USPS
used 14M more hours than need for mail processing in 2012, IG says
FierceGovernment
October 22, 2013
Ryan McDermott
Though the Postal Service reduced hours in fiscal 2012,
USPS still used over 14 million work hours more than necessary to process mail
volume, a Sept. 26 USPS inspector general report says. By reducing those hours,
USPS could cut costs of about $628 million, it adds.
Mail volume has declined but the Postal Service has not
adjusted work hours in response, nor achieved all possible efficiencies in mail
processing operations, the report (.pdf) says.
The IG recommended that work hour reductions are to be
completed no later than fiscal 2018 and that management periodically evaluate
operating efficiency by assessing performance against the median productivity
level for each plant, the report says.
Still, USPS did improve in 2012 over 2011.
From fiscal 2011 to 2012, management used five million
fewer work hours in mail processing.
Plants that had below-median productivity levels in
fiscal 2011 accounted for 3.4 million reduced work hours, the report says.
While the Postal Service made progress in reducing work
hours at processing plants, productivity decreased in all plants about 1.6
percent in fiscal 2012 compared to 2011, the report says.
Part of the decrease in productivity was due to the plants
processing more packages in fiscal 2012, as a percentage of total mail volume,
the report says.
"Processing packages decreases overall productivity
because it is more labor intensive to sort packages than to sort other types of
mail," the USPS IG says.
Post
Office $5.6 Billion Default Raises Urgency of Reforms
Moneynews
October 22, 2013
Jennifer G. Hickey
With Congress and the
media focused on the government shutdown and how to avoid default on the
national debt, little attention was directed toward the U.S. Postal Service
which earlier this month defaulted on a required $5.6 billion payment for the
healthcare of its future retirees.
The third default on the down-payment in just over a year underscores the
necessity of much-needed reforms for the beleaguered Postal Service.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California told Newsmax that without "the freedom to realign its
infrastructure and operations in line with the changing way Americans use mail,
the agency will remain insolvent."
ObamaCare: You
Can Win With The Facts
"Prolonged insolvency of USPS will result in a massive taxpayer bailout
and ongoing subsidy, or a sudden disruption in mail service, or both," the
California Republican said.
Just days before the default, USPS Board of Governors Chairman Mickey Barnett announced
an increase in the price of stamps beginning in 2014, which he said was the
result of USPS' "precarious financial condition" and the
"uncertain path toward enactment of postal reform legislation."
It is not a new message from the USPS leadership. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has been vocal about the need for Congress to
implement legislative reforms, including elimination of the annual prefunding
payments, and its need for greater autonomy to manage its healthcare system.
Appearing before the Senate, Donahoe said the Postal
Service was "in the midst of a financial disaster" due to the burden
of an "outdated and inflexible business model."
Absent any flexibility to govern its own affairs, the Postal Service – which
expects to end fiscal year 2013 with a loss of about $6 billion – has warned
lawmakers it anticipates a government bailout of $50 billion will be needed in
2017.
Action on postal reforms looks unlikely this year, and "even the small
reforms being proposed by Congress will only buy them a year or two," says
James Gattuso of the Heritage Foundation.
Gattuso tells Newsmax that
attributing USPS's losses to the recession or faulty accounting are merely
ignoring the real problem, which is that the market for traditional mail is
diminishing.
In
an October research report, Gattuso notes
that first-class mail volume has already plummeted 30 percent since 2007, and
it may drop another 40 percent over the next seven years.
In addition to a decline in standard mail as a result of increased email
communications, more Americans are paying bills online.
A Household Diary Study found that bill payments by mail have declined almost
16 percent in the past two years, while a 2012 study by the consulting firm
Fiserv reports that 75 percent of Americans pay at least one monthly bill
electronically.
The USPS has "to bite the bullet and make serious changes that include
closing post offices that do not cover their costs or even make a profit. They
also need to be open to considering partnerships with local businesses, such as
CVS, so people would still have access to postal services, but not necessarily
at a dedicated post office building," says Robert D. Atkinson of the
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Atkinson suggests the USPS should immediately move to a five-day or three-day
delivery schedule and to identify underutilized post offices and postal sorting
facilities for closure.
In a June report examining whether the postal service could survive in a
digital age, Atkinson pointed to the fact that more than 21 percent of FedEx
deliveries are dropped off by a USPS postal carrier. This burden sharing is
known as "last mile" delivery, in which a private sector company,
such as FedEx, will manage the sorting and transportation of packages, but the
final mile delivery is done by USPS.
Rather than proposing full
privatization of the USPS, Atkinson suggests opening service up to
competition and for the USPS to focus on its core competencies, such as package
delivery.
"They deserve credit for making some budget cuts and for being upfront
about their fiscal condition. One of the problems is that they have been
hamstrung by a lack of congressional approval for reforms," Atkinson tells
Newsmax.
In the House, Issa introduced legislation similar to
a measure he sponsored in the previous Congress that would begin to phase out
Saturday delivery of mail, while maintaining Saturday delivery of packages,
which is one of the few areas of growth.
