Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The Ambiguous Postal Rate Hike of 2006

From Fox News:

WASHINGTON — The cost of mailing a letter will increase to 39 cents on Jan. 8.

The Postal Service's board of governors approved the two-cent increase in first-class postal rates late Monday. It is the first increase since June 2002.

The cost of mailing a postcard will increase a penny, to 24 cents, as part of the roughly 5.4 percent, across-the-board hike in most rates and fees.

The increase fulfills a requirement, passed by Congress in 2003, that the Postal Service establish a $3.1 billion escrow account. Congress is to determine later how to spend that money. The Postal Service said without the mandate it would not have had to raise rates next year...

Great, now I have to get a bunch of two cent stamps to go with the Muppets so the Postal Service can have some spare money that only Congress seems to think they need.

4 comments:

Nick said...

That's what I would have to show if I was posting to draw opposition to the increase, rather than to let people know it's coming and why.

Jason said...

Nick, you're not running a news site. We'd know it was coming without you. It stands to reason that if you're drawing special attention to it, you must have some opinion on it. Was the only purpose of this post to let us know you use Muppet stamps? ;)

Nick said...

Yes. I love Muppet stamps, I bought a half-dozen sheets of them. Besides that, I was mostly pointing out the reason for the increase since it's not based on operating costs like I think they are normally.

April said...

My Linear Algebra teacher works for the Postal Rate Commission and he said that this time it wasn't their fault. I wouldn't have know that otherwise.