Try reading the thread.:rolleyes:
:rolleyes: Right back at you. Please quote exactly where does it say the USPS is considering closing down its operations. The OP says the USPS is considering cutting deliveries by one day per week.
In the thread, certain posters have proposed eliminating the USPS. This is obviously what my original post in the thread was in response to.:rolleyes:
yeah, rolleyes all you want but why instead don’t you just quote the “certain posters” as is customary on this board. That way we can know exactly what was said and in what context. But is seems you would rather keep us in the dark and that you might be arguing against your own imagination. I will be happy to give you the opportunity to roll your eyes some more if you just provide us with a cite.
Those who have M-F jobs will really be in straits if they close all operations on Saturday.
Actually, I do know what a Post Road is, I live about two miles from Old Post Road. More seriously, Universal Mail Service is something the US is more or less obligated to have thanks to a series of treaties, as well as laws.
The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 says,
The treaties basically state that the US Government has the obligation to deliver mail from outside the country to any citizen it is addressed to.
The fact that it is in the Constitution, though, does establish the mail as a fundamental obligation of the government, and abolishing it would probably fall under fairly heavy scrutiny.
I’m aware that the USPS is as independent as the Federal Reserve, but despite that, it is still part of the government, and still controlled as such. It’s not free to ditch obligations. In fact, it’s a “independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States” rather than a company.
In fact, I will go so far to say “The concept of a universal service obligation (USO) is embedded in the U.S. Constitution.” Or rather, the USPS will.
http://www.usps.com/postallaw/_txt/USPSUSOReport.txt
http://www.usps.com/postallaw/universalpostalservice.htm
Now, the concept doesn’t mean that they have to, and it doesn’t mean that they forever will. And we used to have 7 day delivery till the preachers complained about it.
But I am going to say that it’s pretty clear that delivering the mail is a fundamental concern and obligation of a government, no matter what shape it is in, electronic or physical, and as long as the mail exists, the mail must go through.
Hell, if Ben Franklin thought it was important enough to be the first Postmaster General, I’m not gonna argue with him.
Musicat questioning why the Post Office is the Government’s responsibility. Which is what prompted my post, sailor.
I’ve never understood how the Post Office has been losing so much business lately. Shouldn’t the Amazon/eBay/online shoping in general boom mean the USPS is swimming in money?
Is most of that stuff shipped UPS, FedEx or (shudder) DHL? I always pick the USPS option because it’s always the cheapest, you’d think they’d be cherrypicking a ton of business that way.
The point is that the article of the Constitution you cited does not say what you said it says and it does not support your assertion that the government of the USA is obligated by the Constitution to provide mail service. Or I want to see where is that country-wide network of posts where I can change horses for fresh ones.
This makes absolutely no sense. “More or less obligated”? What does that mean? The USA is not in any way shape or form obligated to have a government run or sponsored mail service. The legislature can dissolve or privatise the USPS any time they want and no one can say anything about it. Not a thing.
The USPS has agreements with postal services in other countries but no country is obligated to have a government-run postal service and the USPS is not obligated to use the foreign postal services anyway. The USPS subcontracts to private contractors part of its European deliveries. I suppose they save money that way.
If the USPS disappeared tomorrow then the postal services from other countries would just have to find someone else to do the work or just say they cannot accept certain types of mail for the USA as they already do for some countries.
Again, most of the argument boils down to “because that’s how it’s always been done”. And just how necessary or desirable it is is a matter of opinion and of time but the point is that the assertion that the US government is somehow obligated to keep the USPS is just false and that you only have to look for the horse-changing stations to see that.
All it takes is the Congress passing a bill which says “The USPS is history”, then the Senate saying “fuck yeah!” and the president signing “It was about time!”
No. It does not. You can repeat it all you want. It is obviously not true. Or I want to see horses on every highway.
Please make up your mind. What is it?
That is your opinion which I respect. But your premise is that the US government has an undeclinable obligation to deliver mail and you cited some laws to support that position. And I say that, without entering on the desirability of having mail, frequent or infrequent, the US government does not have the obligation you assert because the constitution does not say what you claim it says.
So, again, where are the horses?
I think he had in mind this post: # 41 where one said “I wish they’d cut service to zero days a week.” Don’t know if there were others, just the one I remembered.
I’d rather see the USPS raise prices to stay in their current form. They provide a top-quality service IMO, much better than freaking UPS (but then a drunken St. Bernard carrying your package could probably deliver it better than UPS…). I think a lot of folks really take for granted how well the USPS does work for the vast majority of people.
You want to see a serious clusterfuck, just try living with Royal Mail in the UK for a few weeks…two deliveries a day don’t make up for their outrageous prices and taking 5 days to deliver post 3 miles.
This is where it gets complicated.
The Universal Postal Convention of 1874 establishes implicit but not explicit requirements for universal service. So… Yes, technically, you can read the Constitution to say that ‘Congress may but does not have to perform certain tasks.’
Except that Congress has to provide for the general welfare, and the postal system is a governmental function that is considered part of the general welfare and has been so since before the Constitution was signed.
It is possible. Technically. That we could extricate ourselves from these treaties, that start with the UPC, and have been revised ever since. It is possible that Congress would divest themselves of this power.
They could also divest themselves of the power to tax.
I believe that divesting themselves of dealing with the mail entirely would be… troublesome. Seriously so, with ramifications and lawsuits that I really can’t predict. I could see the Supreme Court ruling that delivery of mail has become an obligation fairly easily, but I would need Bricker’s opinion on this to verify.
As far as how important this is, it’s right up there with a legal system, a navy, and coining money.