The bill would allow the Postal Service to forgo past due payments owed to
prefund retiree healthcare benefits, would eliminate the ability of national
and state political committees to use the non-profit mail rate, and permit the
USPS to sell advertising space on vehicles and facilities. The bill also would
allow state and local services, such as the sale of fishing licenses, at postal
facilities.
Legislative action in this session is unlikely considering the other issues
Congress has on its agenda, but Issa spokesman Ali
Ahmad says "with the notable exception of labor unions, all key
stakeholders are in contact and working on a solution to save the Postal
Service and prevent a massive taxpayer-funded bailout."
"The unions carry a lot of political weight because they are one of the
largest unions and they are out there making a lot of noise, whereas the
taxpayers are largely unaware of the situation or the need for reform,"
says Gattuso, who adds that labor opposition is
"somewhat ironic as no one is talking about forced layoffs or drastic
renegotiations of union contracts."
"The status quo is not sustainable. While some argue that the USPS's
losses are due to faulty accounting or a temporary downturn in the economy,
that claim is wishful thinking. The market for traditional mail has been
shrinking rapidly," Gattuso tells Newsmax.
Unions have criticized the reform efforts, contending that the bills do not do
enough to ease the burden of prefunding retirees' health benefits.
Editor's Note:
Gov. Prohibited From Helping Seniors (Shocking)
Neither Gattuso, nor Atkinson, see the USPS becoming
extinct anytime soon. However, they say that, like newspapers and the
publishing industry, a failure to adapt to an irrefutable trend toward digital
and online communications will only exacerbate USPS's poor financial condition.
A Senate bill, co-sponsored by Delaware Democrat Tom Carper and Oklahoma
Republican Tom Coburn, has moved closer toward the House measure, but even
USPS' Donahoe has argued that committee's draft bill
doesn't go far enough in granting the Postal Service greater control over its
healthcare costs.
The Postal Service has proposed launching its own postal-specific healthcare
plan – either within the broader Federal Employees Health Benefit Program or by
negotiating directly with insurers.
RETURN TO TOP
New
Zealand approves 3 days a week mail service
October 22, 2013
Nick Perry
[This story has also
appeared in The
New Zealand Herald]
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s government
has agreed to allow its postal service to deliver mail as infrequently as three
days a week to most customers from 2015 as the volume of letters declines
precipitously in an era of electronic communication.
The move could foreshadow similar changes in other
developed nations as businesses and residents increasingly move online to
communicate and pay bills.
The New Zealand Government on Wednesday announced it was
changing its agreement with the postal service effective June 2015.
Instead of delivering mail six days a week, the service
will be required to deliver a minimum three days a week in urban areas and five
days a week in rural areas, which tend to rely more on mail. About 12 percent
of customers live in rural areas.
New Zealand Post has been lobbying for the change, saying
it was barely breaking even on its mail deliveries and would soon begin losing
money unless it was allowed to cut back.
Mail volumes in the South Pacific nation of 4.5 million
people have dropped by a quarter in the last decade and the decline appears to
be accelerating.
‘‘Around the world postal volumes are declining,’’ said
Communications Minister Amy Adams. ‘‘In New Zealand, this is at a rate of about
8 percent per annum.’’
New Zealand Post spokesman John Tulloch said the new
agreement was vital in allowing the postal service to remain viable. He said
the service hadn’t made a final decision on three day a week deliveries,
although given the ongoing volume decline it was a strong possibility.
He said that a move to three-day delivery would be
accompanied by a new service under which customers could get their letters
couriered six days a week for a premium.
In the U.S., the Postal Service has struggled for years
with declining mail volumes. The service has tried to end its Saturday mail
delivery but has been met with resistance from federal lawmakers.
In a contentious move in Britain, the coalition
government this month privatized the country’s 500-year-old Royal Mail. It
promised six days a week service would continue.
Magazine
industry chief rails against USPS
October 22, 2013
Keith J. Kelly
The publishing industry has its problems — but that’s
nothing compared to the US Postal Service.
Just ask Mary Berner, the head
of the Association for Magazine Media (MPA), who took the opportunity to rail
against the country’s increasingly dysfunctional mail service in her keynote
speech to the magazine industry.
“I’m not pissed anymore about where we are and where we
are headed as an industry,” she said at the American Magazine Media Conference
in New York on Tuesday afternoon.
“I still get aggravated by the inability of lawmakers to
fix the US Postal Service as opposed to making us and other mailers subsidize
its refusal to make the hard choices that every other business in this country
has made.”
The magazine industry is bracing for an emergency, or
“exigent,” rate hike as the cash-strapped Postal Service scrambles to raise
prices to offset falling mail volume.
“I mean, who thinks raising rates on its best customers
is a remotely sane idea for a business whose revenue is already in free fall?” Berner said.
“It’s like raising prices on shoe laces when everyone is
using Velcro. How about incentivizing us to mail more instead of ensuring that
we will mail less?”
While the post office was at the top of her hit list, Berner didn’t stop there in a wide-ranging rant.
“The security desk in MPA’s building lobby never fails to
piss me off when they bust me for not having my ID (you’d think that we work at
CIA headquarters),” she said.
There’s also no lost love for “the clueless bike riders
who seem to think they have right of way riding against traffic (and
pedestrians apparently).”
