The Never Give Up Postal Service

I was out of state when I wrote this post and using someone's Apple computer and I don't know how to use Apple products. I couldn't figure out how to use the link commands to provide the link below so I waited till I got home to post the article and create the link.

Huffington Post - Dave Johnson - Another Attack on Our Postal Service

I have written about this subject before; but, just read the above article and would recommend you read it too. What follows is my take on this newest attack; but, I don't think I have really added much to the article, in fact, I find myself in almost total agreement with the writer which is why I have included his name in the link. I don't do that often as my readers know.

Since Benjamin Franklin began the post office it has been one of the greatest examples of public sector service delivery. Neither rain, nor sleet nor dark of night stopped people from getting their mail. Even better, the first attempt to destroy it came when it had to be 100% self sufficient and it did so. It has not received money from the government in decades. It has met every challenge that has faced it and has continued to find innovative and inventive solutions. It is also the only mail service that is required to keep your mail and transactions confidential. As most people know now, your cell phone communications are not confidential; but, land lines are. The similar situation is true with the post office, court orders are needed to read your mail, that is not true for FedEx or UPS.

The post office is also still the cheapest way to communicate with others. It costs less than 50 cents to send a letter. Check out what it costs to send a letter using FedEx. Heck, check out what it costs to send a small package at the postal service compared to private companies. As people increased the us of e-mail, the post office continued to find ways to supplement it's income without getting any money from the government. When a crazy law was passed to require the post office to put all of a person's possible retirement costs up front rather than over the course of their employment, they managed to do that to. No private company and no government agency has to do that. The law was written to kill the post office and they still found a way to succeed.

Many people believe that "government should be run like a business" and the post office found ways to run better that any other business or government agency. In comparrison, the military is not as efficient, especially when it comes to their purchases. Recently, the Navy gave tens of billions to companies to build a new destroyer and in the end, the destroyer did not perform. All the money for the destroyers (we are buying 3 even though they don't work as needed) went to private industry, along with the technology we paid for them to design them.

There are those who would benefit from the elimination of the post office; but, it would mean that the cost for mailing things would go up, there would no longer be any privacy of the mail and the only people who would profit would be about two or three companies. The public would only lose. Does that sound good to you? Well it is being promoted by some conservative politicians. They want to use a trick that large companies use to avoid taxes, take all the good parts, sell them off (privatize) and leave all the parts that don't do as well to be serviced by a post office that will then die on it's own. These are the same politicians who said that government should run like private industry and because it is efficient want to destroy it.