Bob's Rants......: Bye Bye Saturday Postal Service!

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"............except on Saturday!

Yes...your friendly postman will now get weekends off. In an effort to slash costs, the USPS (United States Postal Service) will end Saturday mail delivery hoping to save $2 billion annually. Read More: Saturday Service Slashed We, the customer, will get a break as well from our mailboxes being stuffed with bills, junk mail and throw away retail ads.

For years the post office has been complaining about going broke. Not a surprise, given what's come its way over the last 30 or so years. Companies like Fed Ex ans UPS has taken away a lot of post office business. The Internet and the advent of e-mail and text messaging has virtually done away with the a dinosaur once known as a letter. Who writes letters to friends and family anymore? Unless it's a threat from debt collectors, attorneys promising to sue or the aforementioned junk mail, personal letters are extinct.

Just an observation, but it seems to me that the USPS could save a hell of a lot of money if it got out of the retail business. Been to your local post office lately? You can buy greeting cards, gifts for a specific holiday from the postal store!! You can buy artwork and posters, mugs and dinnerware, watches and bracelets, books, music and videos, not to mention collectibles for the avid stamp collector.

Then there's those specialty or commemorative stamps. Quit dedicating and printing stamps to every Tom, Dick and Harry that did something notable in their lives and to every group or cause that trying to right the world. How much does that cost? This year you be able to adorn your envelopes with dozens of commemorative stamps from embracing the State of Florida to celebrating the 1966 Pontiac GTO!

The postal service took a major hit when it couldn't move stamps dedicated to America's favorite lovable cartoon family, "The Simpsons." A billion Simpson stamps were produced to be sold over the two year period of 2009-2010. a mere 318 million were sold leaving the USPS with a $1.2 million dollar loss.

Erik Ortiz / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, wrote in 2012, 'dozens of stamps were overproduced in 2009 and 2010, including ones featuring Bob Hope, the Supreme Court justices and pioneers of the civil rights movement.That overproduction of special and commemorative stamps cost the Postal Service more than $4 million over the two years, the inspector general found.'

According to Wikipedia the United States Post Office (USPO) was created in Philadelphia under Benjamin Franklin on Wednesday, July 26, 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress.^[1] 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 (USPOD) in 1792. Until 1971, it was part of the Presidential cabinet and the Postmaster General was the last person in the United States presidential line of succession.

The First U.S. Postage Stamps Issued 1847 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

The USPS is the largest fleet vehicle operator in the world with over 260,000 vehicles and employing some 574,000 people. Other than $5.5 billion per year to be paid into an account to pre-fund retiree health-care, 75 years into the future, the postal service is not funded by taxpayer dollars and must subsist on its own collected revenue.

While the demise of Saturday delivery come August of this year, might help salvage the postal service from financial obliteration, they need to consider ditching the fluff and puff archive the commemorative stamp program to history as well.