Postal Service

The U.S. Postal Service, riding a crest of spectacular sales with its Legends of American Music Series of commemoratives, will issue Wednesday a booklet of 29-cent stamps recalling four famous Broadway musicals. The commemoratives, 20 to a booklet, will depict scenes from My Fair Lady, Porgy and Bess, Show Boat and Oklahoma! The stamp for Oklahoma! was issued earlier this year as a separate sheet of 40 stamps. The issuance will coincide with the 100th anniversary of Broadway.

By Bill Bonvie The 1997 movie The Postman depicted one man's attempt to reintroduce cohesion to society following the collapse of civilization. The hero, played by Kevin Costner, is at first pretending to be a postal representative of a newly restored U.S. government. Eventually, however, his charade morphs into a mission, as he inspires a group of young recruits to begin reinstituting postal service while battling a self-styled warlord and his army. It's not my favorite film, but The Postman does convey how essential basic government services such as mail delivery are to our very existence as a country.

Consider the possibilities, shoppers: 33 oak and mahogany desks, 40 telephones, 164 calculators, motorized drafting tables and 108 typewriters, all of which go on sale at 9 a.m. today at the U.S. Postal Service's Equipment Facility at Tenth Street and Pattison Avenue. The occasion is the first auction of excess postal equipment at the Philadelphia Division of the Postal Service. In all, hundreds of used and surplus items, right down to pencil sharpeners and doormats, will be for sale.

The U.S. Postal Service, which plans to increase the cost of a first-class stamp to 30 cents because it is losing money, spent as much as $10 million on conferences last year, including $99-a-person meals and a $12,000 reception, a government study reported yesterday. According to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, conferences were held at resorts in Hawaii, Arizona and Florida, usually during winter months. Also, the Postal Service awarded bonuses averaging $5,564 to each of the 75 division general managers in 1988, when postal costs went up at twice the rate of inflation, the Washington Post reported.

WASHINGTON - Senators announced a bipartisan plan Wednesday to help keep the Postal Service solvent and continue six-day mail delivery for at least two more years. The proposal would lift the agency "from the brink of bankruptcy," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee. The Postal Service lost $8 billion last year and could report even larger losses when its 2011 budget year report comes out in mid-November. "We're not crying wolf here" about the agency, said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the committee.

IT WAS WITH concern that I read the recent Daily News articles regarding mail service. Employees of Philadelphia District of the Postal Service are committed to delivering consistent, reliable service to all of our 1.7 million customers. A dedicated phone line has been established for our customers to talk directly with a postal representative if they experience service issues. It will be open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The number is 215-863-5049. We've reached out to our network of business and industry leaders, and to the executive committee of the Philadelphia Postal Customer Council, to discuss and identify any service concerns.

A prominent Democratic lawyer and former member of the board of governors of the U.S. Postal Service has been accused of misconduct for pressing postal officials to settle a real estate dispute involving a friend and political ally. Alan Kessler, a partner at the Center City firm of Duane Morris L.L.P., repeatedly urged Postal Service lawyers to consider settlement proposals and helped principals of a Sarasota, Fla., real estate firm to craft their position even as they were battling his own agency, said a report from the Postal Service inspector general.

Yesterday was supposed to be the busiest mail day of the year. That's what the Postal Service was predicting last week, given the track record of Christmases past. It's the day, typically, when folks face the music, as it were, and dump off the last of those rubber-banded stacks of cards and boxes lovingly stuffed with goodies for grown children who can't make it home for the holidays. To give you an idea of just how overwhelming the crunch is, the Postal Service delivers about 80 million pieces on a normal day. Around this time of year, the haul can soar up around the 300 million mark.

The U.S. Postal Service has shaken up its Philadelphia-area management after a week of stories in the Daily News about late and missing mail deliveries. Frank Neri, the Postal Service district manager for the Philadelphia metropolitan district, was replaced yesterday by Jim Gallagher, a veteran USPS manager, spokesman Paul Smith confirmed yesterday. Gallagher "was postmaster here in Philly for six years," Smith said. "He's been in Philly virtually his whole career with extensive operational experience in both mail processing and operations.

The U.S. Postal Service thought it sounded sensible: By cutting the size of the popular Christmas postage stamps, the post office would save money and everyone would be happy. So is everybody jolly? No, they are not. The Postal Service has been pelted with so many complaints about its Scrooge-size Christmas stamps that it's planning to return to the larger version next year. "Most of the people who use the smaller stamps and don't like it complain that it's too difficult to handle," said Hugh McGonigle, a post office spokesman with the title of Philatelic Programs Specialist.

