This insane idea is making me sick for my country.

The United States Postal Service is in debt.  The right wing thinks we should get rid of it.  The spoiled rich white people hate the post office because they have to stand in line with the commoners and the postal workers don't give them any "yazza yazza" and hot towel with complimentary champagne cocktail  Okay, I got it.  They are free not to go to the post office.  They can use UPS, Fed-Ex, or one of the other private delivery services.  

The blow dried fascists on FOX News were saying the post office should be shut down because fax and Blackberries are faster.  We have email and Facebook.  We have UPS and Fed-Ex.  We don't need this big government dinosaur called the post office.  

I have heard people complain about the post office all my life, but I never heard anybody even suggest eliminating the U.S. Postal Service.  Such a position is certainly not "conservative."

If the Tea Party whackos want to eliminate the post office, they'll have amend the Constitution, Article 1, section 8, which gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads."  

When Benjamin Franklin was appointed our first Post Master General in 1775, there were no Blackberries, there were no fax machines, there were no computers, there was no electric power grid, there were no cars, there were no paved roads.  In fact, highways passable by horse and carriage were few and far between in 1775.  It took three weeks at best to get a letter from Boston to Philadelphia.  

I find those citing technology as a reason to eliminate the U.S. Postal Service to be shallow and myopic.  The Internet, the Blackberry, the iPhone, the fax machine, and the UPS and Fed-Ex delivery fleets rely on one thing:  Access to cheap fossil fuels.  Well, we won't always have such access.  When electricity gets so expensive your Blackberry batteries cost $5000 you're not going to be to thrilled poking messages on that tiny qwerty.  When gasoline is $30.00 a gallon, UPS and Fed-Ex will give up the parcel delivery schemes and set up lemonade stands.  Unlike USPS, these business are in it to make a buck.  The USPS is in there by Constitutional mandate.  They will deliver your letters even if they have to do it by donkey cart.  It may sound funny, but if something apocalyptic happens and you don't have access to the grid for six months, you'll appreciate USPS quite a bit more!  The Post Office is an essential piece of our national infrastructure, it is in Article 1 of the Constitution.  Nobody calling for its demise can call himself a "conservative."

UPS and Fed-Ex seem more efficient than the USPS because they deliver a small fraction of the number of parcels the USPS carries every single day.  If private business had to carry the nation's entire postal load, their service would slow to a crawl and their prices would shoot through the roof.  

What puts your community on the map?  A post office.  In some tiny towns the post office is the center of all civic activity.  When the post office closes, the center cannot hold.  Conservatives are supposed to be on the side of small town America.  I guess that only counts if the small town is a gated community in the 'burbs.  

The Tea Party people would like us to live in a third world backwater so primitive it does not even have a central postal service.  If you stopped all USPS activities in their tracks tomorrow, we would sink into a recession so severe even the Great Depression couldn't rival it.  The microprocessor-silly technophiles don't think very deeply about anything except when they can upgrade their Smartphones.  They won't be able to imagine what life is going to be like with no USPS until it happens...

Which it won't.

So why am I so bugged about it?  Because people calling themselves "conservative" are so stupid they do not deserve such a dignified appellation as "conservative."  I'd just call them airheads.
::) ::) ::)

This insane idea is making me sick for my country.

The United States Postal Service is in debt.  The right wing thinks we should get rid of it.  The spoiled rich white people hate the post office because they have to stand in line with the commoners and the postal workers don't give them any "yazza yazza" and hot towel with complimentary champagne cocktail  Okay, I got it.  They are free not to go to the post office.  They can use UPS, Fed-Ex, or one of the other private delivery services.  

The blow dried fascists on FOX News were saying the post office should be shut down because fax and Blackberries are faster.  We have email and Facebook.  We have UPS and Fed-Ex.  We don't need this big government dinosaur called the post office.  

I have heard people complain about the post office all my life, but I never heard anybody even suggest eliminating the U.S. Postal Service.  Such a position is certainly not "conservative."

If the Tea Party whackos want to eliminate the post office, they'll have amend the Constitution, Article 1, section 8, which gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads."  

When Benjamin Franklin was appointed our first Post Master General in 1775, there were no Blackberries, there were no fax machines, there were no computers, there was no electric power grid, there were no cars, there were no paved roads.  In fact, highways passable by horse and carriage were few and far between in 1775.  It took three weeks at best to get a letter from Boston to Philadelphia.  

