the rix mix

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Postal Service said on Thursday it would cut 7,500 jobs and close seven district offices and 2,000 post offices as it handles less mail and faces greater staff costs and competition from FedEx and United Parcel Service.

As of the end of January, the agency employed 583,000 people.

I received in the mail today a bill & an ad for Optimum cable service. That's pretty much all I get in the mail, unless I order a book or CD, & those are often shipped through a UPS to USPS delivery connection.

In Doris Kearns Goodwin's enjoyable book about Lincoln's Cabinet, Team of Rivals, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair was involved in the highest levels of policy discussions, alongside the Secretaries of State & War.The delivery of mail knit the nation together,  was a serious matter of national security, & a strong symbol of national unity. The thousands of postmaster appointments from great cities to small villages were a crucial source of the president's grassroots influence & power. New presidents were besieged with supplicants for these positions, & used them to pay back supporters.

Lincoln himself was part-time Postmaster of the Village of New Salem from 1833-1836, a Whig appointed during Jackson's Democratic administration to a post Lincoln said was "too insignificant" for the politics to matter. But one perk was that he could receive one free newspaper, & of course he could read everyone's out-of-town newspapers before they were delivered.

Maybe I'll lose my small branch post office in this round of cuts. The space is rented, the hours have already been shortened, & even the stamp vending machine is gone. The USPS has self-serve kiosks that handle all routine mail tasks including weighing smaller packages, but the only one I've seen is in the lobby of the main post office.

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