Midwest Chick's Place

(A.K.A. Non-Original Rants)

–Co-opting good stuff from all over the ‘Net and maybe some original thoughts—ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

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More on the Post Office

The Postmaster General (the guy who during a Congressional hearing actually put his hands over his ears when being questioned) is actually working with DOGE to address the BIG financial issues of the USPS. Like any other person or institution that has been protected from consequences (since it’s a Constitutionally mandated institution), it’s wasteful to the point of billions of dollars a year.

Here’s some places where there are going to be cuts:

  • Going with gas instead of Electric Vehicles. IMO, that was a Biden era boondoggle and good riddance.
  • No more Saturday deliveries. I know I definitely don’t need anything that badly on a Saturday. If I do, I’ll pay extra.
  • Ending mission creep like television shows and check-cashing programs.

Maybe if they get rid of programs that allow them to do warrantless searches on people’s mail (pretty sure Ben Franklin would have an issue with that), they’d save some taxpayer dollars.

Or getting rid of the Covert Operations Program where the USPS decided that they need to monitor people’s social media posts. Again, with no warrant or reason. So they are spying on US citizens and passing ‘suspicious’ things to the FBI or other law enforcement agencies.

I’d say that is circumventing the Constitution, wouldn’t you? Perhaps a couple of programs worth cutting….

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Midwest Chick

14 responses to “More on the Post Office”

  1. Texas Dan Avatar
    Texas Dan

    Only deliver mail 4 days a week. Charge Amazon an actual market rate for deliveries. Double the rates for junk mail and catalogs – the sheer reduction in bulk would likely fix most of the issues. There are 600k employees in the USPS – or one for every 500 Americans – that’s absurd. By comparison the armed forces number 2 million.

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  2. B Avatar
    B

    Get rid of the Set asides and Racial preferences in hiring and simply use productivity as a metric rather than DEI type shit.
    If they aren’t gonna do the job, get rid of them. Could double the efficiency right there.
    That would be a MEANINGFUL change.
    Stop discounting junk mail is another.

    Spending money only on collecting, sorting, and delivering mail, and nothing else.
    That’ll save at least 20%.

    But above all, get people that want to do the job instead of all these career lazy people. And yes, that will mean getting rid of many of the minorities and “differently gendered” people…simply hiring based on work ethic.
    Do that, distasteful as it may be to some people, and your Post Office can be productive.
    Stopping Saturday deliveries is not going to make a significant difference compared to the other issues.

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  3. boneman1959 Avatar
    boneman1959

    Well… apparently he’s cutting costs… by RESIGNING.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/postmaster-general-louis-dejoy-resigns

    Sorry if posting a link is disallowed.

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  4. Charlie Hargrave Avatar
    Charlie Hargrave

    Wanna save money?

    Mail delivered every other day. You cut half the workforce and half the vehicles instantly.

    Mail carrier does rt 1 on mon, rt 2 on tues, rt 1 on weds etc etc

    Then double postage on junk mail. Then make one stamp, no commemorative nonsense. Then cut post office hours from 8 am to 9 am and 4 pm to 5 pm. Staff does backroom duties other hours. All employees to be fit enough to walk a route, or get out.

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  5. Unferth Avatar
    Unferth

    It was stated that the post office makes more profit off of packages than letters.

    Junk mail is a money maker. A large portion of that is the requirements on the junk mailer to presort. If the mail carrier only has first-class letters, those letters need to cover the full cost. If there’s 10 pieces of junk mail to go with it, they help cover the burden with minimal additional cost since the carrier is already going to the mailbox.

    There has been endless whining that congress requires the postal retirement system to be fully funded, greatly adding to their cost. Of course, I’m left wondering why all retirement system aren’t required to be fully funded.

    Where USPS loses money hand over fist is international shipping, especially from China. The TL;DR version is that China is paid for the stuff mailed to the United States, and the USPS delivers the mail from China for free. The concept is that the USPS collects the money for stuff shipped to China, and the Chinese post delivers it for free. If the system was balanced … but of course it isn’t.

