Savings
Madison Avenue Flirts With 3-D
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Papa John’s International, the U.S. Postal Service and General Electric have begun to incorporate “augmented reality,” or AR — a technology that lets consumers interact with hologram-like images — into their marketing. One well-known example of AR: the yellow first-down lines in TV broadcasts of football games. This week, the Postal Service will start running an ad campaign that touts a flat-rate shipping fee for its Priority Mail service. The online portion of the ad effort includes a “virtual box simulator” on the prioritymail.com site. The simulator allows consumers to hold an object, such as a cup or a book, in front of a Webcam and use the resulting 3-D image to determine the right size box for shipping the object. The push into AR comes as companies have grown dissatisfied with relying solely on static advertising or passive media like TV commercials, which have washed over coach potatoes for years. In pursuit of alternatives, they have pumped money into approaches that encourage consumers to “engage” with their message or product, something ad executives believe helps increase sales.”
The United States Postal Service & Power Company?
Switching to electric delivery vehicles would enable the U.S. Postal Service to make millions by selling electricity and to reduce delivery costs by millions as well, a postal expert says.
Batteries for the electric vehicles could be charged during off-peak hours and kept connected to the grid, writes Michael Ravnitzky, Special Assistant to Commissioner Ruth Goldway of the Postal Regulatory Commission, in a paper published today on the PRC’s Web site. When not being used in delivery vehicles, stored power in the batteries could be sold back into the grid at times of peak or unexpected surges in demand.
(A presentation Ravnitzky did recently on the concept can be found here. The paper grew out of an op-ed piece Ms. Goldway wrote for The New York Times.)
USPS’s fleet of 142,000 right-hand drive delivery trucks is nearing the end of its useful life. The vast majority could be replaced by electric vehicles using today’s battery technology, Ravnitzky writes.
“Most daily mail delivery routes are short, repetitive and well-defined, and include many stops, making the postal delivery fleet a prime application for electric drive vehicles. The electrification of the postal fleet could significantly reduce gasoline and maintenance expenses while reducing the fleet’s carbon footprint,†he says.
“Historical experience with electric drive vehicles suggests maintenance cost reductions of at least 30 percent to 50 percent,†he writes. That, and an electricity cost that is equivalent to 80-cents-per-gallon gasoline, suggests annual savings for the Postal Service could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
On the revenue side, Ravnitzky sees more opportunity from storing electricity and having it available to the grid on a contingency reserve basis than from actually selling electricity. As such unreliable sources as wind and solar power became more of a factor in the grid, he notes, the needs to store electricity and have it available on a rapid-response basis will grow, he says. He estimates $2000 to $2500 annually in revenue per vehicle from various “V2G†(vehicle to grid) services – which would mean several hundred million dollars if most of the fleet went electric.
“The operators of the electrical grid are essentially running a massive just-in-time delivery system and it can be tricky to keep this system balanced.”
Electric vehicles cost more upfront than gasoline-powered ones, and some investment in battery-charging operations would also be needed, according to Ravnitzky. Mass production of the expensive batteries would reduce the cost and presumably give a leg up to manufacturers developing similar products for the consumer market. Further study is needed to provide detailed information on capital costs, operational savings, revenue potential, and environmental impact, Ravnitzky says.
Perhaps his vision could be employed to provide a simultaneous bailout for three needy recipients – American car companies, the U.S. Postal Service, and the environment.
Summer Postage Sale – well, sort of a sale, no, more like a small rebate
summer sale
To those that are excited about the impending summer postage sale, there are a few details you need to know, first, did you receive a letter from the USPS recently?
Here is what it looks like: summer-sale-electronic-letter
Here are the details:
The USPS has made it official (almost) that they are going forward with the proposed ‘Summer Sale’ event. The PRC must still weigh in with their decision, which is expected in late May, to make this program official. This program would provide a 30% postage credit on mailings submitted between July 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009. This incentive program is designed to increase mailing activity during the usually dormant summer months, when the USPS has their most excess capacity available.
Unlike most sales however, there are a multitude of qualifiers that apply to the Summer Sale.
Who and what qualifies?
For the most part, the USPS has already determined what mailers qualify. Letters were sent out on 5/7/09 to approximately 3,200 mailers whom they determined will be eligible for this program by utilizing the mail volume data that exists within their internal system.
