What about "NO!" don't you understand?

If you’ve been paying even the least bit of attention to postal issues, you’d know that Postmaster General Potter has been lobbying everybody within earshot to cut mail delivery on Saturdays. His mantra has been for years that: “It will save the USPS about $3 billion a year!”

Of course, the only ears that matter are on Capitol Hill. But those 535 pairs of ears are pretty busy right now with healthcare bills, illegal alien bills, financial system overhaul bills, earmarks, back biting, back slapping, and goodness knows what all. They barely have time to hear each other screeching. (That tone-deafness may be why their public approval rating has dipped to a miserable 17%!)

Anyway, recently Potter took his message to the Financial Services and General Government Senate Subcommittee. There he proposed no more Saturday service. Surprise!

For clarification and emphasis, he reiterated what he meant:

• NO residential and business mail delivery collections on Saturday.
• NO collecting mail from the few remaining corner blue boxes.

But under intense questioning — OK, maybe it wasn’t so intense—he allowed that apparently “NO” also meant that:

• Post offices that are usually open on Saturdays will remain open.
• Mail going to Post Office boxes on Saturdays will be delivered.
• Bills paid to P.O. boxes will be delivered.
• Mail order prescriptions will be delivered to residences.
• Social Security checks will make it to Grandmother’s house.
• Express Mail collection boxes will be open for business as usual.

Notwithstanding, Congress is expected to reluctantly go along with the plan (after midterm elections). Those in the know expect the Saturday mail to stop no earlier than 2011.