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Maryville, Mo. —
This is going to be a real reversal for me. I am usually optimistic about things, very optimistic about most everything, in fact.
But I find that becoming more and more difficult.
I usually derive quite a pleasure from keeping as up to date as possible on topics that are relative to the workings of the nation and the world. One of my mainstays, aside from daily newspaper stories gleaned from other places where I have lived, as well as from the newspaper Internet sites where some of the bigger stories of the day originate, is a relatively unknown weekly news magazine.
The Week is dated on Fridays and usually arrives on Mondays, bringing with it a compendium of the main stories from here and around the world, as well as a plentiful helping of arts and entertainment stories capped off with a usually interesting essay at the end.
That is, The Week used to arrive on Mondays. Who knows what its schedule will be if — and when — the United States Postal Service is successful in implementing its proposed reductions in service, and locations, in an effort to avoid near-certain bankruptcy.
Having spent almost my entire working career in an industry that has always been heavily dependent on the Postal Service, it concerns me perhaps more than most that the USPS is about to deliver another punishing, self-inflicted body blow.
I understand the Post Office struggles with abnormal costs resultant of unduly high wages and benefits, including radical retirement obligations that drive labor costs to more than 80 percent. Federal Express manages to get by at 32 percent for the same segment of its budget.
But I cannot, for the life of me, understand how reducing services will lead to anything other than a more hastened demise.
There is just no way that eliminating next-day delivery for first-class mail and taking as long as a week to delivery some other classifications of mail, potentially including newspapers and news magazines, makes much sense. All it will make is more reason for customers to rely more and more on those demons, the Internet and its instant e-mail.
The relationship between the federal government and the Post Office is a somewhat weird one in the first place, and until the government either decides to run the PO like a real business, or get out of the business, things will almost certainly not improve.
This is going to be a real reversal for me. I am usually optimistic about things, very optimistic about most everything, in fact.
But I find that becoming more and more difficult.
I usually derive quite a pleasure from keeping as up to date as possible on topics that are relative to the workings of the nation and the world. One of my mainstays, aside from daily newspaper stories gleaned from other places where I have lived, as well as from the newspaper Internet sites where some of the bigger stories of the day originate, is a relatively unknown weekly news magazine.
The Week is dated on Fridays and usually arrives on Mondays, bringing with it a compendium of the main stories from here and around the world, as well as a plentiful helping of arts and entertainment stories capped off with a usually interesting essay at the end.
That is, The Week used to arrive on Mondays. Who knows what its schedule will be if — and when — the United States Postal Service is successful in implementing its proposed reductions in service, and locations, in an effort to avoid near-certain bankruptcy.
Having spent almost my entire working career in an industry that has always been heavily dependent on the Postal Service, it concerns me perhaps more than most that the USPS is about to deliver another punishing, self-inflicted body blow.
I understand the Post Office struggles with abnormal costs resultant of unduly high wages and benefits, including radical retirement obligations that drive labor costs to more than 80 percent. Federal Express manages to get by at 32 percent for the same segment of its budget.
But I cannot, for the life of me, understand how reducing services will lead to anything other than a more hastened demise.
There is just no way that eliminating next-day delivery for first-class mail and taking as long as a week to delivery some other classifications of mail, potentially including newspapers and news magazines, makes much sense. All it will make is more reason for customers to rely more and more on those demons, the Internet and its instant e-mail.
The relationship between the federal government and the Post Office is a somewhat weird one in the first place, and until the government either decides to run the PO like a real business, or get out of the business, things will almost certainly not improve.
Rather than shutter almost 500 mail processing centers, which are glowing examples of both our sophistication in automated processing and too much automation, both at the same time, and laying off as many as 28,000 employees, many of who will almost certainly collect outrageous retirement benefits, why not take a few lessons from the competition, FedEx and UPS, and act like a real business?
Undoubtedly, some of the smallest rural post offices could be shuttered, saving no telling how much in lease payments. Is that really a tough decision: Deprive maybe a few dozen people of “their own post office,” or delay the delivery of mail to thousands of customers by a day or two?
Or maybe even go way out on a limb and open more branches in grocery and drug stores, malls, and/or pack-and-ship stores that handle U.S. mail anyway?
Stop delivering regular mail on Saturday? Are you kidding?
Move it, but don’t deliver it. Customers could still utilize delivery to USPS boxes. And many business mail users are not open anyway.
Maybe even go back to the “good ol’ days” in many ways. Why send mail posted in Maryville to a Maryville address to St. Joseph, or even Kansas City, when there is really no need for it to even leave the local building until it is pulled from a PO box by the intended addressee, or handed over to a route carrier for delivery?
On a completely different subject, but one almost as difficult to figure out, I am bewildered by the antics of the presidential candidates as they slash and slosh toward the actual beginning of the state primary/caucus season.
Even if I were inclined to favor a Republican candidate, I have to be bewildered by the roller-coaster fortunes of one candidate and then the next. How many front-runners have there been?
Is it Newt Gingrich this week? Certainly he has moved ahead of Herman Cain after his alleged missteps, and Michele Bachmann, following her recent threat to shutter the U.S. Embassy in Iran (which closed during the 1980 hostage crisis). Even odds-on front-runner Mitt Romney might be on the ropes. Former Speaker Gingrich leads in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida while former Gov. Romney is struggling to hold sway in New Hampshire, despite being the most eminently qualified to compete against President Obama come November.
And while we here at home relegate the honesty and ethical standards of our Congress to a level below even telemarketers, such skepticism is mild criticism compared to how the European press views our candidates.
Germany’s Der Spiegel labeled the GOP contest a “freak show.”
British and French commentaries view the candidates as spewing outrageous right-wing positions, denying evolution, endorsing torture and joking about electrocuting illegal immigrants. And those are the more civil observations.
But I am also certain our own rhetoric will dissolve to new, lower lows when the unbridled Super PACs get cranked up.
If nothing else is certain, you can bet it’s not going to be pretty.
Jim Fall is a local weekly columnist. He is a former publisher of the Maryville Daily Forum.
