Post Office Closures Politicized! Go Figure.
D.C.'s non-voting representative in Congress, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) boasts about her success in thwarting the U.S. Post Office's efforts to react to changing conditions and shutter some offices:
"As we predicted, the published list of post offices for study was preliminary, and now nearly half have been effectively removed from the list," said Norton, a senior member of the committee and subcommittee with jurisdiction over USPS. "We will keep at it until we get the same result we achieved two years ago, when none of the D.C. post offices on the preliminary list were closed."
Plus, endless bureaucracy!
The Postal Service also has agreed to Norton's call for new hearings for two post offices on the USPS Expanded Access Study List. Norton requested new public hearings after her office received complaints from residents about the timeline and location of the meetings….
Norton emphasized that even for post offices on the Expanded Access Study List, the timeline for review and study is fairly long and complicated, ensuring no closings in the immediate future.
More on the politics of the USPS.
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doppelpost!
doppelpost!
Double posted.
Double posted.
Evidently the comments get merged when double posts are corrected?
BEST SHIRT EVER today…
^bad link^
personal fail.
http://store.econstories.tv/fe…..irt-1.html
Cripes, how hard is it to do this? Business close branch offices all the time. Sometimes they realize they made an error, or demand in a discontinued service area recovers, and they re-open the office.
The post office is not a business.
It’s a jobs program.
^^THIS^^ Just like the military.
And it employs a large number of blacks, hence Norton’s extra concern.
It’s not fair to make people in a city walk a mile to get to a post office. You heartless demon.
Hey, listen. I’m just making sure my monocle-wearing-rights continuing ed. credit requirements are up to date for the year. You would not believe the paperwork if you let your certification lapse.
Who has to walk a whole mile? According to the USPS website, there are 13 US Post Offices within a mile of the Capitol Building.
Maybe if they closed a couple post offices, they could move some of the workers to other ones, and then have more than ONE person working the service windows at a time! Just think, you might have a chance of the whole post office not being held hostage because some nimrod is sending something huge across the country and has to 1) repack and secure it, 2) investigate the cost and time of every single shipping option starting with most expensive and working down to cheapest which they think is too expensive anyway 3) bum an extra buck off half the people in the post office because they’re short a few dollars.
Or maybe they could pay someone to at least turn press a button on a radio for Lite FM on or something. All you normally hear is teeth grinding.
“Maybe if they closed a couple post offices, they could move some of the workers to other ones, and then have more than ONE person working the service windows at a time!”
Naah. There’d just be more people on break.
How is it possible that THAT guy is in every post office I have ever visited? Is it possible he’s actually a malevolent Diety?
Yo man, fuck the Postal Service and D.C.
“There can be no consent given at the threat of force.”
The Spooner is Spoonerific.
Or perhaps, if our not-so-beloved Federal Legislature hadn’t treated the USPS exactly the same way that they treated Social Security, we wouldn’t be having this discussion…
dont bother em bagel; they’re on a roll just like bluto saying the germans bombed the world trade centers
Yeah, dipshit, pointing out that the post office is a mess is JUST LIKE your fantasies.
I thought you majored in lying; looks like it was false-equivalence.
I find it amusing that you regularly harangue people to stop replying to rectal and yet are running a close second after OM in replying to OO. 😉
Point taken.
Harangue is such a great underused word. I think I’m going to try to work it into everyday conversation at least once every day this week.
Do me a favor, also use the phrase “go ahead, it’s a free country”
And they want to run eve more of our healthcare….
Completely remove the federal government from interference with the post office and make it 100% private. Sure, it will have a competitive advantage by having infrastructure already in place. But it will be able to stay afloat. How about unprofitable areas? Well, rural areas still need mail, but you don’t have to have a dedicated person handling it. The post office can contract out its services to an establishment locally placed, like a grocery store or convenience store. Rural residents may be forced to get their own mail from the PO Box, but you don’t need a full-time person handling all of this. It can be handled by people who are already working in the store. People in those areas who want the convenience of having their mail delivered to them can pay a special premium each month to have this done.
Seriously, folks, it’s not that hard to do. Just because the government does it doesn’t mean that no one else would be able to or that it wouldn’t get done if the government did not do it.
OK, sure, but the Post Office is still one of the very few federal agencies with an explicit authorization in the U.S. Constitution. In a case of sublime irony, whereas most government agencies should require a constitutional amendment to be instituted in the first place, it would take an amendment to remove the federal government from the Post Office.
The Constitution says it has the power to, but it does not say it MUST
^ this – I didn’t know this either until I, y’know RTFC.
good point.
Why don’t we just let the post office raise the price of stamps/postage to cover what it actually costs to operate and then let the people decide with their wallets if it’s worth having the USPS?
Seriously, is the USPS supposed to be self sustaining or not? If it is, take away the power from Congress of setting the price of postage.
I don’t think this will save the USPS, but at least it gives the people the power to save their own post office.
However, I will say, that along with this change, there should also be a Do-Not-Send list like there is for telephone service. 90% of what the post office delivers is junk mail.
Junk mail is the reason the post office is even alive today.
“Why don’t we just let the post office raise the price of stamps/postage to cover what it actually costs to operate and then let the people decide with their wallets if it’s worth having the USPS?”
You don’t even have to do that. Just give it enough time and before long it’ll literally be cheaper to shove envelopes in boxes and ship them with UPS/Fedex.
That is when congress will set a minimum rate for the non-USPS carriers.
This is a very similar reasons to why public transportation in hugely inefficient. The local agency suggests closing these routes, but on one route, a state Congress member’s grandmother uses the bus, on the other, the DA’s daughter-in-law, and so on and so forth….