Monthly Archives: April 2021

“How to Save the Post Office, Maybe”

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That’s the headline of a Monday Wall Street Journal editorial.

In response to which I ask, why do we need to?

After all, using the Editors’ own numbers,

the USPS says in 2006 there were 5.6 daily pieces of mail per delivery point. Last year: three. By 2030 the estimate is 1.7.

Why? It’s a shrinking need; the Internet is supplanting mail delivery. In-person communication is done by telephone, Skype, Zoom, and a plethora of other applications. Written correspondence is handled, in among other ways, by a plethora of email facilities.

The Postmaster General, and the Editors, think it would be a good idea to extend the delivery time for long distance first class mail from three days to as many as five. The horror.

They also want to boost the price of using the mail system—the stamps we use.

Here’s a thought about an alternative, though, and one that has a chance of saving both our taxpayer dollars and reducing our consumer costs.

Our Constitution mandates only that the Federal government establish Post Offices and Post Roads. There’s no requirement that the Federal government—or any other level of governance—run the post office and post roads. The latter especially are everywhere, from the Interstate highway system and Federal highways to State highways, County roads, Farm to Market roads, etc, etc, etc.

Let private enterprise run the post offices, too, and handle all mail delivery.

Everything other than first class mail and junk mail and advertising fliers (but I repeat myself) already is handled competitively and efficiently (because competition) by private enterprises.

There’s no reason those private enterprises, or others that would appear in the competitive market, can’t handle first class delivery and junk mail and advertisements, also. And in the latter case, digital junk and ads already are ubiquitous. The paper needn’t be. Think of the trees.

Problems, Problems

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The Class of 2020 graduates are missing their graduation ceremonies or are having to suffer the ginormous indignities of delayed ceremonies. The Wall Street Journal subheadline shows the pettiness of the plaint:

…some members of the class of 2020—and their parents—still long for their own missed ceremonies; “Do you guys still care about us?”

Huh. In a nation with 573,000 deaths from the Wuhan Virus, severe family and economic destruction from the fallout from the several governments’ reaction to the virus, a year of nonstop rioting, looting, and destruction of mom-and-pop businesses, the joblessness and associated stresses associated with the economic disruptions, it’s so sad that so many of us have not had time or resources for putting on the all important rite of a graduation ceremony.

One graduate, of Barnard College, yet, put it this way—with no idea of how self-absorbed she is:

She worries her class “will never receive the ceremony we deserve.”

That we deserve.

Wow. How entitled.

What, in the end, is truly important—the knowledge gained and the credential that certifies that achievement, or the ceremony? That the question even comes up is an indication of the quality of education these 21-year-old children have received.

This sounds to me like a Precious One’s First World problem and not anything to take seriously.

I can take seriously only the impact such spoiled, self-important, obliviousness is going to have on our nation’s culture and on our nation’s viability.

Progressive-Democrats’ Immigration Newspeak

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Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has announced that the Federal government will no longer

fine illegal aliens who fail to depart from the US and it plans to pursue the cancellation of any currently outstanding debts for people who previously incurred such financial penalties.

After all, he says,

We can enforce our immigration laws without resorting to ineffective and unnecessary punitive measures.

We can enforce our laws by not enforcing our laws….

Josh Hawley Has This One Wrong

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Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO) is planning to introduce a child tax credit bill that would grant $6,000 to a single parent family with children less than 13 years old, and $12,000 to two-parent families with children in that age group.

We need a plan to help working parents that is pro-family and pro-work. I’ll be proposing legislation this coming week that gives a major tax cut to working parents to help them afford to start a family and raise their kids[.]

I have no doubt that Hawley’s heart is in the right place, but he’s badly mistaken on this.

For one thing, stipulating his underlying premise that tax gerrymandering is a good idea, he misses the point that kids cost the same to raise no matter how many parents they have, and regardless of how many of those parents work. The idea, predicated as it is on giving two-parent families a choice in how many of the parents work, also ignores the simple fact that a single parent not only has no such choice, but she (yes, I’m assuming. Sue me) has no support from a second parent, working or not.

For another thing, his underlying premise is badly flawed. Our tax code has no business being used for social engineering, whether for family support or for any other purpose. The same (tax) cost break could be given to those families, along with all American families and individuals, by limiting our tax code to covering the three—and only three—spending purposes enumerated in our Constitution, and then by setting that tax code to a single, low, flat rate shorn of all credits, subsidies, deductions, on all income, regardless of source, that leaves more of our money in the pockets of each of us.

Us Neanderthals are Winning

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At least against the Wuhan Virus, especially as compared with States that are our Betters.

Recall that that most renowned and eminent epidemiologist, Doctor President Joseph Robinette Biden (D), pronounced Texas and Florida to be Neanderthals when those States opened up economically, or refused from the jump to “properly” close down, despite the pronounced demands of the Doctor’s and his predecessor’s minions.

According to my second grade arithmetic and Monday last Johns Hopkins University data, Florida and Texas had a combined 63,103 new cases, or roughly 0.0012 new cases per capita.

Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan, all Progressive-Democrat-run and all Lockdown States, had 97,350 new cases, or roughly 0.0023 new cases per capita—twice the rate of those Neanderthalers.

Maybe it’s a case of Denisovans calling names.