1. This program only applies to Presorted Standard letters and flats.
2. The next qualifier is that you must have mailed a minimum of 1,000,000 pieces during the time period of October 1, 2007 and March 31, 2008. Total volume is calculated by mailer, so even if you utilize multiple permits, your total volume will be calculated across all permits that are associated to your organization. This also applies to “Ghost Numbersâ€, which are created if your mail is sent through a Mail Service Provider. If you feel you are eligible, but have not received a letter, then you can request a contact by emailing your information to summersale@usps.gov.
If you have met the criteria above, you are ready to begin to calculate the ‘Sale’ portion of the program. The 30% postage credit will be given only on the number of mail pieces that exceed your mailing threshold for the time period of July 1, 2009 to September 30, 2009. The caveat to this all is that your mail volume in October must not fall below your mailing threshold for that month. If this occurs; the total credit accrued from mailings between 7/1/09 to 9/30/09 will be deducted by the amount of pieces that fell below the threshold in October and that will be the final credit. The credit will be issued at some point in December of 2009 once the USPS has completed the above calculations.
How to calculate your potential savings:
Below is an example of how to calculate the savings that you as a mailer may receive through this program. Listed in this example is the all important Threshold, which will be the key to planning your mailings to take advantage of this program.
1. Base volume (7/1/08 – 9/30/08): 500,000 pieces
2. Trend:
a. Volume 10/1/08 – 3/31/09 = 1,800,000 pieces
b. Volume 10/1/07 – 3/31/08 = 2,000,000 pieces
c. a/b = (1,800,000 / 2,000,000) = .90 or 90%
3. Base x trend = Threshold:
500,000 x .90 = 450,000
4. Rebate = (Actual volume – threshold) x (actual postage cost / actual volume) x 30%
a. Actual volume for 7/1/09 – 9/30/09 – threshold =
475,000 – 450,000 = 25,000 pieces
b. Actual postage cost / actual volume =
$103,075 / 475,000 = $0.217
c. Rebate =
25,000 x $0.217 x .3 = $1627.50
The October Effect:
It is important to keep your mailing volume for October in mind when factoring the potential savings. If your volume falls below the calculated threshold, then your overall credit will be impacted. Below is an example of how to calculate this effect.
a. October 2008 volume x trend (in #2 above) = October threshold:
300,000 x .90 = 270,000 pieces
b. If October 2009 (260,000 pieces) < October threshold:
Threshold – actual = adjustment
270,000 – 260,000 = 10,000
Rebate adjustment
a. Actual volume – summer sale threshold – rebate adjustment:
475,000 – 450,000 – 10,000 = 15,000
b. New rebate:
15,000 x $.217 x .3 = $976.50
For those of you that have received a letter; be sure to certify the volume that the USPS has provided to you since this will be a binding once you have agreed to enroll in the program. Also be sure to have your response in by August 1st, 2009.
This program is a great way to potentially reach more customers at a lower cost and therefore enhance your business’ ROI. The system is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction for the USPS to utilize their new found pricing freedom to help mailers.
From the Federal Register today:
Federal Register Notices
DATE: Pending publication in the Federal Register.
Standard Mail Volume Incentive Program (aka Summer Sale)
AGENCY: Postal Serviceâ„¢.
ACTION: Final rule.
SUMMARY:
The Postal Service is revising Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®), to add section 709.2 which introduces new standards for a special volume incentive program for mailers of Standard Mail® letters and flats with mail volume exceeding their individual USPS™-determined threshold levels. The program period will be from July 1, 2009 through September 30, 2009.
EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2009.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Kevin Gunther at 202-268-7208.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
The Postal Service is implementing a volume incentive program for qualified high-volume mailers of commercial or Nonprofit Standard Mail letters and flats, for volume mailed between July 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009, above their USPS-determined threshold level. This program encourages mailers to provide new volume and to take advantage of our current excess capacity to process and deliver additional volume.
Fred Smith Talks Green: Helps the environment and Fedex’s bottom line
BILL DRIES | The Daily News
Fred Smith is going green. In the case of the FedEx founder, however, it’s a different shade – something like military fatigue green.
Smith is reframing the push for alternative fuels and energy from a discussion of “what ifs†to a national security issue.
