Franklin (1706-1790) put in place the foundation for many aspects of today’s mail system. Grow Old With Me This song is by The Postal Service and appears on the compilation Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur (2007). There is currently an effort to reduce direct delivery in favor of mailbox clusters. All unused U.S. postage stamps issued since 1861 are still valid as postage at their indicated value. When Franklin left office, post roads operated from Maine to Florida and from New York to Canada, and mail between the colonies and the mother country operated on a regular schedule, with posted times. [16], It is by geography and volume the globe's largest postal system, delivering 47% of the world's mail. [196], The last air delivery route in the continental U.S., to residents in the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness, was scheduled to be ended in June 2009. But some stamps beginning in 1988 or earlier, including Forever Stamps (issued from April 2007) and all first-class, first-ounce stamps issued from January 21, 2011, the value is the current value of a first-class-mail first-ounce stamp. Gold, Michael, and Katie Rogers (March 29, 2018). Under pressure from Britain, the United States hesitantly accepted Liberian sovereignty, making the West African nation the first democratic republic in African history. The program was ended in early 2007 after an analysis revealed that the significant amount of capital investment required to implement the END network concept would not generate the benefits originally anticipated. Domestic surface mail (now "Retail Ground" or "Commercial Parcel Select") remains available. [213][214] The trial was initially limited to San Francisco and the only retailer to participate in the first few weeks was 1-800-FLOWERS.[215]. The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, when Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general. On January 28, 2009, Postmaster General John E. Potter testified before the Senate[48] that, if the Postal Service could not readjust its payment toward the contractually funding earned employee retiree health benefits, as mandated by the Postal Accountability & Enhancement Act of 2006,[49] the USPS would be forced to consider cutting delivery to five days per week during June, July, and August. The changes are a result of the declining volumes of single-piece First-Class Mail, population shifts, the increase in drop shipments by advertising mailers at destinating postal facilities, advancements in equipment and technology, redundancies in the existing network, and the need for operational flexibility. The regulatory system is relatively limited and not really able to represent the interests of the public as a whole. Postal Service spokespeople have also said that some of these boxes will be replaced with newer models. "Beyond Going Postal: Shifting from Workplace Tragedies and Toxic Work Environments to a Safe and Healthy Organization", (2009) Booksurge Publishing, This page was last edited on 29 December 2020, at 02:42. [37], On December 5, 2011, the USPS announced it would close more than half of its mail processing centers, eliminate 28,000 jobs and reduce overnight delivery of First-Class Mail. To assure financial support for these obligations, the postal monopoly provides the Postal Service the exclusive right to deliver letters and restricts mailbox access solely for mail. [51], In February 2013, the USPS announced that in order to save about $2 billion per year, Saturday delivery service would be discontinued except for packages, mail-order medicines, Priority Mail, Express Mail, and mail delivered to Post Office boxes, beginning August 10, 2013. The address data is associated with the image via an ID Tag, a fluorescent barcode printed by mail processing equipment on the back of mail pieces. Additionally, machines with a recent Optical Character Recognition (OCR) upgrade have the capability to read the address information, including handwritten, and sort the mail based on local or outgoing ZIP codes. [44] In a survey of rural customers, 54% preferred the new plan of retaining rural post offices with reduced hours, 20% preferred the "Village Post Office" replacement (where a nearby private retail store would provide basic mail services with expanded hours), 15% preferred merger with another Post Office, and 11% preferred expanded rural delivery services. If, for example, the PES and the mailbox rule were to be eliminated, and the USO maintained, then either billions of dollars in tax revenues or some other source of funding would have to be found. 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