“And since I’m on a pissed-off rant add to the list any
one of my children who miss a curfew — in other words, Mickey, I know I’m late
and you’re going to annihilate me, but damn it was worth it.”
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Federal
Agencies Lost 6,000 Jobs in September
Government Executive
October 22, 2013
Eric Katz
The federal government
shed 6,000 jobs in September, according to new numbers from the Bureau
of Labor Statistics.
The U.S. Postal Service
-- which has seen an overall loss of about 200,000 employees over the last six
years -- added 1,400 jobs last month, while the rest of federal agencies
dropped a net of 7,300 workers. Including the Postal Service, the federal
government ended the month with more than 2.7 million employees.
The BLS report, which
typically comes out on the first Friday of each month, was delayed due to the
government shutdown. The numbers do not reflect any impact of the shutdown,
which began Oct. 1. BLS will also delay the October jobs report, by one week.
That report will begin to illustrate the shutdown’s effect on the labor market.
Still, the new numbers
demonstrate the impact of sequestration and other budget cuts on the federal
workforce. Agencies, many of which have instituted hiring freezes to meet
reduced spending levels, have cut 87,000 jobs in the last 12 months.
Overall, the U.S.
economy added 148,000 jobs in September and unemployment decreased slightly to
7.2 percent, the lowest rate since November 2008. Total government jobs,
including state and local governments, increased by 22,000.
President Obama and
congressional Republicans have voiced opposing views on the future of the
federal workforce. Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget would add
6,180 employees, while House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis.,
has proposed reducing
the workforce by 10 percent through attrition by 2015.
Ryan is leading the
Republican side of renewed budget talks in conference committee, while Senate
Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., is heading up the
negotiations for Democrats.
RETURN TO TOP
New addresses upset Putnam
residents
Charleston Daily Mail
October 22, 2013
Kara Moore
WINFIELD -- Residents of
Putnam County are beginning to receive letters with their new addresses, and
they're not all happy about it.
The new addresses are
part of a statewide mapping and addressing project that's been going on for a
decade now. After years of legwork and compiling data, residents are just now
getting new addresses that apply to everything from emergency services to U.S.
mail to utility services.
Some addresses stayed
the same, but more than 80 percent of the unincorporated parts of the county
had to be changed.
When residents of Joy
Lane and Cleveland Avenue in Culloden got their letters, they found every house
number on the two streets had changed, although a third street in the
subdivision, Lily Drive, got to keep its house numbers.
A group of them got
together to attend Tuesday's county commission meeting to demand their old
addresses back.
"Most of the folks
on these streets are older folks, and this is going to be a huge inconvenience,
a huge hassle for them to change passport, drivers
license, right on down simply because you say there's no 'rhyme or reason' (to
the old numbering)," one male resident said.
"I'm asking today
that you change that," he said.
Emergency Services
Director Frank Chapman was already scheduled to give an update to the
commission on the addressing project to the commission.
The addressing and
mapping project dates back to 2003 when Verizon donated $15 million for the
project in lieu of giving a 25-cent refund to each customer as a result of
billing errors.
The primary goal of the
project is improving emergency services and is often referred to as "911
addressing," but the standardized addresses should also ease delivery for
the U.S. Postal Service and private delivery services.
Putnam County completed
its addressing with the help of a hired contractor at a cost of $70,000 more
than three and a half years ago, Chapman said. The county sent its new
addresses to the postal service and didn't hear back from them until about six
months ago.
"The post office
apparently sat on our data for well over three and a half years," Chapman
said. "The problem that we had is the data they received is now well over
three years old."
Residents in Buffalo,
Culloden and Leon were the first to receive letters notifying them of their new
addresses. The office of emergency management was beginning to troubleshoot
those areas when the postal service sent out 7,000 more letters to residents in
Fraizers Bottom, Liberty Given, Red House and Nitro.
Since then Chapman's
office has been besieged with more than 1,000 phone calls. Office staffers have
been working on returning the calls for two weeks.
Some residents,
especially in Liberty and Red House, received letters that said they had a new
address but they needed to call to get it.
Chapman said those
residents shouldn't worry about getting those addresses immediately because the
postal service will deliver to both addresses for a year, and 911 will keep
both addresses on its maps for the foreseeable future.
"That's not a big
issue," Chapman said. "We want to stress that. We've got you in the
system."
Other residents, like
those who live on Joy Lane and Cleveland Avenue in Culloden, are angry that
their addresses have changed.
The new numbering system
assigns an address every 10.56 feet, which is a national standard set by the
National Emergency Number Association and has been adopted by federal, state
and county authorities.
The national standard
provides enough addresses for dense urban neighborhoods, but it also associates
addresses with specific distances so that emergency vehicles know how far down
a more suburban or rural road an address will be.
Putnam County adopted an
addressing ordinance several years ago that allows neighborhoods to keep their
old addresses if they are numbered sequentially without aberration in such a
way that either new buildings could be added within the sequence or no empty
lots for new homes are available.
Joy Lane could have been
grandfathered in with their current addresses, like Lily Drive and others,
except for one house numbered out of sequence. Between the houses at 217 and
219 Joy Lane is a house numbered 217A. Because of that aberration, the entire
street had to be renumbered.
