Posted on 10/02/2011 8:04:14 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
"A refrigerator has never been hacked. An on-line virus has never attacked a cork board." -- from United States Postal Service TV commercial urging people to use mail.
Right. And a buggy whip has never had a broken transmission--so why don't we junk our cars? Really, that was the kind of pathetic logic on display in the USPS TV commercial that aired during today's Fox News Sunday.
View the video here.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Sorry I’m late. I was in the 16th Century looking for the Post Offices pen.
Even my sister, who is non-political and doesn’t follow this stuff like I do, just about puked when this came up during a football game yesterday. Pathetic.
By begging more Luddites to eat more chicken.
Selling Girl Scout cookies.
Pimping.
Maybe they should pimp out Girl Scouts and throw in a free box of cookies. Problemo solved.
No one has gotten anthrax through e-mail.
Why sell commemorative stamps? Yes, they did it in the 1940’s and 1950’s but they were limited editions. One of my uncles went to college when his mother sold her commemorative stamps. They were worth something because they were very limited editions not massed printings like today's commenoratives.
Why sell packing supplies? They do so because their INTERNAL regulations make most packing supplies unacceptable. Visit the local post office and see what happens. Yesterday a legal size envelope fell into two different pricing scales depending on how it was labeled - regular it was a letter; landscape it was a more expensive package.
The post office should concentrate only on mail operations and exit the retail market. playing in the retail market opened them to financial losses when they made poor/unrealistic decisions.
Beau and I saw this ad during the Badger game yesterday. Both of us threw stuff at the TV screaming, “OUR TAX DOLLARS ARE PAYING FOR THIS?!?”
It lead to a great discussion about where we want our tax dollars spent - and this isn’t one of them! Advertising for a hopelessly indebted Government agency?
Nope. Commercials advertising for the Military? Fine with us! :)
If the Post Office had any brains at all they would move *to* the Internet and offer a global PKI service. They could justify the cost of selling digital certs by the fact that it would virtually put an end to SPAM.
Then, we'd all be happy.
That doesn't mean I have completely stopped using postal mail. My mother really, really likes getting handwritten letters, and I don't mind showing off my penmanship. I do ship small parcels from time to time using Priority Mail, especially when completing an eBay transaction on something smaller than a breadbox.
Bills? All the utility companies have discovered on-line payments using electronic check, so paper checks don't have to physically move. It costs them less. Besides, when I was paying by paper check, I prefer to go to the utility's office and present in person...until all the utilities here closed their counters to the public.
Now, one person commented on this thread that he gets checks in the mail to him for his business. That's fine, and there is a way to fix the problem and still let the Post Office slash costs: use the lockbox service at your bank. Many large banks have their own ZIP code, and receive tons of mail. Using automated equipment and turnaround documents, the banks can accept the checks directly, and get them started in the mill, and credit the correct bank account. Moreover, the lockbox operations get bags of mail every single weekday and Saturday, and I don't see that stopping when they reduce retail delivery to four or five days a week. Mr. Business man, wouldn't you like to avoid having to deposit paper checks personally, and have then clear much fast to boot?
Don't like dealing with big banks? Little banks contract lockbox server from the big guys -- talk to your banker about it.
Yesterday, I picked up my mail from the large bank of mailboxes on my street. (I haven't had door delivery of mail for years; it's always been Post Office boxes or "cluster boxes" for more than a decade.) It's been a week since I checked it last. There were six letters that needed my attention. The 30 or so other envelopes, as well as the rest of the paper that stuffed my box tightly, ended up in the paper recycling.
The Post Office forgot about that refrigerator in Ghostbusters.
The post office is a costly anachronism that is less useful every day. Let it die. Everything the post office does can be replaced by email and Fedex.
However, before I’d eliminate the post office, I’d get rid of the Departments of Education, Energy, HHS, Agriculture, HUD, Labor and yes, the liberty destroying behemoth known as “Homeland Security.” Each of these federal monstrosities should be more of a priority for the next Republican president than the pathetic post office.
I tried switching to smoke-signal communications, but the EPA sued me....
It’s a shame one of the few things the federal govt. was charged with was building post roads and offices [art.1 sec.8]and they’ve loused that up. If we lived by the Constitution instead of feel good liberalism, the monies spent on social programs would actually have to take a backseat in regards to the USPS.
Of course I’m sure one of our benevolent uberdorks has probably seen this and has dutifully written that responsibility out of existence.
yes. they get money from the taxpayers
But they aren’t directly funded by the gubmint with tax dollars.
They get Free “loans” from the government that they don’t pay back. The “loans” are funded by the us taxpayers. It’s a subsidy.
Same as SO many others. Disability, foodstamps, govt. contracts, on and on. AND ON.
How many people do you know who are “subsidized” by the Feds?
Actually, although I use the internet for many things, I do NOT pay my bills online. I have very few, but still prefer to write a check and mail them.
My point is that the USPS is subsidized by the US taxpayer. The USPS is NOT self funded. You can list a whole bunch of government programs that should not be funded but that does not mean that the USPS is self sustaining.
That’s all well and good. But the USPS is not part of the federal government. Even though it is a federal agency. My main objection is slowly being forced into what has been termed the culture of “the mark of the beast”. That is all.
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