    It goes without saying the general inefficiencies of a bureaucracy also come into play for losing money.

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  6. WDS Avatar
    WDS

    I couldn’t bear to watch, did he start yelling “La-La-La-La-La” too?

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  7. crazyeighter Avatar
    crazyeighter

    If they’re gonna do that, then could USPS property be declared Non-Hallowed Ground so that licensed CCW-ers be allowed to exercise their Second Amendment rights?

    You’re afraid somebody will “rob the Post Office”?
    Does anybody even do that anymore??

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  8. Bob Avatar
    Bob

    I haven’t gotten real mail in months, just junk that goes straight to the trash unless it gets shredded & fed to the worms

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  9. thatmrgguy Avatar
    thatmrgguy

    Charlie Hargrave,

    The open hours of the post office are already short enough as it is, from 10:00 am until 4:00 pm, with an hour off for lunch. People that work for a living would be screwed if they adopted your scheme for office hours. Thankfully the post office lunch break doesn’t coincide with working people’s normal lunch hour. A lot of rural offices were either consolidated or had their hours cut down to open 1 or 2 hours only. The cost to send first class mail and packages has gone up just about bi-yearly for the last few years as the service has consistently been degraded.

    Where they lose the most money is in the pensions and the Cadillac benefits they get. A friend of my wife’s, recently retired with an annual pension payment of about 72K . If only the rest of us could be so lucky. Multiply that by several hundred thousand retirees.

    Where the post office is losing the most money

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  10. Old NFO Avatar
    Old NFO

    Get rid of junk mail rates, charge Amazon full price.

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  11. Karl Avatar
    Karl

    How about “Congressional Franking”? Make the politicians pay for their incessant political ad delivery. Letting them send out “junk mail” in the form of political ads for free is ridiculous. Unless I missed the memo somewhere.

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  12. Midwest Chick Avatar
    Midwest Chick

    Texas Dan–They do have a lot of extraneous employees and I don’t think have looked for savings!

    B–Good points.

    Charlie–I agree with thatmrgguy.

    Unferth–Didn’t know about the China connection. Interesting!

    WDS–All but…

    crazyeighter–No one does that anymore, but they are a Federal office… Not saying that is right either.

    Bob–Same here.

    thatmrgguy–I concur. They need to be open at times to serve the rest of the populace.

    NFO–Agree.

    Karl–Another good point

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  13. Nemo Avatar
    Nemo

    …and all have overlooked that the Post Office is a Constitutionally mandated function of the U.S. government.

    Article I, Section 8, Clause 7

    It even mandates the building of roads between post offices.

    I think it takes a constitutional amendment to change that, taking it “private” as some have suggested.

    In the town I grew up in, we lived about 70 yards off of the main road through town which was informally called “the Post Road” even though it was actually named East Main St. That road still runs the entire width, East to West, of that state and has an official state designation number identifier.

    I expect the current government will lose the “take it private” argument in court. Getting it done via an amendment is a non-starter given the divisiveness of fed.gov because each side would want to claim that they reformed the Postal Service.

    Then there’s the union to contend with. How is it that a guy or gal who walks or now drives around delivering mail is making $50K to $75K/year with a golden parachute retirement plan?

    It’ll be decades fighting this out and IMHO is NOT worth the time and effort required until a whole bunch of other problems are fixed first, BY LAW, starting with elected officials being on the receiving end of various money laundering schemes that have been identified SO FAR.

    As a meme I saw else where in the last week or so conveyed, “Social Security isn’t running out of money. The government has been stealing it.” That applies to probably 40% of tax dollars over the last hundred years.

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    1. Midwest Chick Avatar
      Midwest Chick

      Nemo–Working within that Constitutional framework is the problem, definitely. And because they’ve been left unfettered and unionized, they were untouchable.

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