Those residents are
asking the county commission to reinstate their old addresses.
But not all residents
are unhappy with the new addresses.
"A lot of people
are very happy about it, especially the rural routes, and a lot of people it's
not really bothering to change," Commissioner Andy Skidmore said.
"But you do have a couple streets where it's hard for them to make sense
of it."
He said the commission
would look into ways to work with those residents.
"What we need to
find out in the ordinance is if there is an exemptive
process they can go through," Skidmore said.
The commission will look
at the ordinance at the next regular meeting.
Residents who haven't
yet received their letters will soon, but Chapman has asked the postal service
to hold off until his office can get caught up on the phone calls it has to
return now.
Addresses in the
county's cities and towns, Hurricane, Winfield, Buffalo, Bancroft, Poca and Eleanor, were not included in the county project.
Some cities chose to grandfather in most or all of their addresses, and others
took on the task of assigning new ones.
Once residents receive
their new addresses, they must notify utilities and banks of the new address,
and they need to come into the county courthouse to update their voter
registration card.
RETURN TO TOP
Moving?
Beware change of address websites
WCPO-TV (ABC -
Cincinnati)
October 22, 2013
John Matarese
A caution to anyone who
may be moving in the next year, or may have a student moving away from home
soon.
When you go to file that change of address report, you may want to make sure
you're filing it with the US Postal Service... the real postal service, as one
Butler County, Ohio woman recently learned.
Wanted to use USPS website
Belinda Warren recently moved to a new condo, and thought she'd change her
address the simple way, at the Postal Service website.
"I just did a Google search for US Postal Service or USPS change my
address. I was going to do it online to keep me from having to run into the
post office," she said.
The first thing that popped up on her tablet said "USPS Change My Address,
" so she clicked it and found a site with a blue banner.
She entered her info and credit card number for verification purposes.
Strange Charge Shows Up
"I went ahead and followed the prompts on the website," Warren said,
"and about two weeks later noticed a $19.95 charge on my bank account. And
it said it was from a website called Change My Address.com. "
She then discovered that the website is a private company, not affiliated with
the USPS. So she called them, furious.
"I was really upset. And I asked what services do you
provide other than I could have gotten for free from the Postal Service.
And they really couldn't answer me."
BBB Asks for Changes
The Better Business Bureau has 584
complaints about Change My Address.com, and in the Spring of 2013 asked the
site to be more upfront.
The company's attorney tells me the site "has recently complied with the
BBB" request, adding wording to clarify that it is not affiliated with the
Postal Service.
But the site is still confusing to people like Belinda Warren, as are several
other similar sites, such as "United
Address Change."
That one looks even more similar to the United States Postal Service site. But
unlike the USPS, none of these are free.
Bottom line: There's nothing illegal about this, and nothing wrong with
offering a service that helps people change their address.
But if it's something
you can easily do for free, this may be a case of don't waste your money.
RETURN TO TOP
FedEx
Express simplifies US pricing for consumers and SMEs
Post & Parcel
October 22, 2013
FedEx Express has
launched a new pricing approach in the United States, offering a “flat rate”
for consumers and small businesses.
The new service, FedEx
One Rate, promises a “simple, predictable” option for envelopes under 10lbs in
weight and parcels under 50lbs in weight.
It gives access to
time-definite FedEx overnight, two-day and three-day services, with tracking
and a money back guarantee, along with free packaging.
The launch of the new
simplified pricing comes just ahead of the Christmas season, as the US Postal
Service has been achieving good growth in its package services thanks to a
simple “If it fits, it ships” flat-rate approach to pricing.
However, the new FedEx
pricing approach isn’t quite as simple as a postal service
one-price-goes-anywhere offering, with FedEx taking distance into
consideration. Deliveries are priced differently if going within 150 miles of
origin (called the Local Zone), within 600 miles (Regional Zone) and other
parts of the US (National Zone).
The FedEx One Rate does
include residential, delivery area and fuel surcharges but is subject to other
charges including on-call pickup, Saturday delivery, signature options,
additional declared value and address corrections.
Prices (not including
additional charges) start at $7.50 for a three-day envelope sent within the
Local Zone, with a small box going across the country costing $10.50 on the
three-day service and $104.50 for next-day by 8.30am. An extra
large box going nationally on the three day service would cost $37.25,
or $168.50 for the overnight by 8.30am service.
Essentially, the new
pricing approach adds more free packaging options, combines certain surcharges
in with the original rate, eliminates the need for weighing items under the
10lb/50lb threshold, and simplifies the distance pricing.
“Next level”
Raj Subramaniam,
executive vice president of Marketing at FedEx Services, said FedEx One Rate
shipping took convenience and flexibility “to the next level” for FedEx
customers.
“For consumers and small
businesses alike, FedEx One Rate pricing allows customers to plan and control
their express shipping costs more easily. They can add to the box without
adding to the cost,” he said.
FedEx is offering the
FedEx One Rate to account holders and also for one-time shipments paid by
credit card.
The pricing approach
does allow use of FedEx Delivery Manager, which means recipients can request
items to be held at a FedEx Office or FedEx ship centre,
provides delivery notifications, signed-for delivery and a vacation hold.