No, it seems you can’t even look up a few posts to read the thread. Here’s Rand Rover proposing eliminating the postal service in post #41:
Here’s Musicat advocating full privitization in post #48:
And here you are in post #52:
Now, I realize this statement is not serious (although given the nuttiness of you’re posts directed at me, I’m not sure). But why would you put a statement like this in a thread in which “no one is considering eliminating the USPS”? Who is this statement directed to then? Why is it ok for you to discuss eliminating the postal service, but it’s not okay for anyone else to? There aren’t even enough :rolleyes: to discuss how silly your posts are.
Others have said what I’ve thought about it (please don’t take away Saturday delivery!!!). My bills arrive Saturday. I live in a place where if I try to pay some of my bills online, they’ll charge me an extra $3 (I’m not kidding). I’d rather pay 42 cents and send it by mail. Or I could go to their office and pay it there… Except their office is probably open something like 9:30am until 5pm. Guess what my working hours are?
It’s bad enough that my closest post office is in the corner of the local pharmacy, and neither that one nor the next closest one accept debit or credit cards (only cash and checks).
I would rather that the non-delivery days not be consecutive.
Also… a post road has nothing to do with horses. It’s a road along which postal carriers travel to deliver mail from post house to post house. I should point out that all railroads were designated post roads at one point. July 7th, 1938, it seems. (Though they used post route to mean the same as post road in that specific act. Don’t ask me why.)
The colonial post roads were travelled by horse or by horse and carriage, yes, but they could have been walked as well, without them being any less a post road.
It is customary and polite to quote the post you are responding to rather than make people read the whole thread and guess. But hey, I guess manners are not your forte.
The premise is faulty. The government loses no money as the USPS is self-financing. I do not know how that affects Rand Rover’s position but you can see why it is necesary to know what you are responding to. It seems to me more defending privatization than disappearance, but, never mind.
Again, privatization is not elimination. If you quote the post we know what you are responding to and we have the necessary context.
No, as very clearly stated in the OP,
At the present time there is no talk and no chance of it disappearing. You need not worry.
You are mistaken. The “posts” were the stations along the way where tired horses were exchanged for fresh horses. That is the original meaning of “post” in English, French (poste), Spanish (posta), etc. That organization goes back to the middle ages and was used by official couriers and others who were authorised. I already quoted the dictionary
In any case, it is irrelevant. The point is that the Constitution does not mandate the government operate a mail system, it authorises the government to operate a mail system. That’s the point.
In 1590 Antonio Perez escapes from his prison and flees:
It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again–read the constitution. It’s not a long document, and I’ll even lead you through some of the reasons that doing so would have shown you that your point makes little sense from a constitutional standpoint.
Saying that
makes little sense. First, the UPC is not the constitution, and does not change what the constitution says or requires. The UPC is a treaty, equivalent to a law (when self-executing or combined with a statute, but I’ll leave that alone for now). Each is subordinate to the constitution–this is why laws can be unconstitutional. They can’t change what the constitution says. So the UPC cannot create a constitutional obligation to do anything-it’s simply not part of the constitution.
Secondly, it’s not a “technical” reading to say that Art. I S8 (“The Congress shall have power…”) gives congress the power, but not the obligation to do something–it’s the plain meaning of the text.
To see how the two differ, look for example at Art. III S1 (“The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”)—Here, there is an obligation to have “one supreme court”, but that congress “may” establish inferior courts. Art I S8 gives congress the power to establish inferior courts, (just as in the same section, it gives congress the power to establish a post office) but there is clearly no obligation to do so.
The general welfare clause you refer obliquely to is in the preamble–which isn’t a source of rights or a limitation thereof–it’s telling you what the rest of the constitution sets out to do, but doesn’t create any right or power in its own right. (One way to understand this is through analogy to the Heller (DC gun ban) decision-which completely read out a similar phrase in the 2d amendment.)
A simpler, but straightforward demonstration-there are plenty of things the federal government doesn’t provide that would, if provided, promote the general welfare. The constitution doesn’t give it an obligation to provide all of them (for one thing, how do we figure out what they are?). If the constitution did so require, EVERY SINGLE GOVERNMENT has fundamentally failed to live up to its constitutional obligations.
Also note that the constitution was a revolutionary act-one inconsistent with prior laws binding the United States, that has force because it creates a new structure of laws. Hence, while what happened before the constitution may be instructive, it doesn’t bind the Federal Government afterwards–creating the constitution changed all the rules.
Congress doesn’t need to “divest” itself of the power to create a postal service to get rid of the postal service. (or to privatize it, if it so chooses). Congress can simply choose not to enact laws under any of the sources of authority it has to do so.
For example, congress also has the power to “To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal”-the fact that it has not recently issued any letters of Marque and Reprisal doesn’t mean that it has somehow lost the power so to do.
Similarly, the existence of treaties doesn’t matter–their power comes from Art. VI, “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land”
Generally, this is interpreted to make treaties co-equal with laws–so just as a later law can supersede an earlier one, a law can also supersede a treaty.
In fact, while it wouldn’t be be “troublesome” for congress to get rid of the post office, it would be unconstitutional for it to surrender the power to create a post office. To do so would require a constitutional amendment to do so–as the power is explicitly enumerated in Article I.
IANAL, and IANBricker, but for the reasons above, there is no constitutional obligation to deliver mail. The supreme court wouldn’t rule that there is such an obligation–especially now, with a near-majority of strict constructionalists (and one wacky textualist) who won’t go near an obligation not based in the text or original meaning.
Thanks whorfin, you have explained it much better than I could.