Electric vehicles and biofuel incentives are part of a plan Smith admits is controversial. It includes nuclear energy, a carbon tax and maxing out domestic oil exploration.
Smith is co-chairman of a coalition of corporate executives and retired military generals called the Energy Security Leadership Council. The other co-chairman is retired general and U.S. Marine Corps commandant P.X. Kelley.
In two speeches this year, one at the National Press Club in February and the other to a conference at the University of Memphis last month, Smith continued the ESLC bid to set specific goals for American energy independence and take the green movement from theory and individual practice to national policy.
After terrorism and nuclear proliferation, Smith and the council rank the nation’s dependence on foreign oil as the “largest national security risk in front of the United States.â€
Smith and Kelley wrote a column for The Washington Post in the summer of 2006 that began with a question.
“Could a mere 4 percent shortfall in daily oil supply propel the price of a barrel to more than $120 in a matter of days?†they wrote. “Such a rapid rise in fuel costs would have profound effects that could severely threaten the foundation of America’s economic prosperity.â€
Two summers later, they turned out to be off the mark by only $27 a barrel.
“People forget that while subprime mortgages and CEOs and all of these other risky instruments and problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all of the other things you’ve read about were the bonfire that’s consumed our economy, the match that lit it off was $147-per-barrel oil, which reached its peak last July,†Smith said at the April 20 supply chain conference at the University of Memphis’ FedEx Institute of Technology. “Each of the five major recessions since the first oil embargo in 1973 have been coincident with a significant hike in fuel prices.â€
Toward the end of the Bush administration last year, the ESLC was instrumental in helping win passage of the first increased standards for fuel efficiency in cars in 20 years.
“We spent 20 years from the last time the country increased fuel efficiency standards, which all of my free market friends argue against with me,†Smith said. “Nobody is more free market than I am. FedEx is a creature of deregulation. … This is not purely an economic issue. It’s a national security issue.â€
Interests to protect
The five recessions and the five corresponding spikes in fuel prices span the life of FedEx, the cargo innovator Smith founded in Little Rock in the early 1970s and that, soon after, moved to Memphis.
FedEx uses a lot of oil in its air and ground operations. The company has almost 700 aircraft in its entire operation and runs more than 80,000 vehicles of different types, Smith said. Aviation is the most energy intensive use FedEx has.
FedEx Executive Vice President William J. Logue told a U.S. Senate committee in 2007 that FedEx Express alone consumed more than 1.3 billion gallons of fuel in fiscal year 2006.
And Smith said that has propelled the company’s own quest through the years to find and even encourage research and development of more fuel-efficient vehicles as well as those that use alternative fuels.
The speech at the University of Memphis was the first part of an unusual two-day set of public comments from Smith. The next day he attended an executive session of the Memphis City Council at the council’s invitation. The council solicited Smith’s advice on how government could operate more efficiently.
His answers to those questions were specific and he was careful not to stray far from the questions.
Smith’s remarks on green as a national security issue were heavy on specifics even though Smith was talking extemporaneously.
“Over half of our $600 billion-plus military budget every year is spent for the sole purpose of protecting the oil trade,†Smith said as he noted complaints about the cost of a carbon tax, which he favors. Smith said there are no similar concerns about “having to have a military establishment of the size that we have that’s gotten us involved in two wars in the Middle East, which is almost exclusively because of our dependence on petroleum coming from that part of the world – not totally – but almost exclusively.â€
Smith, who backed John McCain in the 2008 GOP presidential primaries, even went back to the 1950s Eisenhower administration benchmark that set anything above a 20 percent dependence on foreign oil as a “grave national security risk.†That dependence is now at 60 percent.
“That might be in a perfect world not a problem. But we don’t live in a perfect world,†Smith told the group of about 100 people at the University of Memphis. “And, unfortunately, contrary to a great deal of what you hear about in terms of the oil business, it’s not our great integrated oil companies like Chevron and Exxon who control most of the oil.
“Ninety-percent of the proven oil reserves in the world belong to national oil companies. And many of those national oil companies are outright hostile to the United States, or at least indifferent to our standard of living and our national interests.â€
An electric plan
Smith’s suggestion as well as that of the leadership council includes a goal of converting the nation’s short-haul commercial vehicle fleet to electrically run cars and trucks. That goal also would include personal cars and trucks.