FedEx will be launching
a nationwide promotion to highlight the service from the start of November, in
which it will donate a dollar from every FedEx One Rate transaction to the teacher
training programme Teach for America, up to a
$200,000 value.
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Citizens'
alternative fuel subsidiary nabs UPS contract
Indianapolis Business
Journal
October 22, 2013
Dan Human
A Citizens Energy Group
subsidiary has scored an eight-year contract to provide alternative fuel to
United Postal Service, the Indianapolis utility announced Tuesday.
Kinetrex Energy in March will begin supplying
liquefied natural gas to five of UPS’s fueling stations in Indiana, Illinois,
Ohio and Missouri. UPS announced in October that its new fuel infrastructure
was large enough to support about 1,000 vehicles.
The companies did not disclose a dollar value for the contract, but it is “by
far” the largest for the new
subsidiary. Terms include providing up to 2 million gallons of fuel per
month, said Citizens spokesman Dan Considine.
“Having the opportunity to supply LNG to a global company like UPS puts Kinetrex Energy one step closer to becoming the Midwest’s
leading LNG provider,” Carey Lykins, president and
CEO of Citizens Energy Group, said in a prepared statement. “With LNG from Kinetrex, UPS will burn a significantly cleaner and less
expensive fuel produced here in America.”
As its name implies, the fuel type is natural gas chilled into liquid form.
Citizens says the fuel costs about 40 percent less than diesel and reduces
greenhouse emissions by 20 percent.
The agreement is part of a UPS initiative to make its vehicles drive 1 billion
miles using alternative fuels and other advanced technologies by 2017, Zachary
Scott, president of UPS’ Ohio Valley District said in a prepared statement.
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Consultant to predict
stamp sales
Linn’s Stamp News
November 4, 2013
Bill McAllister
The United States Postal
Service has agreed to pay $566,000 to a New York firm to advise it on “what
steps must be taken to slow the predictable decline in stamp usage and how can
we best reinvent and reimagine stamp relevance to promote growth.”
The contract, first
reported by Federal Times, says the consulting firm of Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve will be seeking answers to the question:
“Who will be buying
stamps in 2019, 2024 and 2034? What will they be used for?”
In the company’s planned
statement of work for a $566,000 task order awarded in January, it asked: “How
can we embed innovation and new thinking into stamps, to engage America’s
coming generations and the USPS’s existing and new customers?”
The work appears to
reflect the concerns of Nagisa Manabe,
the Postal Service’s chief marketing officer. She has taken control of the
stamp program, replaced the head of stamp services and wants to help the
program contribute more to the USPS bottom line.
In a statement of its
planned project, obtained by Federal Times, the New York company
said: “This is a complex, multi-dimensional issue.
“The methodology
requires in-depth investigation, analysis and ideation in order to
Trend-correct the current decline in USPS Stamp volume and begin to structure
powerful mechanisms for growth.”
Postal Service
spokeswoman Toni DeLancey said BrainReserve
had not previously done business with the Postal Service.
It was founded in 1974
and has worked for American Express, Campbell Soup Co. and other Fortune 500
firms, DeLancey said in an e-mail to Federal Times. Manabe previously worked at Campbell Soup.
It is “important to
note,” DeLancey said, that BrainReserve’s
statements of work for this and other assignments are not USPS documents.
The “terms and
conditions of any task order awarded may be different from what is reflected in
these documents,” she said.
Asked about Manabe’s role in the study, DeLancey
told Linn’s: “The Chief Marketing and Sales Officer has a long history in the
marketing and innovation fields, and she is familiar with numerous innovation
agencies.
“Prior to conducting the
competition, when the Postal Service was researching potential sources, Ms. Manabe identified eight leading innovation agencies for
possible consideration in the source selection process. Having been in the
marketing industry for 22 years at leading consumer product companies, Ms. Manabe has a broad range of contacts with leading marketing
agencies nationally and internationally.”
Federal Times said the
stamp project is one of five task orders that BrainReserve
has so far received from USPS.
Another is an almost
$1.1 million project that would consider using letter carriers to provide paid
home visitation services to the elderly and ill.
The Reuters news service
reported that Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas,
chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, said the
agency should be worried about other problems.
"While small in
terms of the overall crisis USPS faces, this certainly seems like a poor use of
its limited funds," he said in response to a question on the BrainReserve contract.
The Association for
Postal Commerce, an organization composed of bulk mailers, noted the story on
its website, adding: "Dear USPS — Please deduct
$565,769 from your exigency [rate] request. I don't think you need us to pay
for that."
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Save
the Jenny — but not in the original envelope
Linn’s Stamp News
November 4, 2013
Michael Baadke
As Linn’s reported on
page 1 in the Oct. 21 issue, the United States Postal Service intentionally
created 100 panes of its new $2 Inverted Jenny souvenir sheet as a special
variety with the airplane flying right side up, rather than inverted, on the
six stamps on the pane.
Anyone buying the
Inverted Jenny stamps, therefore, has a slim chance of actually obtaining an
invert of the invert.
Those who obtain the
specially printed pane of six can choose to add the variety to their collection
or sell it for a profit.