Down the long line, the smoke of muskets and artillery boiled from the landscape, marking the collision point of Union and Confederate forces at the Battle of Gettysburg. That moment was captured in an 1887 chromolithograph by Thure de Thulstrup (1848-1930), a Swedish-born artist who became an illustrator for Harper's Weekly after the Civil War. And on Thursday, a reproduction of it appeared on a newly issued stamp from the U.S. Postal Service, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the epic clash.

JABEZ AUSTIN wrote everything down. A thought or idea or opinion didn't pop into his head without his writing it in his journal. He also recorded the everyday doings of his life. He even had a title for the book he hoped his musings would someday create: The Tale that Wags the Dog: An Essay of Black Influence in America . Jabez Thomas Austin Jr., son of a Southern Baptist preacher, 33-year employee of the Postal Service, Air Force veteran and devoted family man, died May 5 of heart failure.

WASHINGTON - What business gets more customers every year, yet keeps losing money? The U.S. Postal Service delivers mail to 11 million more homes, offices, and other addresses than it did a decade ago, even as the amount of mail that people in the United States receive has dropped sharply. That combination may be financially dicey, some analysts say. "The more delivery points they have to service, the higher their costs" in fuel, time spent, and other areas, said Rick Geddes, associate professor in Cornell University's department of policy analysis and management.

As the U.S. Postal Service struggles to stay afloat in a rapidly changing world, could it be that social media are helping to push it over the edge? Could technology put a "forever stamp" on snail mail? "We can't continue to operate on a precipice," Joe Corbett, the United States Postal Service's chief financial officer, said at a recent news conference. Coupled with the worst recession in 80 years, the USPS is facing challenges as the world of letters, postcards and stamps has taken a backseat in the millennium of e-mail, Facebook and Twitter.

WASHINGTON - The spending bill passed by Congress on Thursday appears to continue the requirement for six-day mail delivery, but some lawmakers and postal officials say plans to cut Saturday service should proceed. The financially troubled Postal Service announced last month that it would switch in August to five-day service for first-class mail and continue six-day package delivery. The government at the time was running on a temporary spending measure and postal officials invited lawmakers to spell out the way ahead in the 2013 spending bill.

Not even a big man is an island While many feel that Gov. Christie's weight should be his own business, no one's weight is his own concern alone, unless he does not have health insurance or Medicare, and pays his own medical bills. ("Age, weight no issues for N.J. leaders," Feb. 13) Statistics show that medical treatment for problems associated with obesity is responsible for about 20 percent of the nation's total medical costs. This means that everyone is paying considerably more for health insurance.

With the U.S. Postal Service losing tens of millions of dollars a day, neither snow nor rain - nor the required congressional approval, it seems - has stopped the agency from finally delivering on its threat to end the mailman's Saturday rounds. The announcement last week by Patrick R. Donahoe, the postmaster general, prompted understandable protests, but also shrugs from millions of Americans. After all, some have long since switched from affixing stamps to hitting the send button on an e-mail or text message to speed their personal greetings on their way. In this era of electronic communication, first-class mail volumes have declined by nearly a third.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Postal Service lost $1.3 billion in the final three months of last year, despite a blizzard of campaign advertising for the fall political elections and a big holiday mail and shipping season. The loss announced Friday was far less than the $3.3 billion in the comparable quarter the previous fiscal year, but still showed the effects of a continued decline in first-class mailing as customers continue to flock to the Internet for e-mailing, bill paying and the like.

WASHINGTON - The financially struggling Postal Service announced Wednesday that it plans to stop delivering mail on Saturdays starting Aug. 1 - but will continue delivering packages. Unless forbidden to do so by Congress, which has moved in the past to prohibit a reduction to five-day-a-week delivery, the agency for the first time will deliver mail only Monday through Friday. The move will save about $2 billion a year for the Postal Service, which has suffered tens of billions of dollars in losses in recent years with the advent of the Internet and e-commerce, officials said.

WASHINGTON - Saturday mail may soon go the way of the Pony Express and penny postcards. The Postal Service said Wednesday that it plans to cut back to five-day-a-week deliveries for everything except packages to stem its financial losses in a world radically re-ordered by the Internet. But Congress has voted in the past to bar the idea of eliminating Saturday delivery, and this announcement immediately drew protests from some lawmakers. The plan, which is to take effect in August, also brought vigorous objections from farmers, the letter carriers' union and others.