Postal Service

There's no doubt that the Postal Service, which is struggling to redefine itself in the e-mail era, desperately needs money. But its decision to abandon a longstanding policy by allowing living people to appear on stamps in hopes of boosting sales is short-sighted. The service concluded that it could no longer afford to pass up the opportunities of, say, an Oprah commemorative stamp, or perhaps a first-day cover for the season premiere of "Glee. " But for a modest financial gain, the service is sacrificing a rule that has kept disreputable characters off stamps - imagine the Pete Rose commemorative, circa 1985 - and, more importantly, helped insulate the agency from political disputes.

‘I AM become death, the destroyer of worlds…" As his famous words suggest, Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, had apocalyptic visions as he watched the first atomic bomb light the skies over Alamogordo, N.M. Part physicist, part philosopher, Oppenheimer had a flair for the dramatic. His quotation referred to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction; it could just as easily have come from Vint Cerf, the soft-spoken inventor of the Internet's communication protocol some 30 years later.

The financially strained US Postal Service said yesterday that it may permanently close its Boston processing facility and abandon plans to replace it with a new plant nearby, potentially resulting in the loss of more than 1,300 jobs in the city. The announcement, part of a nationwide plan to save $3 billion a year by closing more than half the Postal Service's processing plants, carries broad implications for a large section of the city from South Station to the Seaport District.

WASHINGTON - Governor Rick Perry of Texas received at least $23,500 in campaign contributions from drug-maker Merck & Co., including $5,000 in 2006, the year before he ordered girls throughout the state to take a new Merck vaccine. Perry, seeking the Republican presidential nomination, only acknowledged receiving $5,000 from the company during a debate Monday night in Florida. The drug-maker also has donated about $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association, a group Perry chaired twice and has been among his most generous campaign donors.

WASHINGTON - Imagine a nation without the Postal Service. No more birthday cards and bills or magazines and catalogs filling the mailbox. It's a worst-case scenario being painted for an organization that lost $8.5 billion in 2010 and seems headed deeper into the red this year. "A lot of people would miss it," says Tony Conway, a 34-year post office veteran who now heads the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers. Businesses, too. The letter carrier or clerk is the face of the mail.

WASHINGTON - The White House said yesterday it will include a financial rescue plan for the US Postal Service in a broader $1.5 trillion deficit reduction package it is due to send to Congress in the coming weeks. In advance of those recommendations, the Obama administration is asking lawmakers to give the Postal Service a 90-day extension to pay billons of dollars in mandatory annual retirement payments due at the end of its fiscal year on Sept. 30. If approved, a delay would buy time for Congress, the White House, and postal officials to draft a package of reforms for the cash-strapped delivery service, whose leader warned again yesterday that it is teetering on the brink of financial collapse and likely to go broke within a year.

The postmaster general is going to Congress to discuss the Postal Service's mounting debt. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is among the witnesses scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The Postal Service is facing a second straight year of losses of $8 billion or more. A decline in mail because of the Internet and the loss of revenue from advertising amid the economic downturn have taken a toll on the agency. Postal officials say they will be unable to make this month's $5.5 billion payment to cover future employee health care costs because the agency will have reached its borrowing limit and doesn't have enough cash.

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown says he's confident Congress will find a way to help rescue the financially-strapped Postal Service. Brown said Tuesday that Congress and the post office must find a "sustainable fiscal path" for the service to help it meet the needs of postal customer and workers. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday that the Postal Service will default on a mandated $5.5 billion payment by Sept.

WASHINGTON - The US Postal Service, expecting about $9 billion in losses this year amid slumping mail volume, is still paying thousands of its workers millions of dollars each year to do nothing. Longstanding labor agreements with the largest postal unions prohibit the Postal Service from laying off or reassigning workers because of broken equipment or periods of low mail volume. Instead, some idled employees report for work and are instructed to sit in a break room or cafeteria and do nothing.