Postal Service

The Ravens got under Eric Gilbert's skin this week. Wednesday found the 33-year-old football fan stretched out in a Hampden tattoo parlor as an artist carved the image of a raven into his flesh. For three hours, Gilbert lay still as the tattoo machine hummed along, its razor-sharp needles burrowing just beneath the skin to produce the tattoo of his dreams. Never mind the pain, he said. "I wanted something to pay homage to the Ravens," said Gilbert of Hampden. "And I'd like to think this will bring them luck."

Updated with comments from Harris and Bartlett. In a rare intra-delegation, across-the-aisle nudge, Sen.Barbara A. Mikulskion Tuesday called on the state's two Republican lawmakers in Washington to support a Senate version of an overhaul of theU.S. Postal Servicethat would save a pair of mail sorting facilities that just happen to be located in the lawmakers' districts. The move instantly put Republican Reps. Andy Harris and Roscoe Bartlett on defense, forcing them to either support the bipartisan Senate version of the postal legislation -- which is not popular with Republican House leaders -- or acknowledge that the Postal Service must be allowed to trim costs and close plants, even if the cuts are made in their own districts.

Isn't it ironic that our government could afford to subsidize our involvement in Iraq to the tune of $12 billion per month, yet it cannot afford to subsidize the U.S. Postal Service, one of the best-operating federal agencies, at a fraction of that cost ("'Snail mail' could get slower under Postal Service plan," Dec. 6)? Donald T. Torres, Ellicott City

Key senators reached a tentative agreement Tuesday to save a mail processing center considered significant to the Eastern Shore economy but left the fate of more than a dozen post offices in the Baltimore region uncertain as they considered a sweeping bill to overhaul theU.S. Postal Service. The underlying bipartisan legislation, which is poised for a vote in the Senate Wednesday, would allow the cash-strapped mail service to inch closer to ending Saturday delivery after a two-year waiting period and also restructure the way it pays retiree health benefits - potentially saving the agency billions of dollars a year.

It's going to be more expensive to mail holiday greetings and birthday cards next year. But the U.S. Postal Service announced Tuesday that the price of a first-class stamp will increase to 45 cents starting on January 22, the first price increase in two years, according to Reuters. Prices for postcards will increase three pennies to 32 cents and letters to Canada and Mexico will increase to 85 cents. Sending a greeting to someone outside of North America increases to $1.05.

Ever since Congress stupidly decided to make the U.S. Postal Service a quasi-private entity, the organization has been going steadily downhill. The arrangement has grossly inflated the ranks of upper and mid-level management, people who have nothing to do with the post office's actual mission of delivering the mail. On top of that, some upper management idiots decided to spend millions of dollars on changing the design of the Postal Service's logo and are now engaged in a massive TV advertising campaign to get people to ship more packages by USPS.

Mail carriers will attempt to resume deliveries today, according to the U.S. Postal Service. Deliveries were canceled throughout Maryland on Saturday due to the snowy weather, said Postal Service spokewoman Freda Sauter. On Monday, "carriers will make every attempt to deliver as long as there's safe conditions," she said. Residents are asked to clear a path to their mailboxes to ensure it is visible and safe to access. Mail will not be delivered if carriers deem conditions to be unsafe, according to the postal service.

Few institutions touch more Americans than the U.S. Postal Service, whose role is spelled out in the Constitution and which delivers to 150 million homes and businesses six days a week. Letter carriers get to know our communities, occasionally saving elderly residents who are ill, finding lost children and stopping crime. We annually conduct the nation's largest single-day food drive, replenishing food pantries in Baltimore and elsewhere. And yet, the misinformation circulating about the Postal Service is startling, such as the notion that in delivering the mail, the USPS has a massive imbalance between revenues and expenses.

A foreign student I knew in college said he loved America for three reasons: our freedoms, the quality of our peanut butter and the excellence of our postal service. He thought it was cool that we could gather and protest anything we wanted to, whenever we wanted to. He thought the famous brands of peanut butter on the supermarket shelves were all good. And he was absolutely amazed that he could mail a letter from Connecticut on a Monday and have it reach almost anywhere in the country by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest.

