I have noticed an alarming trend in the past few years and it raises some serious questions. Postage increases are scheduled for Mother's Day, which is one of the highest-volume mail periods each year. Is this just coincidence or by design?

If the US postal system is raising rates to capture the increased volume of mail during this period each year, it raises some serious questions about opportunistic practices on the part of our government agencies. If it is just happenstance, their timing sucks. Either way, I have to ask why they consistently raise rates on the second Sunday of May each time. Maybe someone in a higher position of government should take a serious look at the timing and maybe, just maybe they should consider spreading out the increases so they don't seem to target a specific high-mail-volume holiday like Mother's Day. Instead they could be seen as choosing non-specific holidays equally weighted.

While this is kind of intended in fun, it does raise some questions as to intent and maybe opportunistic design. What do you think? Should we start a protest or just accept the inevitable? Suspicious (maybe paranoid?) writers want to know...

Postscript: I talked with a friend who worked for the US Postal Service for almost 20 years and was told that they chose the Monday after Mother's Day to raise rates so that people could 'ease' into the new rates. It seems that Mother's Day has the largest volume of mail of any of the holidays. I would like to see the numbers myself, but I'll take his word for it for now.

Anyway, after Mother's Day, there is a major lull in the volume of mail during the Summer and the head of the postal service felt that people would have more time to adjust slowly to the new rates instead of having postage go up just before or during a major holiday like Christmas or Valentines Day, both of which have significant volumes of mail delivered.