To keep anyone from
going through the $2 sheets and picking out the varieties that are randomly
inserted among the normal issues, each pane of six stamps is sealed inside a
security-printed envelope that is placed within clear plastic packaging.
From the outside, you
can’t see what you’re getting.
There’s obviously a good
reason to carefully open the plastic packaging after you buy it and remove the
Jenny pane: You just might discover that you’ve won this Postal Service lottery
and received one of the 100 variety panes.
And once you’ve taken
the stamps out of the envelope, it’s a good idea to keep them out.
Postal Service
representatives confirmed to Linn’s that the packaging holding each one of the
2.2 million panes of six stamps — both the normal issue and the variety — is
not safe for long-term stamp storage.
That means that over
time, a reaction with the paper envelope or the plastic sleeve could
potentially harm your stamps.
Some collectors will
want to save the packaging. It’s best, though, to keep it away from your
stamps. Your Jenny souvenir sheet should be preserved in a stamp mount, sleeve
or stock book that is chemically safe for stamp storage.
Janet L. Yellen, the vice chair of the board of governors of the
Federal Reserve System, was nominated Oct. 9 by President Barack Obama to head
the Federal Reserve, replacing fed chief Ben Bernanke, who will step down when
his term ends Jan. 31.
Yellen is
a stamp collector. Associated Press economics
writer Martin Crutsinger filed a report in early
October, stating that Yellen and her husband,
George Akerlof (who won the 2001 Nobel Prize for
economics), share a stamp collection valued between $15,000 and $50,000.
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Gingerbread Houses stamps Nov. 6 in New
York; sugary works of art built, photographed for set
Linn’s Stamp News
November 4, 2013
Jay Bigalke
Four scrumptious, sugary
works of gingerbread architecture are featured on new United States
contemporary Christmas stamps scheduled to be issued Nov. 6 in New York City.
This is the second
contemporary Christmas stamp issue for this year, following the Poinsettia
stamp issued Oct. 10 (Linn’s, Oct. 7, page 1).
The four Gingerbread
Houses forever stamps will be sold in a double-sided pane of 20 (convertible
booklet format).
The first-day ceremony
for the stamps is scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. in the lobby of the James
A. Farley post office at 421 Eighth Ave., in New York City.
According to U.S. Postal
Service spokeswoman Stephanie Hill, the ceremony will include a life-size
gingerbread house building event.
She added that
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe and USPS chief
marketing officer Nagisa Manabe
“will usher in the holiday spirit by unveiling the Gingerbread Houses stamps
and discussing the important seasonal mailing dates.”
Derry Noyes of
Washington, D.C., designed the stamps using photographs by Sally Andersen-Bruce
of gingerbread houses set against a blue background. The gingerbread works of
art were created by Teresa Layman.
Each stamp depicts a
similarly constructed building with different colors for the decorations on the
roofs and doors. The actual buildings are approximately 10 inches tall,
according to the Postal Service.
The stamps show a house
with a red roof, shutters and door; a green roof with blue shutters and door; a
yellow roof with orange shutters and a green door; and a house with an orange
roof, shutters and door.
The color of the forever
inscription matches the roof color for each respective stamp.
Banknote Corporation of
America (for Sennett Security Products)printed 750
million of the new Gingerbread Houses stamps.
Two different types of
press sheet segments will be sold: one with normal die cuts and one without. A
total of 2,500 of each variety will be made available.
A standard black ink
four-bar first-day cancel and a digital color first-day postmark will be
offered for the Gingerbread Houses stamps.
Technical details and
first-day-cancel ordering information for the Gingerbread Houses forever stamps
can be found in the box below.
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Press
sheets for Eid and Jenny variety sold out
Linn’s Stamp News
November 4, 2013
Jay Bigalke
The Eid
forever stamp press sheet issued Aug. 8 has sold out, and one of the two $2
Inverted Jenny press sheet varieties issued Sept. 22 has also sold out.
A call to the USPS
retail stamp ordering service revealed both sheets were unavailable as of early
October. United States Postal Service officials did not respond to repeated
requests for confirmation that the items were sold out.
Only 500 Eid press sheets were placed on sale. A press sheet for
this issue consists of eight unsevered panes of 20
stamps without the die cuts that normally separate individual stamps, arranged
four panes across by two down. No normal die-cut version of the Eid press sheet was offered.
The sold-out $2 Inverted
Jenny press sheet without die cuts was produced in a larger quantity of 3,000.
The configuration of this press sheet is three panes of six stamps across by
two down.
The press sheet of the
$2 Inverted Jenny with normal die cuts is still available.
Outside of the two
sold-out issues, each press sheet variety offered to date in 2013 has been
issued in a quantity of 2,500.
These are the third and
fourth 2013 press sheets to sell out. The first was the Modern Art in America
press sheet issued without die cuts March 7. The second was the Made in America
press sheet without die cuts issued Aug. 8.
Press sheets and sheet
varieties without die cuts are not assigned separate Scott catalog major
numbers by the catalog editors. Instead, they are mentioned and valued in the
Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers in a footnote
following the issue listing.
