On page A3 of your April 28 issue, you carried an Associated Press article entitled “Smaller towns adjusting to post office changes.” It is absolutely unbelievable papers such as yours would carry something like this without at least an accompanying article to rebut some of the info put forth in this article. It is very apparent that the Postmaster General and his staff as well as a number of members of Congress are more interested in destroying the Post Office than helping it to survive.
In 2006 Congress passed legislation mandating the Post Office pre-fund health care costs for postal employees for 75 years in advance in the next 10 year period. This is a requirement not shared by any private or public entity anywhere in this great country. In other words they are mandating health care for postal employees not even born yet. Your article claims the Post Office lost $354 million the first three months of 2014. Were it not for this ridiculous pre-funding requirement the Post Office would have been in the black for the first quarter of 20I4 by $1.1 billion. Even though 1st class mail volume is down, and we have suffered the worst depression in decades the Post Office is very much alive and well.
Cutting the Saturday delivery, forcing citizens give up door to door delivery by going to cluster boxes at the end of the block, cutting hours at local post offices, and other ill advised cuts in service should be the signal for companies like the T-R, and postal patrons everywhere to rise up against such foolish cuts. The last paragraph of your article vividly shows what happens when service is cut-the customers go some where else where service is still available. There is no segment of the U.S. Government that directly reaches out and touches as many of its citizens on an almost daily basis as does the U.S. Post Office. Every month across this great country there are many documented instances of postal carriers on their appointed rounds helping ill or injured seniors, reporting fires, protecting elderly and young children being attacked by vicious dogs, reporting suspicious activity or in other very important and necessary ways serving while all the while delivering your newspapers six days a week to our doorstep regardless of the weather.