“The United States should as a matter of national policy move toward a largely electrified short-haul transportation system,†is how Smith put it.
In a February speech at the National Press Club in Washington, Smith said electrification would be a “sea change†made possible in part by technological advances in the past 25 years that have given longer life to batteries. But he said the transition still will be difficult.
“We cannot encourage the purchase of electric cars and then not have the generation capacity to power them, the transmission capacity to deliver that power to the consumers who need it, or the smart grid technology that will be required to handle those cars as we plug them in and out of the grid,†he said.
At Syracuse University in New York, Patrick Penfield has been writing for several years about the emergence of this turn in the green movement.
“In the next several years, you will be hearing more about supply chain sustainability or the green sustainable supply chain,†he wrote in August 2007.
The assistant professor at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse also cast the validity of the move in different terms.
“The whole idea of a sustainable supply chain is to reduce costs while helping the environment,†he wrote.
It’s no accident that reducing costs is mentioned first.
On the second day of the green supply chain conference at the University of Memphis, Mike Bruns, the president of Memphis-based Comtrak Logistics, said lower fuel consumption is at the root of green considerations for him and others in the freight business.
“I guess I could sit here and tell everybody that I’m a real believer in green – and I guess I am,†Bruns said. “But I’m really a believer in making money. And it’s generally interesting that everything we’re doing to make some money at Comtrak has everything to do with being more green.â€
At the same panel discussion, Mark Schulze, a vice president of BNSF Railway Co., one of the city’s major rail presences, was more direct.
“I haven’t seen one decision made yet that was environmentally based,†he said. “It gets down to cost and on-time performance. … But there is a mandate to lower our diesel fuel consumption, which will benefit us with (fewer) greenhouse gas emissions.â€
Price-driven alternatives
Penfield told The Memphis News that converting to such a green supply chain will be “long and arduous.†He also said interest and commitment could wane in direct relation to the price of gas.
“When gas prices are high, there’s actually a benefit to the greening of the supply chain,†Penfield said. “When gas prices are low, that whole impetus is taken away. Nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody really wants to figure out ways to help the environment.â€
Smith, however, saw differences in last summer’s gas price spike. There was the part that China and India played in upping the demand for gasoline.
“Prior to last summer’s run-up, you could anticipate that the crisis would come, demand would go down and you’d come back and to some degree it would be business as usual,†Smith said. “On the supply side, there really was little alternative to the continued consumption of fossil fuels. But in the interim … the development of battery technology fueled … by the proliferation of laptops and PDAs and cell phones has created a whole new generation of batteries that have the amount of storage that will allow the daily use of a personal automobile to be tolerant by batteries.â€
That means traveling 40 miles on a single charge.
FedEx teamed with the Environmental Defense Fund in 2004 to launch the first commercial hybrid truck. Smith calls it a PUD – pickup and delivery vehicle. It’s a step-in delivery van that has 700 cubic feet of space. It is 42 percent more efficient than diesel-powered delivery vans and its emissions are 90 percent less. The FedEx fleet uses 300 of them.
“The problem with the vehicle is it is more expensive than the conventional diesel,†Smith said.
It’s more expensive by about $30,000.
“When the price of fuel was up to $4 or $5 per gallon for diesel, you actually were getting close to getting a reasonable return on investment for that,†he added. “But as fuel has come back down – and it will go back up in all probability – it’s very hard to justify.â€
Victoria Mills, the managing director of the EDF’s corporate partnerships program, said the FedEx request for proposals on the hybrid trucks was nevertheless an important step.
“That’s where the transformation started,†she said. “Then within two years, no fleet trade show was complete without a hybrid offering.â€
By the EDF’s count, the 300 hybrid PUDs FedEx has are among 1,200 hybrid trucks either on the road or on order in North America. The FedEx fleet of hybrids is one of 85. And there are 36 makes and models.
“What we’re seeing is not just rising orders, but a diversification in the marketplace,†Mills said by phone from Boston. “That reflects confidence in the technology and a much broader trend in business to address climate change.â€
Seeking a standard
Penfield said at least for now, the diversity has a downside as well.
