Posted on 08/07/2011 6:15:39 AM PDT by maggief
A large majority of post offices that have been targeted for closure are in Republican districts.
More than 2,500 of these post offices are in GOP districts while about 1,000 are in districts represented by Democrats, according to a review by The Hill. There were fewer than 100 stores where the district could not be determined because the zip code is represented by lawmakers in both parties.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has stressed that politics played no role in determining which sites to shutter, noting that it adhered to a strict methodology for choosing them. The USPS used a computer program to select the offices on a range of factors, including revenue and workload.
The closures would save about $200 million annually for the ailing USPS, which has urged the end of its Saturday service.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
From the link in #30: Looks like we are both safe for now.
LA SALLE ! LA SALLE ! 77969
LA WARD ! LA WARD ! 77970
LAKEVIEW ! LAKEVIEW ! 79239
LANE CITY ! LANE CITY ! 77453
LANGTRY ! LANGTRY ! 78871
LAZBUDDIE ! LAZBUDDIE ! 79053
LEDBETTER ! LEDBETTER ! 78946
LEESVILLE ! LEESVILLE ! 78122
See the link in reply #30.
Actually, it was 10 miles round trip so 5 miles to the PO. No, it's not a long damn way. Five miles to country folk is nothing. It's considered "down the road", by the neighbors', or across the creek. Out of milk for breakfast would mean a 40 mile round trip for me (not that I'd drive in for milk but hubby would) which is about average for country folk here.
Don’t see us there! Thanks for the info.
http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/news/2011/07/26/list-of-post-offices-that-might-close.html
Type in your state or zip code to search for closings.
There are many things that the USPS could do to enhance revenues and or reduce costs:
Lower wages
Convert the pension to a defined benefit plan
Eliminate Saturday delivery
Eliminate USPS sponsorship of events and sports teams
Sell advertising on stamps and envelopes
Establish regions for Mail that coincide with the Parcel delivery and charge appropriately
Reduce staffing to the level actually required (the USPS has done a great deal of automation in the last 20yrs)
Close any offices below a certain volume of mail and sub-contract that area out
Set up urban deliveries on corners and in boxes like in apartment complexes. Of course, that would be perfect targets for little gangsta wannabes to break into and damage.
For those who don’t want their rural mailboxes smashed with baseball bats - buy two boxes, one larger than the other. Place the smaller one inside the larger one and pour cement into the space between. Your neighbors may have smashed boxes but the idiot will be easily identified as the guy who was admitted to the ER the night before with a broken arm.
I don’t know about your state, but I just took a look at the proposed closures in California. Sure, there are a bunch of rural places up in the Sierras, but there are also 24 closures in the Los Angeles Basin, with a lot of those in LA itself. So the welfare recipients are going to do some walking too.
Well, I guess I was thinking selfishly.
Our Mailman delivers our mail between 11:00 & 2:00 at the latest and we send our mail by putting it in our curbside box and putting the Red Flag up.
So we rarely have to go to the P.O. Building.
Then you must live in an extreme outlier of what is considered a rural area or out West . It would be a rare area indeed East of the Mississippi to draw a 15 mile radius from a point and not encircle a corner store selling basic groceries.
Even when I used to do hiking an camping all through Wyoming and I felt like I was really out there, when you pull out a map, you see civilization is just 20 miles away. It may not be much - just a bar and a gas station. But the beer truck, Frito Lay and Pepsi distributor make it there every week.
Maybe we should have Anheuser Busch haul the mail. No matter how far you go into towns that time forgot, their product makes it to the shelves.
Out in Luckenbach there ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain.
When it comes right down to it what I see is a typical big government solution where a more individualized approach would be better.
In fact in my area our post office is in a 100+ year old rented building when there’s a brand new township owned building less than 25 yards away. We built a brand new building for our police department then disbanded the police department 2 years later.
What I would do locally is move the post office into the new building rent free. Triple the number of boxes and bring the people who live just outside the village limits into the post office instead of keeping them on a rural route. We have several hundred people around a small lake just outside the village limits (far more than are inside the village)
On the national level I would let the post office raise rates as needed.
Had to smile at your new tagline. Hear last week that the aquifer we’re on is getting low and slow. Don’t know if that means we need to batten down the hatches tomorrow, next month, or six months from now. Hopefully, we’ll get some of that wet stuff before next year. I had thought our well had never gone dry but mom said it did when I was little. I remember us all getting horribly sick from contaminated water from a neighbor’s well and having to have someone bring us water from town. Oh, we were S-I-C-K. Now days there’s more people here so there’s more chance of contamination from septic tanks even though there’s more regulation on them. Still, I dunno. Not good no matter how you look at it. I can get water from the river for bathroom and laundry use but I’m getting a bit concerned with drinking water. Yes, need to get more prepped for that expense. We’re fine for the time being but bring on hurricane season!
I was surprised to see Ledbetter on the list. That is about 12 miles east of Giddings. There are some in Austin that are closer than 12 miles apart.
Go once a day and they can cut their staff by 2/3. Plus you can cut your gasoline consumption by 2/3. My God, man! Don’t you love this earth! sarc
Don’t you post-office-haters KNOW that freepers who are employeed by the post office work their fingers to the bone every day for little or no pay and no benefits and no retirement just so you can get all those ads delivered to you within a day or two of the posted delivery date? And if a “flier” is delivered wrong by accident they have to go back and get it and deliver it again?
We NEED the post office! Ben Franklin knew this. If you’re against the post office you’re against the founding fathers!
Must I always have to type “sarc”?
The Luckenbach post office has been shut down for a long time, it’s only there for show. From the History of Luckenbach, in the words of Hondo Crouch:
“Four weeks after we’d bought Luckenbach store the joke was on us. We found out the government was closing the post office. Thirty-seven families still had boxes at the post office. Although there was a sharp decline in grocery sales, beer joint patrons & egg customers remained loyal. Even though Hondo wrote a futile plea to Senator Tower, he made a joke out of losing the post office. “I’m so conservative. Its my fault,” he told the people. “But I just couldn’t see why I should send a big mail sack with one little letter down in the bottom so lonesome. I kept it ‘til I got it full. Took seven Months.”
Hondo was a good Republican, so perhaps they were basing their post office closing decisions on politics back then, too!
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
Both are good UPS moves more volume(50lb limit) but Fedx moves more weight.
Our post office is on the way out.
And the problem in dealing with that is that the USPS is neither man nor beast. It isn’t a strictly government-entity, and it isn’t a truly private, for profit enterprise either.
If it was the former, we could get some satisfaction through our elected representatives, and if we were truly customers in the true sense of the word, we would probably get a fair hearing based on the merits.
As it is, we get neither. Believe me.
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