The Postal Service Is Not A Business
Dear Editor,
FYI, the book 1984, along with Atlas Shrugged and Animal Farm should be on the reading list for ALL Americans. Atlas Shrugged is a huge book, full of wordy paragraphs a slog at times. You can listen to this book much more easily.
The best movie version of 1984, starring Richard Burton and John Hurt, is now playing on one of the streaming pay TV networks. Even if you have read the book, this is a must-see. The opening scenes of massed people gathered to ridicule opposing views and stonewall other opinions by shouting en masse, big, big, big, big, big, big (Brother) draws chilling congruence to leftist Brown Shirt street tactics. This book is not an attack on the Democrat Party, but an expos on Big Brother socialism.
On another subject, I recently received a priority mail flat rate box (2-day delivery) shipped from West Palm Beach, FL. Received after 12 days in transit. Five of those days residing at the USPS sorting facility near the Greensboro airport. Conversely, I received a first class letter from Boone, NC, the day after it was mailed less than 24 hours.
When the pandemic began, people began to shop on line v/s visiting the stores. This put a severe strain on all the shipping services. FedEx has reacted by simply going bad. FedEx lost one of my packages; you cannot get them on the phone, they literally dont want to talk to you. The local reps dont have a clue. FedEx also took six days to deliver an overnight letter, then rubbed salt in the wound by charging me $36 to not do so. They wont do that to me again.
Rather than stomp and holler, I went to a couple of post offices to find out what is going on. So straight from the firing line, this is what is going on with the USPS. When the on-line biz picked up, USPS could not train new employees (who might be temps) quickly enough, so the employees worked overtime to get the mails delivered a little slower, but OK.
The problem begins with the new postmaster general, Mr. Louis DeJoy, appointed to the post in June 2020. Mr. Dejoy is a trustee at Elon University and was in private business for companies such as New Breed Logistics and XPO Logistics for 35 years. The statement from the USPS website says that Mr. DeJoy has committed to creating a long-term, viable operating model for the Postal Service that will ensure the organization can fulfill its public service mission while remaining self-sustaining.
This statement proves the problem as related to me by several of his employees in Greensboro. The terms public service mission and self-sustaining are incongruent. To his credit, Mr. DeJoy is trying to run the USPS as a profitable business. The USPS is a service, not a business.
Anyone alive knows that our government does not make money. It does not live within its means. For 55 cents, you can send a first class letter to anywhere in the U.S. and possessions (Guam, W. Somoa). Letters have to be sorted numerous times, and gathered and delivered by hand. 55 cents is a bargain, for the simple reason that it costs a lot more than that to process the letter.
What Mr. DeJoy has done is to eliminate and curtail overtime pay for the employees in order to reduce costs. So whether the mail is processed or not, at the end of the day, work stops. Would you work for your employer for free? Should you? The USPS is a service, not a business.
Miller Forester
Black Lives Matter Both Concept And Organization
Dear Editor,
Black lives matter. All lives add value to this world. All lives matter equally. The problem at hand is partially due to using the term Black Lives Matter to both describe a concept and name an organization. Disagreeing with the organization does not equal disagreeing with the concept. Most group opponents openly support the concept. However, individuals disagreeing with the group have faced false accusations of racism.
To encourage a difficult conversation, here are several criticisms of the loosely organized Black Lives Matter group.
1) Stop and frisk policies caused devastating mistrust of police in the African American community. However, the BLM group over demanded. It crossed the line from a defensive to an offensive group. It has morphed into an antiestablishment, anti-police, anti-constitutional rights, and antigovernment organization. Two wrongs remain two wrongs.
2) The group leveraged confusion between concept and group to force support and punish disagreement.
3) It is dangerous to attack individuals for saying all lives matter. The term implies equality not racism. Black lives are included within all lives matter. Supporting all lives supports black lives. If you truly support equality, you must believe that we are equally capable of good as well as bad acts. If you believe we are all capable of graduating from college given environmental factors, you must also believe that we are capable of committing crimes given environmental factors. If you believe everyone are capable of good but only that other group is capable of bad, we risk defensiveness crossing over to offensiveness. We all risk being both abused by and abusers of racism. By becoming angered over all lives matter comments, increasing extremism risks crossing into racist ideology. We must all worry about extremism crossing the line into racism/discrimination. No one is immune. The individuals demanding only Black Lives Matter comments demand support for the organization not the concept.
4) The groups extremism increases tensions increasing threat to all sides. Fear and animosity has been heightened. Today, when police stop citizens, both sides become defensive. Both sides misinterpret the others defensiveness as offensiveness. This will only escalate tensions resulting in greater number of painful outcomes. In order to truly fix this situation, all sides must be listened to and understanding of the other attempted. After all, we are all, ALL, capable of mistakes. Demanding understanding without offering the same only amplifies distrust.
Alan Burke
Be Careful Of Propaganda From Both Sides
Dear Editor,
propaganda
Propaganda has been going on sense man developed speaking, reading, and writing. It has always been a very valuable tool used for good and bad. Advertising is probably the single largest use ever.
If you are paying close attention to what is being written and said you will spot the subtle use of words and phrases that other people begin using in any conversation on the subject. The best, most obvious example is where members of the media who are graduates of the Joseph Goebbels School of Journalism have managed to insert the word troops in place of the word agents when talking about federal law enforcement across the country. This allows the segue into the other lie about having federal troops on the streets of American cities
Goebbels is often credited with being the originator of the following;
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
In this example, the State is replaced by the collective leftist, Marxist/communist, socialist, anarchist groups being given cover and support by the (National Socialist) Democrat party.
They are able to get away with this because not enough people do actual comparative research. Too many people simply accept what they read and hear without challenging it, without looking at other sources and what they have to say. These are the people that help to spread the propaganda. And I will point out that that applies to both sides. There are those organizations on the extreme right and some that are truly racist that are as bad.
There is nothing wrong with being a little bit cynical. It keeps you safe and healthy. And it helps to make for a better, stronger America.
Dont buy into the B.S. Do your research before you vote.
Alan Marshall
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Letters To Editor: August 5, 2020 - The Rhino Times of Greensboro - The Rhino TImes