“We want to move to batteries. But these different automobile manufacturers are all using different batteries,†Penfield said. “How do you charge it up?â€
Penfield talked about charging stations for battery powered vehicles being used in Israel in which motorists simply swap spent batteries for newly charged ones.
“The problem is getting everybody to use that battery,†he said. “That’s an issue. There’s no standard. … Nobody has a path to follow.â€
Smith told the National Press Club in February it’s important that whatever standards are set for a national grid don’t create a new dependence on imported technology.
“The investments – private and public – involved in electrification could have a tremendous positive effect on the American economy – if we do everything in our power to encourage the creation of new manufacturing capacity and jobs here at home,†Smith told that gathering. “That means, among other things, reducing the corporate tax rate and changing the tax code to allow the expensing of capital equipment. If we are going to drive battery operated cars, let’s make sure that as many of them as possible are built here in the United States.â€
Mills concedes Penfield’s point about the impact changing oil prices have on the demand for hybrids as well as the expense of hybrids at this point.
For business owners who run or manage fleets of vehicles, the main issues are if the new additions to the fleet pay for themselves and over what period of time.
Mills and Smith agree that until the gap in price between conventional short-haul vehicles and the hybrids is bridged, government incentives are essential.
“The difference between having incentive help and having no incentive help can be five to 10 years off the payback of one of these trucks,†she told The Memphis News. “New York, for example – their program will fund 80 percent of the incremental cost of a hybrid truck. At the federal level, money from the stimulus bill has gone into what is called the Diesel Emission Reduction Act (DERA).â€
The DERA regulations have spun off a business of organizing hybrid or alternative-fuel fleets for companies integrating them into their overall fleets and capturing the federal incentives.
Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen took a test drive last month in an electric car made by Nissan. The Japanese carmaker with a Tennessee presence plans to begin selling such cars for commercial and government fleets in the U.S. next year.
Bredesen has proposed a network of public charging stations for electric cars in a partnership that would involve state and local governments as well as carmakers. At the test drive, he also talked of research on solar-powered charging stations in Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville. Bredesen said he hopes to garner some of the federal stimulus funds for the effort.
California recently enacted a voucher program for short-haul vehicle fleets that contributes $10,000 to $40,000 per vehicle for new hybrids.
“Over the road†longer-haul trucks remain problematic if the goal is no diesel fuel.
“We don’t see in the near term any technology that will displace the use of diesel power plants,†Smith told the Memphis audience. “But we have many initiatives to reduce the energy consumption of our over-the-road vehicles.â€
Hybrid technology for over-the-road vehicles still involves using conventional diesel fuel, Mills said.
“That was originally the last place people thought to look for hybrid applications,†she said. “But, in fact, Walmart has been testing out some hybrids in long-haul applications, just because when you drive that many miles, smaller percentage gains in fuel economy add up to huge cost savings.â€
In one case, the hybrid part “simply captures the energy from braking and stores it in a battery where it can be used to supplement energy from the diesel fuel.â€
Here to stay?
For all of the technological changes being explored and garnering attention as well as financing for now in the corporate world, Smith said oil isn’t going to vanish as the fuel that runs America.
“It’s unrealistic to think that the demand for petroleum is going to decline from 80 million barrels per day or thereabouts, which it was last summer, and go to the point where petroleum is going to be irrelevant,†he told the Memphis audience last month. “We should be producing the maximum amount (of oil) that we can in this country.â€
It is a point in the leadership council’s set of recommendations that he admits, “We don’t get as high a grade on … from environmentalists.â€
Smith said an “enormous amount of resources†beneath the outer continental shelf could be produced in an “environmentally sensitive†way.
He also said, “Nuclear energy should be a huge part of the equation,†noting the use of nuclear power at FedEx’s facilities in Paris, France. “It’s the only completely emission-free power source.â€
Penfield isn’t so sure about the future of petroleum.
“I think eventually something is going to happen where it will be a pretty dramatic situation,†he said. “There’s going to come a point in time when we do run out. With the population increasing the way it is and these different countries booming, it’s going to be very, very difficult to attain the stuff.â€
He sees a “tipping point,†or point at which the research and development of green alternatives becomes a direction for corporations in possibly the next two to three years, with some important questions still to be answered in the research.
