal worker unions.

When I say it's time to bite the bullet, I mean the government needs to stop all the dickering and posturing. The only real solution is to reabsorb the USPS and revert it back to a full government agency which is FUNDED by the government. Then there's no worries about whether mail will be delivered or not. There's no need to cut Saturday deliveries. If there's one government agency I believe most people would support, it is the Post Office - as a Department, not an outside agency which must fund itself. We don't have any other agencies doing so. Why should we do this with the mail system?

When Fax machines & cell phones were new, we used to have to look for a public fax and pay $1.00 a page...I Never understood why the USPS never got on that gravy train. Imagine a fax machine in every PO?

The reasoning was explained to me that they would be competing with themselves, which would only make sense to a government bureaucrat with no sense of the future.