Postal executives cater to bulk mailers rather than you

Postal executives cater to bulk mailers rather than you
EDITOR:
I'd like to inform your readers about changes the U.S. Postal Service is proposing which the American Postal Workers Union believes will adversely affect shipping and delivery of their mail.
The Postal Rate Commission is studying a proposal to relax the current overnight standard for local delivery of mail. They're considering allowing for a delivery time of several days to get a letter across town, instead of overnight as is done now.
Postal management is proposing this change to accommodate their long-term goal to eliminate many of the nation's mail processing plants such as the facility in downtown Youngstown. They would like to consolidate all mail processing down to just a few regional sites across our state, but that goal cannot be accomplished under the current overnight delivery standard.
In an effort to cater to the interests of the mass mailing industry, service cuts like these are being made or proposed across the country. These huge business mailers have been heavily lobbying postal officials and politicians in Washington D.C. for changes beneficial to their industry, without regard to the negative impact which these changes would have on our retail and small business customers.
Locally, we have already seen many cuts to our service which have resulted in both added inconvenience and expense for our customers. Examples of these cuts include the elimination of drive-thru service at the Boardman post office, cutting service at the East Side Station to four hours, elimination of many of the street collection boxes, as well as scaling back of their last pick-up times to much earlier in the day. They have closed Station "A" in East Liverpool and have cut back Youngstown's main Post Office Box section, which used to be open 24 hours, now is down to less than six hours a day.
Of course it's not news to many of our frustrated customers that postal management regularly fails to adequately staff the window clerk positions, resulting in inexcusably long delays. Postal managers responded to customer complaints by encouraging them to use stamp vending machines in order to avoid the long lines. Not surprisingly, increased use of these machines resulted in an increased need for servicing and replacement of this old equipment. USPS officials have come up with a solution to that problem, recently announcing their intention to eliminate all stamp vending machines from service nationwide. This is just another example of a myopic bureaucracy which has lost sight of its original mission of universal service for the citizenry of this country.
In short, any service that the postal service provides which isn't used by the large "junk" mailers is at risk. These large corporate entities are dictating policy to postal management, who willingly cater to their demands. These mass mailers don't really care if you or I have to wait in long lines stretching out the front door, because all of their business is trucked into and out of the back door of the post office.
I'd urge you to voice your concerns to your congressional representatives. Make them aware that maintaining a full-service post office in your community or neighborhood is important to you.
RAY STANAR, President
Youngstown Area Postal Workers Union, Local 443
Youngstown
A growing evil in Israel
EDITOR:
I don't think that the shooting into a crowd of women by the Israeli armed forces came as a surprise to anyone in the world recently, just as there was absolutely no surprise when a few weeks before they went on their merry way bombing airports, apartment buildings and refugees escaping on the highways in Lebanon.
I do not believe that you could find any individual anywhere in the world, no matter what dictatorship or oppression he or she lives under, who would choose to exchange with a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation.
I was pleased to see the pope plead for a cessation of the violence, though his calling for "all sides to cease the violence," given the extreme one-sidedness of the situation leads me to wonder if the pope himself is desperately trying to straddle the fence of neutrality in the face of this growing evil.
American Christian Zionists, who claim to be Christian but have the hearts and souls of demons, are urging Israelis to commit more acts of living nightmares in order to fulfill their fantasies of Armageddon in which they imagine they will be raptured to safety while all the people of other faiths perish in pain and agony. That is what the world waits for in silence while the Palestinians are dying. That is what the true people of faith, Jewish, Christian, or Islamist, will do everything in their power to put an end to.
ROGER LAFONTAINE
Youngstown