By: Diane Benjamin
I’ve received close to 100 emails from every possible leftist group crying about Trump wanting to close the Ellsworth Post Office.
I don’t even know if that is true, but it should be. There is no logical reason for a staffed office in a tiny town.
Sure Ellsworth is convenient. I use it a couple times a year. I could easily drive a few miles farther to LeRoy, their office is much bigger.
If people making policies can’t see how ridiculous it is to have a post office in every tiny town what won’t they fund? Have they ever proposed ANY cuts except to the military?
These people must want America to fail. The debt clock is now at $24.7 Trillion. $74,972 for every citizen. https://usdebtclock.org/
Add another $13,005 for Illinois.
The lack of common sense proves why government must be limited. They aren’t going to limit themselves. The local nonsense spending has perverted all levels of government.
I started writing this story last week. The debt clock was $24.4 trillion then. Enjoy your stimulus check!
The US post office has been a money pit for decades. No efficiency that can be documented. Just like Amtrak. Connect transit. The list goes on.
Laws of economics are immaterial to most government staff and career politicians. They have something the real world does not…a money tree. They have the power to take as much money as they like for whatever use they like. There is no concept of how to make or earn money. A penny saved is a penny earned is punchline. If something adds a job to the government books then it is deemed essential regardless of how much must be taken from the taxpayers who are that money tree. Some communities are worse than others with their belief they are entitled to take as much from the money tree as they wish. Uptown Normal is a shining example of the repeated abuse to the money tree.
The USPO will never be touched because of the unionized employees and the politicians dependency on the union money for their coffers. It is more beneficial for them to keep pumping money into it.
There is absolutely no need for most small towns to have their “own” post office. And while you are at it Mr. Trump, let’s make mail delivery every other day (still excessive in today’s electronic world) and eliminate half of the employees, delivery fleet and the fuel burned every day. Where is the green crowd support of this idea?
My father, who passed away in the mid Seventy’s, told me a few times that if I “wanted to work where there was no competition, go to work for the USPS”. Because they would or could not handle larger packages, UPS and FedEx. became their competition and started making inroads to the Post Office business. Amazon came along and we all know how that is doing. They are already building their own fleet of vehicles to do their own delivery’s shortly. Leading me to say that even Bloomington, without State Farm could be on that same list some day.
Why NOT close Ellsworth? McLean county has more “places” that HAD post offices at one time or another then it currently has OPEN ones. Just a FEW DPO’s are Kumler, Weedman, Fletcher, Yuton, Holder, Sabina, Dry Grove, Padua, etc..
Townie, from your list of bustling community’s that no longer have a Post Office, your comment taken at face value looks pretty good, But they have been closed for a very long time, in most instances, so taking a look at each one today, is it possible that is also why they do not grow in population?
I am an avid reader of your articles, some I fully agree with others I partially agree with but this article about Ellsworth Post Office, I disagree with. The purpose of the post office is to provide mail service for the residents of that town and the outlying area around it, the Mail service was never intended to be a p;profit-making service of the government, just like so many of our government services, police, emergency services, park services, federal highways, airline services, and FAA, river control and maintenance, and numerous other services provided by our federal government. The National debt will never be eliminated by closing post offices that provide the vital link between people and business, so let’s leave the post offices alone and start eliminating projects that do not help the people of this country., I could go on but I have said enough for now.
It can’t be closed because people have to pick up their mail.
There is no single one reduction or elimination of a government program which will magically solve the waste problem. In my opinion, it will be many small changes that will in aggregate amount to a meaningful savings. It is government’s unwillingness to even tackle small problems that is at the heart of the issue.
I have no knowledge of this post office to form an opinion if this one is necessary or not, though email and technology has reduced the number of important pieces of mail I receive to a handful a year.
I don’t think the President can close down a post office.
Post offices have MANY rules, such as it IS illegal to send a FIRST CLASS letter by ANY other method then the PO! So, IF you send a letter that would otherwise be first class via ANY other means, it IS a violation of FEDERAL law.
Also, as for closing PO’s, IF they do Ellsworth, how about closing down HALF of the ones in North Dakota? They don’t do NEAR as much business. The PO was established to basically provide mail to people in sparse areas at the SAME rate as city folks. Just as back a century ago, people from Towanda, IL had to get their mail in Mackinaw, IL. basically a 3 day horseback ride. HOW many of YOU FOLKS are up for that?? We now have “forever” stamps, but at one time IF you had a 1 cent rate letter and ONLY had a 2 cent stamp, you could cut it in half and send it using only 1/2 of it. TRY that now! The PO has come a LONG way since 1847 and the 5 and 10 cent stamps they had as #1 and #2!
We can’t close a post office without the leftist fury. But we can’t open up downstate without leftist fury. You can’t win.
You actually believe that closing the post office in Ellsworth is going to lessen the U.S. debt?
What about people not you who don’t want to go to the LeRoy’s post office?
Few facts about the Post Office. It’s the one entity specifically mentioned in the constitution.
It finishes the delivery of parcel that USP, FedEx, DHL deem too costly to bother to deliver. This is mainly in remote and rural areas. The Post Office has been a separate agency since 1971. The Post Office along with the Defense Department delivers mail to the overseas military. Unlike any other corporation or government department, the Post Office has to cover the retirement of employees in the future. The contract that the Post Office has with Amazon is profitable along with it’s other parcel delivery. Parcel delivery is a growth area for the Postal Service and not a factor in the agency’s overall lack of profitability
Trump’s feud with Jeff Bezos is the source of the president’s ire with the Post Office. The Post Office has been around since the beginning of this nation. Why exactly do you want to disband a Agency which has central to this country’s success?
Horses contributed to the nations success too! Cars replaced them, upset about that too?
The Ellsworth Post Office isn’t closing, it’s leftist tactics to scare people. People have to pick up their mail, it isn’t delivered.
Heard something today regarding President Trump’s commenting about USPS on Moody Radio who uses SNR, but couldn’t find that in writing. Did find an article written by Fox News https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-calls-amazons-deal-with-postal-service-a-scam-costing-billions President Trump is just trying to get the Post Office to raise their rates on these packages, since he has a concern that Amazon is getting a special rates & is calling this a scam.
Amazon is getting lower rates, they should at least be covering the cost. It appears Amazon wants to do their own deliveries eventually. PO should profit while they can.