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By James Bovard -- The U.S. Postal Service announced plans this month to phase out overnight delivery of first-class mail. Postal officials are portraying the decision as a painful but necessary budget-induced departure from a long history of exemplary service. In reality, the Postal Service has been intentionally slowing down first-class mail for almost 50 years. It’s time to end the post office’s monopoly on letter delivery.

With the rise of e-mail and the decline of letters, mail volume is falling at a staggering rate, and the postal service's survival plan isn't reassuring. Elsewhere in the world, postal services are grappling with the same dilemma — only most of them, in humbling contrast, are thriving.

The federal government's mail transport and delivery agency this week said it will roll out a line of apparel and accessories it plans to sell in department and specialty stores. The "Rain Heat & Snow" brand of clothing, named after the Postal Service's motto trumpeting its carriers' determination to overcome whatever Mother Nature can throw at them, would put USPS in the "cutting edge of functional fashion," it said.

A driver of a white Prius with a giant, red plastic flag affixed to its side is rolling through the hilly streets of San Francisco, undelivering mail from mailboxes. The driver is not a thief. He and the car are part of a startup called Outbox that is attempting to pick up where the embattled United States Postal Service leaves off -- by digitizing physical mail. The driver, dubbed an "unpostman," visits Outbox subscribers' homes three times a week.

U.S. Postal Service suuuuucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you want to mail a letter in Sugar Hill, N.H., you’d better be quick. The town’s postal unit has cut its hours to a mere 30 minutes per day, sparking outrage from the rural community’s 563 residents that has now caught the attention of the state’s two U.S. Senators. The Postal Service announced in May that instead of eliminating up to 3,700 post offices, it would instead reduce their hours of operation from 8 hours per day to between 2 and 4 hours, but only after holding community meetings.

The financially troubled U.S. Postal Service reported an $8.5 billion loss in the fiscal year that ended in September and said it will run out of money in 2011 if economic conditions don't improve and Congress doesn't act.

Postal worker on tape displaying his eye for providing superior customer service and taking special care with a package

Wrong on so many levels... Gordon Wozniak, a city councilman in Berkeley, Calif., has proposed an email tax to provide much-needed revenue to the ailing U.S. Postal Service. “There should be something like a bit tax,” Wozniak said. “I mean a bit tax could be a cent per-gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year… And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email.” Wozniak said the bit tax could bring in revenue to help a number of sectors, beyond just the post office.