The End of the Post Office as a Public Institution?
from OnTheCommons.org:
The End of the Post Office as a Public Institution?
The Post Office will close half its processing centers this year and end Saturday delivery
| by David Morris
For the post office the end game is on. This year the Post Office will close half its processing centers. By late spring a first class letter will take 1-3 days longer to arrive at its destination. By the end of this summer Saturday delivery is scheduled to end. Over the next year the Post Office plans to close over 3000 local post offices while slashing some 220,000 of the its 650,000 employees.
How did we come to this place? In retrospect, it is easy to distinguish three discrete stages in the 221-year life of the Post Office.
Stage 1: The Post Office Has a Broad Public Mandate
The first stage began in 1792 when President George Washington signed legislation making the United States Post Office a Cabinet level Department. It was a public institution with a clear mandate: to enable universal low cost access to information. In its early years this led it to initiate free and low cost delivery of newspapers and eventually, to offer a special rate for periodicals and books.
The post office helped tie the country together physically as well as intellectually. Post roads were essential to the early development of the country. Rural free delivery established in the late 19th century, spurred improvements in roads and bridges since the post office would not offer service where roads were bad. In the 20th century mail contracts underwrote the embryonic aviation industry. ....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/magazine/end-post-office-public-institution
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In the 80s the airlines were deregulated...the unions busted and our air transportation system has "never been better" 
. Numerous sales and mergers that drove the buyers into huge debts along with top heavy management has led to the stripped down and barely functional air system. It's also meant that many smaller towns that once had service no longer did cause they just weren't "profitable enough".
In the 90s it was the "public airwaves" that got the treatment. Once again large corporates bought everything in sight to dominate the industry and proceded to bankrupt themselves in the process. Small and now medium and major markets have lost local service...replaced by satellited clap trap. Many times when there's bad weather or a serious news story the local media is non-existent and whatever is available is unreliable.
Now the sites are set on the USPS...a long time target of the rushpublicans. They see the service as "loafers"...a bloated government welfare program that hires lots of minorities and are "infected" with unions. Unfortunately they're well on their way of "regulating" the USPS into bankruptcy...then to set up another "privatization" failure...