“Does it make sense to switch? Does it make sense to change the infrastructure? If prices of gas are low, it’s going to be a hard thing to convince people to switch. It really is. I hate to say that,†Penfield said.
Mills has a different view.
“I believe we’ve reached that tipping point and gone beyond it,†she told The Memphis News. “I believe that people have internalized expensive and fluctuating fuel prices as a business risk that they need to manage. I believe that people are seeing environmental innovation and efficiency improvements are going hand in hand – getting them where they need to be to address security objectives, to address climate objectives, to address business objectives.â€
Big Brother is Watching-direct mailers beware, you are not safe even when postage is paid
PostCom’s general counsel has communicated the following to the association:
The United States Postal Service, which appears headed for a multi-billion dollar loss this year, has quietly launched a major new initiative to collect more postage from mail that already has been paid for and delivered.
The primary targets of the initiative are business mailers—the mailers that use large volumes of First-Class and Standard Mail for marketing, billing, account statements, and other customer communications and the mail service providers that help prepare these mailings.
The Postal Service’s strategy is to investigate recent mailings for violations of the complex and arcane mail preparation requirements for discounted postage rates. Evidence of violation can lead to demands for additional postage, or enforcement actions under the False Claims Act. The potential financial exposure for big national mailers can be seven or eight figures.
The Postal Service seems to be looking for violations of Move Update (address updating) requirements, other addressing requirements, and other mail preparation and content requirements that could lead to large revenue deficiencies. In some cases, the investigators seek evidence that the mailer entered improper mailings knowingly or intentionally, states of mind that can support a claim under the False Claims Act.
Violation of the False Claims Act can expose a mailer to double or treble damages—i.e., liability equal to two or three times the amount of the underlying revenue deficiency—as well as civil penalties of approximately $11,000 per violation. The Postal Service typically rules that each mailing statement constitutes a separate violation; hence, total civil penalties sometimes can be ten or more times the underlying revenue deficiency. Criminal liability under the False Claims Act is also possible, but unlikely except in extreme cases. The firm has provided tips on how to deal with postal inspectors.
3rd Circuit: When Serving Post Office, Don’t Rely on Mailbox Rule
OK, so how ironic is this!!!!
Shannon P. Duffy
The Legal Intelligencer
May 12, 2009
If you’re filing a claim against the postal service, don’t just drop it in the mail because the courts won’t apply the ordinary presumption that a letter mailed is a letter received.
In a holding fraught with irony, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has declared in Lightfoot v. United States (pdf) that the so-called “mailbox rule” cannot be invoked against the U.S. Postal Service to save an otherwise time-barred claim.
Instead, the court said, a plaintiff pursuing a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act has the burden of proving that the federal agency was “presented” with a timely administrative claim, and that proof of mailing is not enough.
“The term ‘presented’ in the filing of an administrative claim means more than merely mailing the claim,” visiting Judge Richard G. Stearns of the District of Massachusetts wrote for a unanimous 3rd Circuit panel.
In the suit, plaintiff Cedric Lightfoot claims he was sideswiped by a postal van while driving on Broad Street in Philadelphia in October 2004.
Everyone agreed that Lightfoot’s lawyer, Frank S. Pollock of Brownstein Vitale & Weiss, filed a timely initial claim with the USPS by certified mail just before the second anniversary of the accident.
The dispute erupted over whether Pollock had filed a timely request for reconsideration within six months after the USPS denied his initial claim.
Pollock filed an affidavit in which he swore that he had signed a final copy of the request for reconsideration before giving it to his secretary to be mailed first class.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul W. Kaufman offered an affidavit from an in-house lawyer at USPS that said he never received it.
Senior U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois sided with the government, finding that while the government has waived its sovereign immunity to allow suits under the FTCA, the waiver is a limited one and that the burden remains on the plaintiff to demonstrate strict compliance with the law’s administrative provisions.
“Where a plaintiff fails to comply with the presentment requirement or limitations periods in the statute, a district court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the FTCA claim,” DuBois wrote in a March 2008 opinion.
On appeal, Pollock argued that DuBois erred in refusing to apply the “mailbox rule” to his claim for reconsideration.
But Stearns, in an opinion joined by 3rd Circuit Judges Theodore A. McKee and D. Brooks Smith, found that the federal courts have been nearly unanimous for more than a quarter century in rejecting such arguments.
