Editor’s note: This is part one of a four part series.
“... nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
— Herodotus
The U.S. Postal Service has no official motto yet Mr. Herodotus’ quote is frequently proffered as the raison d’etre to “... establish Post offices and post roads ...” which provides for the existence of my current employer under the U.S. Constitution when actually a reverse reading of the foregoing would be more accurate. You will not find in the Constitution a prescription for the departments of Treasury, Commerce nor Health and Human Services which only exist as the spoils of political brigandage for tax evaders and influence peddlers.
And yet the service you get from the Post Office is free.
Yup, that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, FREE! You don’t have to sign up for this service. There is no initiation nor yearly maintenance fee. No salesmen will call. Of course, however, provided that you’re not a future U.S. Cabinet nominee on the dodge from the IRS, we may or may not, political pedigree pending, be required by law in assisting the IRS to find you. More importantly, NO TAX PAYER money is spent for this service.
The tab is paid when you shell out to the USPS a measly 42 cents for a 1st class stamp.
And we will deliver bloody near anything. In 1904, a prohibition against sending small children through the mail had to be enacted. No joke, there are pictures of this. I delivered a small canoe once as well as the cremated remains of someone’s dearly departed to “point B” from “point A.”
The USPS “Smurf Army” of 690,000 handles half of the world’s mail [no exaggeration] so that you may enjoy the comfort and succor of your letters from Grandma, books from Amazon and recycled lingerie from Khyrgistan.
OK, so what service do you really get for less than half a buck from the USPS?
Let’s say you live in Key West, Florida. Your long lost Uncle Bronco lives in Nome, Alaska. You send him a smarmy all-vegan post-consumer waste Tantra-colonic birthday card from the Aura Shop affixed with one of our 1st Class stamps. We then fly that little bit of personal fluff all the way from sunny Florida to the farthest popsicle precipice of the planet.
However, Uncle Bronco has since moved from the quiescent confines of Eskimo-ville to the bottom of the sweltering Grand Canyon in Arizona. The USPS, on that same 42 cents, re-routes your missive from Alaska to Arizona and then delivers it to the bottom of the gorge by mule train [no kidding] so Uncle Bronco can then enjoy your natal day salutations only to quip, “Who the hell is this from?”
Please name for me any other entity, public or private, that can pull off that stunt for under half a buck.
So the next time you pull up at the gas pump to fund autocratic oil-fed terrorist dictatorships or bump up against the counter of Starbucks to aid small time Colombian drug lords or whine about your crappy mortgage “deal” while bankers and politicians grease the wheels of commerce and call it “stimulus,” please desist from squealing when the USPS raises the price of a stamp by a crappy dime over a 10 year period!
Recently, the Post Master General of the USPS went before Congress and informed them that due to upper managerial ineptitude that mail service may have to be cut to five day/week from the current six days/week due to declining mail volumes.
Suffice it to say, when was the last time that you actually sat down, wrote a letter to a loved one, business associate or ex-girlfriend [sometimes these are all the same thing], sealed it in an envelope and then affixed one of the USPS’ low cost non-cyberspace alternatives that would directly stimulate the economy? Forget about the hopey-changey Congressional pinheads arguing about how condom and abortion subsidies stimulate “job growth.” Mail a letter instead.
So simple even a liberal can do it!
Write a letter and print it from your Apple iDooDad, stick a stamp on the darn thing and then drop it in the mail in order to preserve one of the best American inventions that Benjamin Franklin ever devised! Akin to Al Gore inventing the internet, Ben invented lightning.
Like Horndog-in-Chief Billy Jeff Clinton, Ben was also a whizzbang favorite of the ladies of the French court.
Is it an inconvenient truth that the primary governmental representative with which you have the most regular contact is your mailman? When was the last time that the Hag of the House Nancy Pelosi rolled by your crib? And the closest that you’ll ever get to President Zero is the bumper sticker of your arugula fed Prius. Sorry, folks, but you’re stuck with li’l ol’ me..
Lucky you!
Steve Breen and his merry band of postal Smurfs are happy to make your day and is still “the best looking mailman in the US Post Office” He can be reached at dulcamarax@yahoo.com.
