Postal Service should think of rural access

[Pepper]

The Pueblo Colorado Chieftain via Lancaster Eagle Gazette:

See

Postal Service should think of rural access
http://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/article/20110408/OPINION/110408001/Postal-Service-should-think-rural-access

The U.S. Postal Service is taking the wrong approach in planning to decide which post offices to close based on sales, foot traffic, hours of operation and other volume-related statistics. This is biased in favor of big-city, congested post offices that ironically can be within easy driving distance to other postal outlets in the same vicinity.

Not so with rural post offices. If you close one of them down, you deny postal patrons any reasonable access to mail services simply because of their remote locations from the big city.

The postal service announced that as many as 3,000 offices across the country might be reviewed under new criteria that would drop the usual exemptions for small post offices.

“I’m not certain that this is going to lead to wholesale closings,” postal vice president Dean Granholm said. “We still need to make good business decisions.”

The postal service needs to include access as one of the review criteria. After all, big doesn’t necessarily mean better when it comes to providing universal mail services to Americans, urban and rural alike. It’s only fair.

— The Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain

[Pepper]

More:

 

The United States of America was a fabric that was made whole through a commitment to common ideals that its immigrants held. Since the 30s, our very fabric is being torn by those wishing to destroy what America was and represented. It reached a zenith during the 60s, subsided and now has reared its ugly head again.

 

An important part of that American fabric are the citizens of the small towns and communities that are largely ignored by the media.

 

Within those communities and small towns in these rural areas, the local post office was and is the single place where almost everyone meets on often a weekly basis. The postmaster was the focal point.

 

In addition to providing mail services, the rural post office was and is the place to go and get information on how a neighbor is, on what was happening at the local church, or when the next event at the school would be held.

 

Closing rural post offices is just one more step in the tearing and ripping up of the fabric that makes up the heart of America.

 

It is a deliberate step to further fragment this nation from one of individuals with common ideals but different goals to one of a collective, a Borge, with but a single goal: to serve big government.

 

If it is a matter of costs, rural post offices should remain open and the big city operations that need to shut down.

 

The majority of people negatively affected by the closing of rural post offices are the working class Americans, those who get it on the chin with each new government proposal.

 

The people who gain from the closures will be nameless bureaucrats who can say they held the cost line, nameless unionized workers and union bosses in big cities and all those nameless city folks who have never once experienced a rural post office and rural life.

 

All who wish to curtail government spending should begin with the big city institutions where mail delivery is institutionalized, nameless as well as mindless and instead, retain the small offices that cost a fraction to maintain.

[Pepper]

 

 

 

 

Or

[Pepper]

[SrWoodchuck]

"Gubmint" just ain't responsive.

 

There is a progressive movement to do away with the Electoral College and mandate the electors of each state vote for the candidate with the majority of the popular vote. In effect, America would be governed strictly by the large populations of the coasts.

 

I, along with many here at TRR, am in "fly-over" country......even in the suburbs of Denver.

 

What your post illustrates, Pepper! is that we could become "fly-speck" country. A small community uses a Post Office as a gathering point for many things besides pickin' up the mail.