In 1981, Stearns noted, the 9th Circuit in Bailey v. United States refused to “accept appellants’ invitation to rewrite the [FTCA] and in effect repeal the regulation by holding that mailing alone is sufficient to meet the requirement that a claim be ‘presented.’”
Just three years ago, Stearns said, the 9th Circuit noted that, since Bailey, “virtually every circuit to have ruled on the issue has held that the mailbox rule does not apply to [FTCA] claims, regardless of whether it might apply to other federal common law claims.”
That strong weight of authority was enough for Stearns, who wrote, “We now join these sister courts in rejecting the mailbox rule and holding that a plaintiff must demonstrate that the federal agency was in actual receipt of the claim, whether on initial presentment or on a request for reconsideration.”
In a footnote, Stearns rejected Pollock’s reliance on Glover v. United States, a 2000 decision from the Eastern District of New York that drew a distinction between the requirements for an initial presentation and a request for reconsideration.
” Glover is not persuasive,” Stearns wrote, noting that the 10th Circuit has already explicitly rejected Glover ‘s rationale and held that “nowhere is there any indication that what constitutes presentment of a request for reconsideration is different from presentment of the claim itself.”
Pollock, in an interview, said he was disappointed that the 3rd Circuit never addressed his most compelling arguments, but instead had relegated the discussion to a footnote with no real analysis.
The importance of Glover , he said, was that the trial judge in that case recognized that while the mailbox rule cannot apply to an initial claim, it made sense to do so for reconsideration.
The initial claim is designed to give notice to the federal agency and is mandatory, Pollock said, but the Glover court recognized that requests for reconsideration are governed by non-mandatory procedures that are designed to give the agencies an opportunity to take a second look at a rejected claim to facilitate settlements.
The issue in Lightfoot’s case was identical to Glover, Pollock said, because everyone agreed that the initial claim was timely filed.
The lesson to be drawn from the 3rd Circuit’s ruling, Pollock said, is that lawyers should always use certified mail when filing FTCA claims and that it is sometimes better to simply file suit than to ask an agency to reconsider denial of a claim.
Monkeying Around with Postal Pallets
Monkeying around with postal equipment
From the Dead Tree Edition
Where have all the pallets gone, U.S. Postal Service officials sometimes wonder.
The Postal Service spends millions of dollars annually replenishing the supply of pallets, tubs, mailbags, and the like because so many get diverted to other uses each year. Pat Donahoe, USPS’s COO, explained to the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC) recently that, sometimes, getting the pallets back is no easy matter.
He displayed the following photo from a major U.S. zoo to prove his point.
Do you suppose there’s an Intelligent Mail barcode on these orangutans?
postage increase goes into effect on Monday, May 11th
I would be remiss if I did not remind you that the postage increase goes into effect on Monday, May 11th. Here is a link to the new rates!
http://www.usps.com/prices/pricechanges.htm?from=prices&page=NewMay09Prices
Two Maine newspapers test the future of newspapers’ web plans
Richard Anderson, publisher of Village Soup
By Galen Moore of MHT, The Journal of New England Technology
Competing business models to save the newspaper industry are breaking ground not in Boston or New York, but in Down East Maine, as two local publishers try web-based strategies that couldn’t be more at odds.
Village Soup Inc., a chain of four local papers with headquarters in Rockland, last year blurred the line between advertising and editorial by letting local merchants pay to post their blogs on its Village Soup family of websites.
Last month, the Ellsworth American took a turn in the opposite direction, replacing its online presence with a site called Fenceviewer, which features summarized versions of the paper’s articles. The full Ellsworth American is available weekly as a PDF download to those willing to pay a $32 annual subscription.
“Beginning around the first of the year there was a swelling of opinion inside the news industry that we couldn’t continue to give it away for nothing,†said Ellsworth American publisher Alan Baker. The company toyed with a micropayment strategy, as had other newspaper sites nationally at the time. But in the end, Baker said, “We decided we’d hold our nose and jump.â€
Nationally, the newspaper industry is desperate, grasping at straws such as e-book readers to make up for plummeting print ad revenue. Yet in the microcosm of small-town Maine, local newspapers are trying new strategies — and one publisher has an idea he hopes to export nationwide.
