Recent Posts

By Steve Hutkins The Postal Regulatory Commission has spent the past four years working on a revision of the rate system for Market Dominant products. Yesterday the Commission issued its final rule on the changes. The order is here. The PRC’s press release is here. The media kit contains a ... Read More

We’re tracking all the reports the Postal Service has been submitting on service performance, the processing of ballots, and other data being shared in the various lawsuits. The Postal Service’s weekly on-time service performance reports submitted in Jones v USPS can be found here. The daily reports being submitted in ... Read More

Twelve lawsuits have been filed against Postmaster General DeJoy, the U.S. Postal Service, and President Trump over issues connected to mail delays and threats to voting by mail in the November election. We’re “live blogging” the latest developments on a daily basis. You can find a list of all the ... Read More

By Mark Jamison In forestry the practice of tree girdling is well known. Although there are some circumstances where this can be a useful practice, in most cases the technique is used for nefarious ends. Girdling involves removing the bark and layers below the bark, usually around the trunk of ... Read More

By Steve Hutkins In response to several inquiries from members of Congress, the Office of Inspector General has issued a report  on “Operational Changes to Mail Delivery.” The report discusses the Postal Service’s plan to eliminate 64 million work hours — the equivalent of 33,000 jobs — by implementing 57 ... Read More

This week there have been several significant revelations about the operational changes that took place over the summer, their impact on service performance, and the Postal Service’s plan to eliminate 64 million work hours.

• According to an OIG report released yesterday, the Postal Service embarked on this plan — ... Read More

By Mark Jamison In looking at the results of the recent lawsuits against the Postal Service — eight of which have led to rulings banning changes in postal operations until after the election — it is tempting to make a bad sports analogy.  After all, going 0 for 8 lends ... Read More

By Steve Hutkins In late June of this year, a few days after the new Postmaster General took office and in the middle of a pandemic, the Postal Service initiated a plan to eliminate 64 million work hours, the equivalent of 33,000 jobs. It was one of the largest cost-cutting ... Read More

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds … until THE GREAT POSTAL HEIST Established by the U.S. Constitution, the once-venerated agency has been thrust into a political maelstrom that is hampering its effectiveness in the days ... Read More

mankatofreepress.com: It was May of 2014 when the U.S. Postal Service announced it would sell its historic downtown Mankato home and move postal boxes and retail services to a smaller leased space. Nearly 6½ years later, the relocation happened. “It’s a shame they moved,” an elderly woman said Tuesday as ... Read More

The Fall 2020 newsletter from Community & Postal Workers United contains articles on “Outcry Halts New Postmaster General’s Attacks on Service…for Now,” “Target the Postal Board of Governors ! Dump PMG DeJoy!,” “Postal Service workers quietly resist DeJoy’s changes,” and “Postmaster General eyes aggressive changes at Postal Service after election.” Read ... Read More

By Steve Hutkins A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post exploring the possibility that Postal Headquarters has a large-scale, comprehensive plan to eliminate some 67 million work hours. (The Seven Percent Solution: The Not-So-Secret Plan to Downsize the Postal Service.) Thanks to evidence that has come out in ... Read More

By Steve Hutkins This post was written in 2016 and slightly updated on Oct. 31, 2018, exactly two years ago today. The update started like this: According to this AP report today, alarms are already being raised about the rejection of many mail-in ballots in next week’s elections.  Several of ... Read More

The Postal Service has shared some weekly on-time service performance data with the plaintiffs in the Jones v. USPS case. The data set provided by the Postal Service provides the most complete picture of on-time performance that we’ve seen since the mail delays became an issue earlier this summer.  The ... Read More

By Steve Hutkins First, a disclaimer. The following analysis is largely speculative. It’s not based on insider information. The evidence comes from news articles, government reports, legal filings, and a few leaked internal USPS documents that were published on postal news sites. The analysis could be totally wrong. The hypothesis ... Read More

By Mark Jamison “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, ... Read More

USPS OIG: Our objective was to evaluate the Postal Service’s readiness for timely processing of Election and Political Mail for the 2020 general elections. Election Mail is any mailpiece that an authorized election official creates for voters participating in the election process and includes ballots and voter registration materials. Political Mail ... Read More

By Mark Jamison After years of being a journalistic backwater the Postal Service is all over the news. From the usual contextually vacant reports about financial losses, we shifted to meaty and sometimes sensational coverage about the removal of Blue collections boxes and mail processing equipment at plants. There’s also ... Read More

By Karen Heller Washington Post: President Trump has branded the Postal Service “a loser,” “joke” and “scam.” It’s a first-class source of his mail-content. He routinely disparages the Postal Service because it loses money and, by his own admission, he doesn’t want people in much of the country to vote ... Read More

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