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OPINION
Linn’s Stamp News
November 4, 2013
I just received two
Inverted Jenny souvenir sheets ordered from USPS Stamp Fulfillment Services.
After unsealing the
packaging I regrettably didn’t get the prized uninverted
special variety.
The sheets I did receive
had atrocious centering, with the bottom die cuts almost touching the red
border design.
I’ve returned items to
Stamp Fulfillment Services before for reason No. 6 on the USPS invoice: “Not
Collector Quality.” But then I noticed that a non-return/exchange statement is
printed on the back of the Jenny cellophane packaging.
What is this now — buyer
beware? I didn’t see any such notice in the catalog when I ordered.
Why should a collector
be stuck with inferior or damaged merchandise because the Postal Service wants
to play find the hidden pea?
Dennis Philipkoski
New Hartford, N.Y.
I was shocked to find
that all three Inverted Jenny sheets I bought had extremely poor centering and
would probably grade average, not even good.
Since I had to cut the
cellophane and had to slice open the sealed white envelope, the post office
will not take these back.
I am very disappointed
and will never purchase stamps from the post office in this manner again.
John Muroski
Toms River, N.J.
The statement printed on
the back of the Jenny packaging reads: “Stamps are intentionally sold in sealed
packages. Do not purchase an opened package. Only sealed packages may be
returned/exchanged.”
Jenny done right
Some readers were being
crabby pants earlier this year when they wrote in about the Inverted Jenny
commemorative stamp.
I think the stamp and
the commemorative sheet are beautiful. The USPS did this one right.
The size of each stamp
and coloration — including the cream color background — is perfect. The stamp
vignette, frame and selvage design printed in my favorite intaglio is a
definite plus.
And, when the souvenir
sheet’s backside is examined for the stamp history and info, it is found to be
printed upside down! Who doesn’t love this little smiley nod to the subject
matter of the stamp?
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Guest
opinion: USPS will keep delivering for America if Congress allows
Billings Gazette
October 23, 2013
David Vaughn
Every day except Sunday
a postal carrier walks or drives by your residence looking for the chance to
bring you something from afar. He or she is a member of your community. His
obligation is to you, not to the stockholders of the corporate entity that
employs him. If you ordered something from Amazon, if you bought something on
eBay, if you want to send out wedding invitations or a sympathy card, if you
want a hard copy of your hometown newspaper or Time magazine, your postal carrier
is there to serve you....
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Privatization
Benefits the 1%; Public Services Benefit Everyone
BuzzFlash
October 21, 2013
Paul Buchheit
Private systems are focused on making profits for a
few well-positioned people. Public systems, when sufficiently supported by
taxes, work for everyone in a generally equitable manner.
The following are six specific reasons why privatization simply doesn't work.
1. The Profit Motive Moves Most of the Money to the Top
The federal Medicare Administrator made $170,000 in 2010. The president
of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas made over ten times as much in 2012.
Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group,
made almost 300 times as much in one year,
$48 million, most of it from company stock.
In part because of such inequities in compensation, our private health
care system is the most expensive system in the developed world. The price of common surgeries is anywhere from three
to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or
Germany. Two of the documented examples: an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare
would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, for which a private
insurance company was willing to pay $2,000.
Medicare, on the other hand, which is largely without the profit motive and the
competing sources of billing, is efficiently run, for all eligible Americans.
According to the Council for Affordable Health
Insurance and other sources, medical administrative
costs are much higher for private insurance than for Medicare.
But the privatizers keep encroaching on the public sector. Our government reimburses the CEOs of private
contractors at a rate approximately double what we pay the President. Overall,
we pay the corporate bosses over $7 billion a year.
Many Americans don't realize that the privatization of Social Security and
Medicare would transfer much of our money to yet another group of CEOs.
2. Privatization Serves People With Money, the
Public Sector Serves Everyone
A good example is the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which is legally
required to serve every home in
the country. Fedex and United Parcel Service (UPS)
can't serve unprofitable locations. Yet the USPS is much cheaper for small
packages. An online comparison revealed the following for the two-day shipment
of a similarly-sized envelope to another state:
-- USPS 2-Day $5.68 (46 cents without the 2-day restriction)
-- FedEx 2-Day $19.28
-- UPS, 2 Day $24.09
USPS is so inexpensive, in fact, that Fedex actually
uses the U.S. Post Office for about 30 percent of its ground
shipments.
Another example is education. A recent ProPublica report found that in
the past twenty years four-year state colleges have been serving a diminishing
portion of the country's lowest-income students. At the K-12 level, cost-saving
business strategies apply to the privatization of our children's education.
Charter schools are less likely to accept students with disabilities. Charter teachers have fewer years of experience and a higher turnover
rate. Non-teacher positions have insufficient retirement plans and
health insurance, and much lower pay.
Finally, with regard to health care, 43 percent of sick Americans skipped doctor's visits and/or
medication purchases in 2011 because of excessive costs. It's estimated that over 40,000
Americans die every year because they can't afford health insurance.
3. Privatization Turns Essential Human Needs Into
Products
Big business would like to privatize our water. A Citigroup
economist exulted, "Water as an
asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important
physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural
commodities and precious metals."