Village Soup, which also has a paper in the state capital, is now under contract to expand its online model to five newspapers in Alabama and New York state via a software-as-a-service model hosted on virtual, cloud-based servers. Village Soup publisher Richard Anderson claimed that his strategy is already a success, saying the sponsored blogs generate 19 percent of the company’s $2.5 million annual ad revenue, according to a May 1 piece he wrote on the media blog Reflections of a Newsosaur.
In Anderson’s model, advertisers pay to blog, and their posts appear under a home-page “bizBriefs†column with a headline and a byline that look exactly like news articles. BizBriefs posts are supposed to be confined to informative postings, and many do — like a mortgage broker’s post on Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke’s comments, or sewing tips from a fabric store. About 600 people clicked on a local dentist’s post about the dangers of oral piercing, Anderson said.
The click-throughs for display ads don’t compare, he said. “Banners and buttons, no matter how closely you target the content … it’s difficult to get people to read what you have to say.â€
It’s a strategy that makes sense, said Dharmesh Shah, chief software architect and founder of Cambridge-based Hubspot Inc. According to Shah, when businesses post informative content, web users tend to find it and click on it. However, the model may be difficult to duplicate outside Village Soup’s hyperlocal context, he said.
Community businesses likely to blog on a newspaper’s site are very aware of who’s reading and why, he said.
“When you narrow the focus and most people know the individual/business posting, you’re less likely to be an idiot,†Shah said in an e-mail. “It would be like walking into a neighborhood cocktail party and starting to scream about the new promotion you’re having at a car dealership. It just wouldn’t work.â€
The Ellsworth American’s payment strategy serves an even narrower niche. From 12 percent to 15 percent of its subscription revenue is in mail subscriptions — typically snowbirds who get the paper by mail during winter months. Problems with the postal service have taken their toll.
So far, about 100 readers have subscribed online, said Chris Crockett, the paper’s IT manager, but it’s still early in the process. There have been “some comments,†about the new model, he said, but many people have been satisfied to be pointed to the paper’s trimmed-down free site.
“This is such an interesting time,†Baker said. “We are optimistic. We think this is an opportunity for us, with the economy soft.†The subscription downloads may cost more, but they offer more: they are searchable and include ads as they appear in the print edition, he said. “We want to come out of this recession with an even stronger business model than we had going in.â€
USPS: Ve Haf Vays of Making You Use Our Barcode
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 From the Dead Tree Edition
The Postal Service’s Intelligent Mail program might fail because it is not sufficiently attractive to mailers, the Government Accounting Office warned today.
Not to worry, the Postal Service responded. If the tiny Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) discounts scheduled for later this year are not enough to entice mailers, it said, two years from now the huge penalties for not using IMbs will force mailers to change their ways. Starting in May 2011, mail without IMbs will be ineligible for automation discounts, which typically are at least several cents per mail piece.
“Some mailers have said they find the pricing incentives insufficient to recover their investment in the program,” said the GAO report. “For example, some large mailers said they invested millions of dollars to update and purchase hardware and software, while some smaller mailers expected to invest tens of thousands of dollars.”
Other highlights of the report and the Postal Service’s response:
The Intelligent Mail program “lacks a comprehensive strategy” that includes a detailed plan or “goals and measures of success”, the GAO said. The Postal Service agreed to beef up its planning but said the approach recommended by the GAO would drag out implementation too long.
“USPS and mailers may not be ready for implementation given USPS’s short-time period in which to simultaneously design, develop, test, and implement the Intelligent Mail program,” the report said. Amen to that!
An odd statement from the Postal Service: “Despite an extremely compressed schedule, the successful implementation of the Operating System environment on May 11 and the Test Environment for Mailers on May 18 demonstrates how well this effort works.” May 11 and 18 haven’t occurred yet, and mailers are reporting that the Postal Service is not ready for those key dates. See “Another Delay for Intelligent Mail?”
USPS “lacks information on costs and savings attributable to the Intelligent Mail program,” the GAO said. USPS responded that the program will give it valuable information enabling it to become more efficient but that “there is no sound financial method to specifically attribute these reductions to Intelligent Mail.”
“According to USPS, Intelligent Mail is the most complex project it has undertaken,” the GAO report said.
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