Sometime during the next few weeks I understand we will be paying a cent more postage to mail a letter. Make that 45 cents.
What? Another postal increase? Are those people crazy? How many times during the past 10 years has postage increased? It’s unconscionable. People should rebel. Write their congressman. Curse the president.
Yeah!
Let’s be honest about the postal situation. Can you think of a better bargain than buying a 44-cent stamp (make that 45 cents pretty soon), slapping it on an envelope in Decatur, or Gentry, or Gravette and having it arrive halfway across the country two or three days later? Honest, now, isn’t that quite a bargain?
Let’s do a little comparison. Take a box of corn flakes. Used to be 35 cents. And now, up and up and up and whadda you pay? $2.95? $3.29? And the milk you put on the flakes? 35 cents a quart? What is it now? And how about a gallon of gasoline? 20 or 30 cents or even a dollar a gallon? Ha. Come on now. Get the picture?
I have picked on the Postal Service for years. Readers 15 or 25 years ago probably remember those annual New Year predictions in the Cuff. One that appeared every year: Postal rates will rise.
Maybe they did rise. A penny or two every other year or so. Compare that with the annual increases in other prices.
The postal service is the absolute one service thathas been reliable for more than 200 years. Always there. Always reliable. Always a bargain.
And now? Of course it faces challenges. It always has. Remember the telephone was bound to kill letter writing. And today it’s that even bigger challenge, the Internet, the iPhone, or who knows what other marvel is on the horizon, if it’s not already there.
For decades the service was totally subsidized by the government. And then along came the idea to take it out of politics (ha) and make it a pay-as-yougo entity. What other government program is pay as you go? It’s a miracle it has been self-sufficient as long as it has.
The Postal Service is the one and only government service that continually serves everyone. Twentyfour hours a day. Year in and year out.
Perhaps it’s time for congress to at least make the playing field level for the department. More aptly, considering the billions and billions of subsidies that flow throughout the system as well as into foreign countries every year, maybe the answer would be to cut back on a bunch of those gimmes and underwrite the one service that serves everyone.
Just making sure the service remains intact- every-day service, no Saturday closings and comparatively reasonable customer costs are simple things that seem a lot better than spending $200,000 to research the sex life of fleas. Or building a bridge to nowhere. Or finance painting a disrespectful picture of a religious symbol. Or shipping millions to a foreign country that always has us in its sights. Or any one of the dozens of programs/ projects that squander our tax dollars.
It’s time to be practical. Keep the post offices open. Even the small, rural ones which are close to the people. Provide the service that has always been provided. For all our citizens. These could be the best bargains of taxpayer dollars that could benefit all of our citizens.
◊ ◊ ◊
The above is not my Christmas greeting to you. That message is a simple and sincere one: May the blessings that have come from the Christmas message fill our hearts and may we all find the peace that passes all understanding. And may God’s direction reach into our souls and that of our nation as we face the challenges of a new year.
Dodie Evans is the editor emeritus of the Westside Eagle Observer and may be contacted by email at [email protected].
Opinion, Pages 5 on 12/28/2011