Hey, here's an idea! Let's penalize other fully viable businesses to make up for the Post Office's poor business practices over the last couple of decades.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/03/07/berkeley-councilman-proposes-email-tax-to-fund-postal-service/

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I blog, I tweet. When I'm not writing or goofing around on Seahawks.NET.

How about just removing that stupid 11B a year in future benefits.

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RIP ROAD WOES 12/2/2012

I don't like the idea of taxing email, but I think using some tax money in some form to help fund the USPS isn't a terrible idea. I'm still a fan of the Postal Service. I use them a lot.

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Tanzania¹²

I wouldn't mind a minimal tax on email sent added to my isp bill. Imagine how much spam and junk mail that would eliminate.

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Legal Notice: Any references made by the online entity know as SacHawk 2.0 or "Sac" in regards to "Currystopstheruns" being a pre-op tranny with an anal tampon fetish are entirely accurate.

How in the hell would such a tax be assessed? The technology would have had to be developed around such a standard when such standards were being drafted nearly 30 years ago.

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Feel free to contact me if you need legal assistance. I have a great lawyer that helped me with an ex who violated my privacy and kept harassing me on MySpace and Facebook. He's very good. And there is legal precedent. - linuxpro

He is hold back the legion of boom - skater18000

http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/intern ... ost-office

The Post Office's business practices have remained sound. I want to see them break into the e-mail market, though. Create free online postal accounts with personalized e-mail (12evanf@usps.com, for example) that allows printable stamps and bill pay options. You know, break into the 21st century.

USPS.gov cloud email? It would require far more infrastructure than could be supported by advertising and stamp sales.

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Feel free to contact me if you need legal assistance. I have a great lawyer that helped me with an ex who violated my privacy and kept harassing me on MySpace and Facebook. He's very good. And there is legal precedent. - linuxpro

He is hold back the legion of boom - skater18000

I think it could happen. The big problem facing the Post Office (besides the forced retirement payments) is public perception. They are largely viewed as a junk mail service. There is even a new company called Outbox that is un delivering mail and digitalizing it for its customers http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/26/tech/inno ... il-service. That should be the Post Office providing that service, they need to welcome technology and offer a business plan that people want and will use in every day life.

I disagree. Email can be incredibly profitable and if every person has an email address they could do things like earthclassmail does (scan and leave mail in their email inbox). You could charge a lot for spam... have extremely targeted advertising and even limit the amount of spam since you could charge quite a bit.

Instead of shipping letters you could simply scan it and print at your local office and deliver to the local address.

There's a billion things you could do with the USPS to make it incredibly profitable, forward thinking and powerful all without removing daily physical mail delivery.

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RIP ROAD WOES 12/2/2012

How are you going to charge for spam? Who are you going to charge, all those spam farmers in Nigeria? Are you familiar with how the SMTP protocol works?

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Feel free to contact me if you need legal assistance. I have a great lawyer that helped me with an ex who violated my privacy and kept harassing me on MySpace and Facebook. He's very good. And there is legal precedent. - linuxpro

He is hold back the legion of boom - skater18000

Privatize the post office. Problem solved.

Uhh... It already is, mostly. Not gonna solve anything.

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Feel free to contact me if you need legal assistance. I have a great lawyer that helped me with an ex who violated my privacy and kept harassing me on MySpace and Facebook. He's very good. And there is legal precedent. - linuxpro

He is hold back the legion of boom - skater18000

Let me clarify: End the government monopoly on mail.

You do realize that the US Constitution clearly permits the Federal government Postal Power. Or do you only support the Constitution when it fits your agenda?

The government monopoly? I'm pretty sure there are a few postal services you can think of that exist beyond the USPS.

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RIP ROAD WOES 12/2/2012

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Tanzania¹²

Are you kidding? You're asking me who would want to buy direct access to US citizen email inboxes? What does SMTP have to do with anything? You could have actual vetted business who would love the opportunity.

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RIP ROAD WOES 12/2/2012

If you read through my posts I doubt you'll see much defending of the constitution. The constitution is a vexing issue because I don't always agree 100% with it and it was written in a time when things were different...a lot different.

From wiki:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".

When I read this, I don't see anywhere that mentions it would be illegal for a private company to establish their own postal service and deliver first class letters.

And how many individuals would want an email account that gets sold to marketers?

Everyone already has a couple bogus email accounts for the purpose of avoiding that crap.

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That's weak sauce!

People use mail to pay bills and maybe send post cards or family photos. it used to be used for correspondence, obviously. It needs to get back to being competitive in all of these areas. Creating a paypal type service for bill paying, allowing digital/printable stamps for the letters you rarely send, and offering free email are ways to get people to come back. They need to be user friendly, and rid themselves of their stigma as a cumbersome junk mail service.

Instead of getting innovative they are cutting their services, something's amiss.