WASHINGTON - The Postal Service took the first formal step Wednesday toward cutting mail delivery to five days a week. The postal governing board agreed to ask the independent Postal Regulatory Commission for an opinion on dropping Saturday delivery. That request goes to the commission next week. Under the proposal, mail delivery to homes and businesses and mail collection from blue mailboxes would be limited to Monday through Friday. However, post offices that are now open on Saturdays would remain open, and Express Mail delivery service would still be available seven days a week.

Your article on cost cutting at the Postal Service is an ominous indication of the progress of the far-right campaign to destroy the U.S. Post Office, which has served our nation since its beginning and is enshrined in Article I of our Constitution ("Postal Service cost-cutting may deliver blow to Easton," March 10). Contrary to the lies being propagated by those who would leave us at the mercy of FedEx and other private competitors, the USPS is not broke and has not used any taxpayer money since 1971.

The only way to reach Supai, Ariz. (population 208), is to hike or helicopter eight miles to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. TheU.S. Postal Servicedelivers mail and supplies there three days a week - by mule. Although the country's steepest canyon may be no match for the American mail carrier, our postal system does face a gaping threat from a huge hole of another kind: After several years of modest surpluses, the postal service lost $25.4 billion between 2007 and 2011, plunging $13 billion into debt.

Kathie Jones loses more than patience when the mail is late. She also loses customers. As the owner of a small business that prepares bulk mail for delivery by the U.S. Postal Service, Jones hears complaints every time a church newsletter or a political ad she sends arrives late — even if the delays are not her fault. If mail is lost, she has to start projects over, sometimes eating the cost. So Jones is understandably wary about a Postal Service proposal to close the last mail-sorting hub on the Eastern Shore, located a few hundred feet from the Easton Municipal Airport.

Reps. Roscoe G. Bartlett and Chris Van Hollen are planning to take service members past and present to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address Tuesday evening. Bartlett, a Western Maryland Republican, and Van Hollen, a Montgomery County Democrat, are among some two dozen lawmakers participating in the bipartisan effort organized by the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs and the House National Guard and Reserve Components Caucus to help focus attention on veterans' needs.

Ever since Congress stupidly decided to make the U.S. Postal Service a quasi-private entity, the organization has been going steadily downhill. The arrangement has grossly inflated the ranks of upper and mid-level management, people who have nothing to do with the post office's actual mission of delivering the mail. On top of that, some upper management idiots decided to spend millions of dollars on changing the design of the Postal Service's logo and are now engaged in a massive TV advertising campaign to get people to ship more packages by USPS.

Isn't it ironic that our government could afford to subsidize our involvement in Iraq to the tune of $12 billion per month, yet it cannot afford to subsidize the U.S. Postal Service, one of the best-operating federal agencies, at a fraction of that cost ("'Snail mail' could get slower under Postal Service plan," Dec. 6)? Donald T. Torres, Ellicott City

Most Americans are just an email, Tweet or Facebook update away from reaching someone else - or the entire world. And the trend is accelerating, as the number of email accounts alone is expected to grow by almost a billion worldwide from last year to 2014. Now, the U.S. Postal Service has practically conceded that it's being left in the digital dust. The Postal Service proposed Monday changing its first-class delivery standard so mail will arrive two to three days after it is shipped, rather than as early as overnight.

The only way to reach Supai, Ariz. (population 208), is to hike or helicopter eight miles to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. TheU.S. Postal Servicedelivers mail and supplies there three days a week - by mule. Although the country's steepest canyon may be no match for the American mail carrier, our postal system does face a gaping threat from a huge hole of another kind: After several years of modest surpluses, the postal service lost $25.4 billion between 2007 and 2011, plunging $13 billion into debt.

Most Americans are just an email, Tweet or Facebook update away from reaching someone else - or the entire world. And the trend is accelerating, as the number of email accounts alone is expected to grow by almost a billion worldwide from last year to 2014. Now, the U.S. Postal Service has practically conceded that it's being left in the digital dust. The Postal Service proposed Monday changing its first-class delivery standard so mail will arrive two to three days after it is shipped, rather than as early as overnight.

It's going to be more expensive to mail holiday greetings and birthday cards next year. But the U.S. Postal Service announced Tuesday that the price of a first-class stamp will increase to 45 cents starting on January 22, the first price increase in two years, according to Reuters. Prices for postcards will increase three pennies to 32 cents and letters to Canada and Mexico will increase to 85 cents. Sending a greeting to someone outside of North America increases to $1.05.