They want our federal land. Attempts at privatization were made
by the Reagan administration
in the 1980s and the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. In 2006,
President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in
41 states. Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity was based in part on
Republican Jason Chaffetz' "Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of
2011," which would unload millions of acres of
land in America's west.
They want our cities. A privatization expert told the Detroit Free Press
that the real money is in urban assets with a "revenue stream." So
Detroit's most valuable resource, its Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD),
is the collateral for a loan of $350
million to pay off the banks handling the litigation. Bloomberg estimates a cost of
almost half a billion dollars, in a city where homeowners can barely afford the
water services.
And they want our bodies. One-fifth of the human genome is privately owned
through patents. Strains of influenza and hepatitis have been claimed by corporate and
university labs, and because of this researchers can't use the patented life
forms to perform cancer research.
4. Public Systems Promote a Strong Middle Class
Part of free-market mythology is that public employees and union workers are
greedy takers, enjoying benefits that average private sector workers are
denied. But the facts show that government and union workers are not overpaid.
According to the Census Bureau, state and local
government employees make up 14.5% of the U.S. workforce and receive 14.3% of
the total compensation. Union members make up about 12% of the workforce, but
their total pay amounts to just 10% of adjusted gross income as reported to the IRS.
The average private sector worker makes about the same salary as a state or
local government worker. But the median salary for U.S.
workers, 83% of whom are in the
private sector, was $18,000 less in 2009, at $26,261. Inequality is much more
pervasive in the private sector.
5. The Private Sector Has Incentive to Fail, or No Incentive at All
The most obvious incentive to fail is in the private prison
industry. One would think it a worthy goal to rehabilitate prisoners and
gradually empty the jails. But business is too good. With each prisoner generating up to $40,000 a year in
revenue, the number of prisoners in private facilities has increased from 1990 to 2009 by
more than 1600%, from about 7,000 to over 125,000 inmates. Corrections Corporation of America recently offered to run
the prison system in any state willing to guarantee that jails stay 90% full.
Nor do privatizers have incentive to maintain infrastructure. David Cay Johnston describes the
deteriorating state of America's structural foundation, with grids and
pipelines neglected by monopolistic industries that cut costs rather than
provide maintenance. Meanwhile, they achieve profit margins of over 50%, eight
times the corporate average.
As for public safety, warning signs about unregulated
privatization are becoming clearer and more deadly. The Texas fertilizer plant, where 14 people were
killed in an explosion and fire, was last inspected by the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA) over 25 years ago. The U.S. Forest Service,
stunned by the Prescott, Arizona fire that killed 19, was forced by the sequester
to cut 500 firefighters. The rail disaster in Lac-Megantic, Quebec followed deregulation of Canadian
railways. At the other extreme is the public sector, and the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), which rescued hundreds of people
after Hurricane Sandy while serving millions more with meals and water.
The lack of private incentive for human betterment is evident throughout the
world. The World Hunger Education Service states that
"Harmful economic systems are the principal cause of poverty and
hunger." And according to Nicholas Stern, the chief economist
for the World Bank, climate change is "the greatest market failure the
world has seen."
6. With Public Systems, We Don't Have to Listen to
"Individual Initiative" Rantings
Back in the Reagan years, a stunning claim was made by Margaret Thatcher:
"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women,
and there are families." More recently, Paul Ryan complained that government support
"drains individual initiative and personal responsibility."
That's easy to say for people with good jobs.
Individual initiative? Our publicly supported communications infrastructure
allows the richest 10% of Americans to manipulate their 80% share of the stock market. CEOs rely on roads and
seaports and airports to ship their products, the FAA and TSA and Coast Guard
and Department of Transportation to safeguard them, a nationwide energy grid to
power their factories, and communications towers and satellites to conduct
online business. Perhaps most important to business, even as it focuses on
short-term profits, is the long-term basic research that is largely conducted
with government money. As of 2009 universities were still receiving
ten times more science & engineering funding from government than from
industry.
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Is The USPS
Killing Direct Marketing?
Soulati
Media
October 22, 2013
Jayme Soulati
The U.S. Postal Service
(USPS) lost $3.9 billion the first nine months of 2013, according to BtoB in its Oct. 15, 2013 edition. The USPS has a
proposal before Congress to raise first-class postage to $.49 from its current
$.46, a 6.5 percent hike.
Direct marketers are
suffering from the USPS’s “precarious financial condition,” and the two leading
organizations paying careful attention to how this proposal wends its way
toward possible approval are the Direct Marketing Association and the Catalog
Mailers Association.
The article in BtoB providing the fodder for this post points also to
internet taxation and data security issues as culprits to direct marketing’s
pain points.
Postcard Mailings Still
Viable
When you think of direct
marketing, most thoughts turn to catalogs. The colorful, modelicious
glam pages much like magazines selling everything from personal care, attire
and furniture to hardware and technology are what we love to flip through, dog
ear the pages and circle items for a wish list.
Think about postcards. How
often do you get a postcard in the mail for the appointment for the dentist,
vet, or next hair cut? How about the insurance agents, landscapers and roofers
wanting your attention via a postcard?
There are many
businesses using postcard mailings as the core of their lead generation and
customer service. I, for one, count on the post