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Post by Clipper on Aug 21, 2020 14:48:58 GMT -5
It must be true that the mail delivery is slow and undependable. I only received two political bulk mailings today. I wonder if there is any hope for a continuance of the lack of BS political mail between now and November.  |
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Post by kit on Aug 22, 2020 9:14:13 GMT -5
What about those sweet elderly ladies who don't have computers and frequently send hand written letters to each other? Some don't even have those new-fangled things called telephones. What is this post office nonsense going to do to them?
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Post by Clipper on Aug 22, 2020 9:35:09 GMT -5
Sadly that post office "nonsense" has been going on for decades. As advances were made by UPS, Fedex, and other carriers, coupled with the number of people communicating and paying bills online, revenues fell for the USPS. I don't buy into any conspiracy theory that it is connected to the upcoming election. However if the post office is to continue to exist it will require one of two things. Either we will see a major increase in the cost of mailing anything, or we as taxpayers will be picking up the tab to heavily subsidize it as an essential service. People have labeled the service "snail mail" for a very real reason. The cuts over the years have included consolidating processing into regional hubs. I used to be able to mail a bill to the local electric company and be relatively assured it would arrive there the next day. Today if I mail a birthday card to my neighbor across the road, it has to go to Johnson City, then to Knoxville before being delivered by the same carrier that picked it up FOUR DAYS LATER. Yep. That is what we call "progress" and "increased efficiency" in today's world.  My mom was an avid letter writer. Corresponding by mail was one of her favorite pastimes. She spent many hours in her chair with a lapboard, writing to friends and relatives. She would have been lost and devastated if the post office ever ceased to exist. The truth is that faxes, emails, text messaging, and smart phone apps are rapidly becoming the predominate method of communication. However sad it may be, snail mail is becoming a dinosaur and is in danger of extinction. Probably time to buy granny a smart phone or Ipad and teach her to use it. My uncle is 92 yrs old and in a rehab recovering from a hip replacement. His wife just bought him an Ipad and put facetime on it so he could communicate face to face with the outside world while the place is on lockdown. |
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Post by chris on Aug 22, 2020 12:37:53 GMT -5
One thing for sure its not as trustworthy as they use to be. But so far no real big issues although it was on the news when a lady in Irondequoit questioned where her mail was and the news channels reported on it. She said her normal mail that she would get was being delivered. The news station yesterday said the post office here had pulled several sorting machines with no plans of putting them back.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Aug 22, 2020 15:54:15 GMT -5
If the volume of mail has gone down, it makes sense that less equipment and fewer people are needed. The way I see it, vote by mail will men out household will receive 2 additional pieces of mail in October, hardly an overwhelming increase.
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Post by Clipper on Aug 22, 2020 17:57:04 GMT -5
The ballots will certainly not create much more volume than Christmas cards and holiday parcels do. As you said CB, it is most likely two pieces of mail for the average household and it will not all be in the flooding the system at the same time.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2020 10:25:00 GMT -5
The ballots will certainly not create much more volume than Christmas cards and holiday parcels do. As you said CB, it is most likely two pieces of mail for the average household and it will not all be in the flooding the system at the same time. What with the slow down I am hearing news media telling people who vote by mail to mail back the ballots as soon as you receive them. So the system just might become flooded. We will have to see. Doesn't that government have up to the end of December to have all the ballots counted. Granted that would mean not knowing who the next President will be but we at least will still have a seated President so I doubt the cart would be upset. Who knows new territory to explore. |
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Post by BHU on Aug 23, 2020 12:58:16 GMT -5
I have a better idea. Anyone who is healthy & feels safe should vote in person. Wear a mask & follow CDC guidelines. That's what I'm going to do so that some politician in Washington can't call into question the validity my vote & claim the system is rigged when it's not or when people are just excercising their constitutional right to cast a ballot. Me? I'm going to beat them at their own game & vote in person come hell or high water.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2020 13:19:52 GMT -5
I have always wondered if absentee vote are actually counted. The results of elections is usually called before the absentee votes are counted. This past election it was said there were over 1800 absentee votes to count for one race that was very close. Next day results were in and there wasn't much of a change to begin with. I noticed for the primary the envelope for the ballot had return postage on it so that was nice.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2020 13:27:14 GMT -5
I have a better idea. Anyone who is healthy & feels safe should vote in person. Wear a mask & follow CDC guidelines. That's what I'm going to do so that some politician in Washington can't call into question the validity my vote & claim the system is rigged when it's not or when people are just excercising their constitutional right to cast a ballot. Me? I'm going to beat them at their own game & vote in person come hell or high water. You must vote at Kennedy Jr. High School which is nice. I had to go to Mount Carmel and some of the people voting smell badly. It was at the Italian American Club on Bleecker St but moved when the club closed down. Now it is a bottle redemption center with some fantastic fast counting equipment. And you get to spin the wheel to see if you win 8 cents off per can/bottle. Not sure if they fixed it yet since it was bent out of shape last time I was there. Chinese family owns it. |
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Post by kit on Aug 24, 2020 9:24:08 GMT -5
I would suggest that the Postal system reduce the cost of mailing a 1st class letter or a hand-written Post Card and increase the cost of sending junk mail like ads, unwanted magazines, store flyers, promotional pieces, political crap, etc., which constitutes the majority of what appears in my mailbox. Compared to a magazine, a 1st class letter or Post Card weighs almost nothing. It should be less expensive to send.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Aug 24, 2020 11:02:32 GMT -5
The third class mailings are a huge revenue source for the Postal Service, much larger than 1st class. They rely on services like PJ Green which addresses the mail with a machine readable bar code and bundles it by carrier route in the order in which the route is walked. It is then put in bags marked for individual post offices, loaded on pallets and trucked to Syracuse. It is much less expensive for the Postal Service than a hand written envelope dropped in a blue box.
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Post by Clipper on Aug 24, 2020 14:15:06 GMT -5
I was just reading earlier that one reason that Nancy Pelosi may be pushing the issue so rabidly is that her hubby the real estate tycoon is said to be heavily invested in properties used by the USPS, and a major portion of the money she is pushing for the post office is tagged for capital improvements to post office buildings in order to make them "more marketable." Why don't she just tag the funding for delivery to her husband's bank account and cut out all the paperwork and red tape? I didn't get all the details in the article I read, but is it true that her old man owns post office buildings that are leased to USPS?
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Post by clarencebunsen on Aug 24, 2020 17:29:41 GMT -5
I have been reading the horror stores about mail delays while the Postmaster General has been grilled. I just received a shipment prescriptions today. Out of curiosity I clicked on the link from Express Scripts which allows me to track the shipment. It was put on a DHL truck in Missouri yesterday delivered by the USPS today. The USPS web site still says they waiting for it. I give them good marks for service, not as great on data base management. I can live with that.
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Post by BHU on Aug 24, 2020 17:48:36 GMT -5
DeJoy wanted to remove almost 700 mail sorting machines. Why? Were they not being used? Outdated? Some of the machines have been destroyed, probably costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions to have them replaced. Since when is it ok for government property to be destroyed? Especially equipment that was taken out of service for no reason other then political. DeJoy should be fired for that reason alone & charged with destruction of government property.
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