I find those citing technology as a reason to eliminate the U.S. Postal Service to be shallow and myopic.  The Internet, the Blackberry, the iPhone, the fax machine, and the UPS and Fed-Ex delivery fleets rely on one thing:  Access to cheap fossil fuels.  Well, we won't always have such access.  When electricity gets so expensive your Blackberry batteries cost $5000 you're not going to be to thrilled poking messages on that tiny qwerty.  When gasoline is $30.00 a gallon, UPS and Fed-Ex will give up the parcel delivery schemes and set up lemonade stands.  Unlike USPS, these business are in it to make a buck.  The USPS is in there by Constitutional mandate.  They will deliver your letters even if they have to do it by donkey cart.  It may sound funny, but if something apocalyptic happens and you don't have access to the grid for six months, you'll appreciate USPS quite a bit more!  The Post Office is an essential piece of our national infrastructure, it is in Article 1 of the Constitution.  Nobody calling for its demise can call himself a "conservative."

UPS and Fed-Ex seem more efficient than the USPS because they deliver a small fraction of the number of parcels the USPS carries every single day.  If private business had to carry the nation's entire postal load, their service would slow to a crawl and their prices would shoot through the roof.  

What puts your community on the map?  A post office.  In some tiny towns the post office is the center of all civic activity.  When the post office closes, the center cannot hold.  Conservatives are supposed to be on the side of small town America.  I guess that only counts if the small town is a gated community in the 'burbs.  

The Tea Party people would like us to live in a third world backwater so primitive it does not even have a central postal service.  If you stopped all USPS activities in their tracks tomorrow, we would sink into a recession so severe even the Great Depression couldn't rival it.  The microprocessor-silly technophiles don't think very deeply about anything except when they can upgrade their Smartphones.  They won't be able to imagine what life is going to be like with no USPS until it happens...

Which it won't.

So why am I so bugged about it?  Because people calling themselves "conservative" are so stupid they do not deserve such a dignified appellation as "conservative."  I'd just call them airheads.
::) ::) ::)


PREACH BROTHER

Snail mail is so 15 minutes ago.  Think "Newman" or Cliff Clavin.   :P

As to the 'postal clause' of the Constitution... it grants Congress the power to establish post offices.  It does not COMPELL Congress to do so.

I don't think we should wipe it out.  But its cost structure is completely out of whack and it needs major surgery.  If they gotta close alot of offices and cut back Saturday hours and raise postal rates, so be it.  And if the raised postal rates result in customers fleeing to other providers, then we'll know that the Post Office was mismanaged.

Maybe the USPS could get more kiosks in Wal-Marts.   :P

Snail mail is so 15 minutes ago.  Think "Newman" or Cliff Clavin.   :P

As to the 'postal clause' of the Constitution... it grants Congress the power to establish post offices.  It does not COMPELL Congress to do so.

I don't think we should wipe it out.  But its cost structure is completely out of whack and it needs major surgery.  If they gotta close alot of offices and cut back Saturday hours and raise postal rates, so be it.  And if the raised postal rates result in customers fleeing to other providers, then we'll know that the Post Office was mismanaged.

Maybe the USPS could get more kiosks in Wal-Marts.   :P
i'm not listening to anyone who talks about how we need to cut back on vital domestic services until we cut our defense budget in half. if we can waste all that money on fancy-pants jet fighters we're never gonna use, i think we can afford to spend a little money on things like the post office that are actually useful. but no, the conservatives aren't going to be happy until we look like feudal england under the East India Company. which is ironic because the redcoat teabaggers are always talking about the founding fathers.

Snail mail is so 15 minutes ago.  Think "Newman" or Cliff Clavin.   :P

As to the 'postal clause' of the Constitution... it grants Congress the power to establish post offices.  It does not COMPELL Congress to do so.

I don't think we should wipe it out.  But its cost structure is completely out of whack and it needs major surgery.  If they gotta close alot of offices and cut back Saturday hours and raise postal rates, so be it.  And if the raised postal rates result in customers fleeing to other providers, then we'll know that the Post Office was mismanaged.

Maybe the USPS could get more kiosks in Wal-Marts.   :P


They never thought anybody would be stupid enough to want to dismantle the postal service.

