Letters

From the February 1995 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

Another aspect of "getting there from here" is the ability of Mr. Child to challenge the claim of covetous bureaucrats to his land in federal court. Mr. Child is "there" today only because Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) represents him for free. Since MSLF--like other conservative, nonprofit, public-interest law firms--depends on public support to assist people like Brandt Child, it would be helpful for REASON to mention that fact.

William Perry Pendley
President and Chief Legal Officer
Mountain States Legal Foundation
Denver, CO

Mr. Henderson replies: I thank Tom Holt for clarifying the Dolan decision. And I appreciate Perry Pendley's pointing out the important role of Mountain States Legal Foundation in the Child case. Public-interest law firms like Mountain States, and the others I mentioned in the story, can help level the playing field for property owners facing regulators with coercive powers and seemingly unlimited resources.

Stamping Grounds

I read, with great interest, Brian Doherty's "Affirmative Reaction" editorial (October). As a postal worker, I could only laugh at an assertion made by Charly Amos, the Postal Service's manager of affirmative action.

Amos "points out that applicants for postal jobs go through objective written examinations. Except for military veterans, who get a slight boost, all comers are treated equally in the test grading." Either Amos is deliberately spreading misinformation, or he is just part of the long line of incompetents who permeate the Postal Service.

In May 1984, I took the clerk/carrier exam. That was objective, in the sense that it involved a rote memory of names and addresses. I scored a 95.8 on the test. But I am a white male of 100 percent German ancestry.

After nearly a year and a half, I was finally offered a $5.00-an-hour casual employee position at Milwaukee's main downtown post office. I was a casual for six months, when my name finally came up for a "part-time flexible" (PTF) letter-carrier position. From our casual group of about eight people, one woman, who was also black, and had a disability from her military service, used affirmative action points from all four criteria to catapult over the rest of us and into a regular machine-operator position.

That's only one example. After being a PTF carrier for 10 months, I transferred back to the downtown facility as a PTF distribution clerk, i.e., someone who sorts mail by hand. Remember my test score, because by the time I made "regular" (full-time permanent position) in a city secondary zone, one black woman was already there. She tested during the same time frame as I had, but had scored an 84.

While the gist of Mr. Doherty's piece was sound, it never ceases to amaze me how much misinformation surfaces when any part of the media tries to grapple with the United States Postal Service.

Brian A. Podoll
West Bend, WI