The Demise of the USPS

CNS News ^ | 4-4-05 | Chuck Muth

[FlyLow]

Candle-makers were none too happy with the invention of the light bulb, for obvious reasons. Ditto blacksmiths with the invention of the automobile. So you can imagine how the post office must feel today about cheap, long-distance rates, faxes and email.

While candle-makers and blacksmiths still roam among us today, like the buffalo their numbers have greatly diminished since the country's founding years. I assume they fought the tide of progress tooth-and-nail, but in the end their fate was inevitable. So, too, is the fate of the once great United States Postal Service. Its demise is a foregone conclusion.

The only question is when and how the USPS as we know it today will be put out to pasture for good.

Last month, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) introduced the latest version of a postal reform bill. This in response to recommendations made last year by the President's Commission on the United States Postal Service. And while there are a number of good things in the bill, it is a bill crafted in denial.

The bill's overall intent appears to be to return the USPS to its glory days, ignoring the fact that its time has come -- and gone.

The Magic City Morning Star, a local paper in Collins' Maine, covered the introduction of the bill in some detail. It characterized the purpose of the legislation as an effort "to preserve the jobs of more than 750,000 career USPS employees."

Um, if the intent of postal reform is simply to provide employment for these folks, maybe we can retrain them to become candle-makers and blacksmiths? Talk about back to the future.

[Conservative til I die]

And? Don't use them. You have no requirement to have a mailbox, nor any requirement to use the mail for anything.

What are you, the USPS Scientologist or something?

[Old Professer]

Wasn't it Franklin who embodied the virtue?

[infocats]

Wasn't it Franklin who embodied the virtue?

When the Continental Congress named Benjamin Franklin the first Postmaster General in 1775, the United States was a weak confederation of colonies scattered along the eastern seaboard. The postal system that the Congress created helped bind the new nation together, support the growth of commerce, and ensure a free flow of ideas and information.

Reference

or was it Kevin Costner?