If they cut back Saturday delivery, the postal workers would have that much more work to do on Monday and the whole system would get even more cumbersome.  Ending Saturday delivery is part of the mad plan by the radical loonies to do away with our national infrastructure.  


i'm not listening to anyone who talks about how we need to cut back on vital domestic services until we cut our defense budget in half. if we can waste all that money on fancy-pants jet fighters we're never gonna use, i think we can afford to spend a little money on things like the post office that are actually useful. but no, the conservatives aren't going to be happy until we look like feudal england under the East India Company. which is ironic because the redcoat teabaggers are always talking about the founding fathers.


What did the bloody British do in India besides exploit the natives and strip natural resources?  They set up a postal service.
::)

What did the bloody British do in India besides exploit the natives and strip natural resources?  They set up a postal service.
::)
that's a good point. i actually malign the old british empire by comparing it to the right-wing kleptocracy in the US. at least the old-school british gave their colonies a little bit of a reacharound since they believed in "white man's burden." the market utopians in the US like to "liberate" people, and then tell them they're on their own.

I thought conservatives respected tradition.  It's traditional to have a postal service.  

Technology is also exclusive.  Believe it or not, millions of Americans cannot afford a Blackberry (or whatever the latest doohickey is).  Some don't have the credit to start an account.  Some can't afford the monthly payments.  Most everybody can scrounge up a couple of quarters for a stamp.

Furthermore, to suggest we should eliminate the public postal service in favor of private electronic communications accounts is to once again oblige the people to hand over their money to corporations like it or not.  That's fascism.  

BTW, this has already happened with telephones.  Mitt Romney made that abominable analogy of Obama being a payphone president in a Smartphone world.  In twenty years cell phones have gone from a luxury to a requirement.  You are regarded as irresponsible if you don't own one now.  

The other day an old homeless man asked me for a dime to make a phone call.*  Indeed, in Romney's retrograde payphone world, you could have a dime to your name and still be able to make a phone call.  Now you are required to sign a debtor's contract with a telecom corporation if you want to call your friend when you're downtown.  

* Jesus would have lent the guy his cell phone.  I felt like I should lend him my cell,  but I hastened away from the man feeling guilty!
:(

I think I have a solution to all of this.  After all, the internet and email is what's killing the Postal Service.

We should enact a 41-cent tax on every email message sent, and then forward said funds to the USPS.

And since bulletin boards such as InThe00s.com are a form of electronic mailing, a 41-cent tax should be imposed on every post.  Karma or Fudge transactions will be taxed at a lower rate, say 5 cents a pop.

I think I have a solution to all of this.  After all, the internet and email is what's killing the Postal Service.

We should enact a 41-cent tax on every email message sent, and then forward said funds to the USPS.

And since bulletin boards such as InThe00s.com are a form of electronic mailing, a 41-cent tax should be imposed on every post.  Karma or Fudge transactions will be taxed at a lower rate, say 5 cents a pop.


That'll go over like baked beans on a bus trip.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/15/violent1.gif

5 cents a pop.


It's been a while, karma for resurrecting the gag that brought out one of the 'net's earliest urban legends:

Kickin' it old-school, at five cents a pop.

In all seriousness, it was the phone companies that wanted (and still want) that world, not the postal agencies of the various companies involved.  A phone call on the analog POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) network consumes at most 64kbps.  Try to use VoIP instead of making a long-distance phone call?  As soon as it becomes popular enough, the phone company will throttle all VoIP traffic to the point that it ceases to be usable.  When cable companies started providing TCP/IP connectivity, we saw the same thing: Sure you can stream video, but if it's not Netflix (or some other company that's "partnering" with us), we'll make it so unusable that you'll be forced to use our video-on-demand service.

It's been a while, karma for resurrecting the gag that brought out one of the 'net's earliest urban legends:

Kickin' it old-school, at five cents a pop.

In all seriousness, it was the phone companies that wanted (and still want) that world, not the postal agencies of the various companies involved.  A phone call on the analog POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) network consumes at most 64kbps.  Try to use VoIP instead of making a long-distance phone call?  As soon as it becomes popular enough, the phone company will throttle all VoIP traffic to the point that it ceases to be usable.  When cable companies started providing TCP/IP connectivity, we saw the same thing: Sure you can stream video, but if it's not Netflix (or some other company that's "partnering" with us), we'll make it so unusable that you'll be forced to use our video-on-demand service.


They made me dumb enough to sign up for a Smartphone!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/07/phone.gif