Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/474388
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Firstandforemost,atruly appreciated thank you to the 17,000 plus citizens who have signed the petition to stop the consolidation of the Redding Mail Processing Facility to West Sacramento. Your support to just say no indicates your insistence that sending local mail from Modoc, Lassen, Shasta, Sis- kiyou, Tehama and Trinity counties 322 miles round trip to be processed just doesn't make sense. This action by the Postal Service would delay overnight mail 3-7 days. On January 5, the Postal Service threw another wrench into the spokes. Like a stealth jet fighter in the night, the de- livery standards for the entire nation were changed. No fan- fare, no notification to the cit- izens it serves, no nothing. What does this mean to you? All local mail even if the Red- ding facility remains open will take a minimum of two days for overnight delivery. There will be no more overnight first-class mail delivery. What happens to the el- derly, the citizens and vet- erans who rely on receiving their medications in a timely manner. There is concern of how election results will be negatively affected. There is concern of mortgage and bill payments being delayed caus- ing late charges or worse. There is concern of the small business receiving prompt re- turn of remittence of mail. There is concern of non-prof- its losing DSCF rates curtail- ing mailings for their organi- zations. And there is concern the delay in service will be even greater for those in ru- ral areas. The decision to cut service directly impacts the North State economy, which stands to lose 63 living-wage jobs as the result of the movement of mail processing operations from Redding to West Sacra- mento. But why is the Postal Ser- vice hell bent on degrading your mail service? I wish there was a reasonable answer. Yes, we hear that the Postal Service is financially in the red and needs to make decisions to be a solvent entity. What caused this alleged dilemma? The Postal Service receives no tax dollars to fund its oper- ating expenses. The current fi- nancial situation is a false and manufactured crisis primar- ily caused by: (1) Excessive dis- counts to large mailers, (2) The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) legislation, which set unreal- istic price caps and mandated pre-funding of retiree health benefits for employees who have not even been born, 75 years in advance. As if that was not bad enough, Congress required that all pre-funding had to be completed within 10 years — $5.5 billion a year. That's like your mortgage company call- ing and requiring you to pay your 30-year mortgage in 5 years and (3) overpayments to retirement programs. The Postal Service is the only Federal Agency that must pre-fund 100 percent of both it's health and retirement ben- efits. No other public or pri- vate business in America faces this onerous and unnecessary requirement. Congress created the problem and Congress could easily fix it. The Postal Service has been making an operating profit since October 2012. In addition, the Postal Ser- vice made $1.1 billion oper- ating profit in the last cal- endar quarter of 2014. The losses that are announced in postal press releases are en- tirely on paper and solely due to the unreasonable require- ment for pre-funding of fu- ture retiree health care. For some reason the profitability of the Postal Service has not been provided to the Ameri- can public. The Postal Service and the economy changed significantly since 2011, but the cost/ben- efit analysis used to justify the proposed 2015 closings — 82 facilities nationwide — is based largely on 2011 data. So, this means the closure of mail processing in Redding is based on data four years old. I guess being in a bubble, there have been no changes in the world as the Postal Service would have you believe. The degrading of overnight mail service and the closure of Redding Mail Processing violates the constitution and numerous Federal Regula- tions and codes. "The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to pro- vide postal services to bind the Nation together through personal, educational, liter- ary, and business correspon- dence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all commu- nities." And I would be remiss not to mention the pundits who will criticize the need for the Postal Service. One must re- member there are millions of Americans that do not have smart phones or computers. In many rural areas through- out the country there is no Internet access. The less for- tunate and many senior citi- zens are less inclined to have a computer or the skills. And until packages and maga- zines can pop out of your smartphone or computer, the Postal Service is still a via- ble entity. The good news there are bills in the House and Senate to stop the degrading of ser- vice and mail processing clo- sures. Congressman LaMalfa is at the forefront in this battle on behalf of the citizens in the North State. Senators Boxer and Feinstein are fighting in the Senate to stop the consol- idations and service standard changes. What can you do to return overnight delivery and stop the consolidation of Redding Mail Processing to West Sac- ramento? We need to con- tinue to call, email, and write to LaMalfa, Boxer and Fein- stein to stop the closures and return overnight mail deliv- ery to the country. Have their phones ringing off the hook. Bombard their offices with letters. Another very impor- tant agency to contact is the Postal Regulatory Commis- sion (PRC). Delayed mail is recorded by the PRC each quarter and reported ev- ery year. By contacting the PRC by letter, phone, email you can voice your displea- sure of the closure of the Red- ding Mail Processing Facility and/or your mail has been de- layed due to service standard changes. Request the PRC re- scind the new service stan- dards changes and stop clo- sures. Visit www.prc.gov/con- tact, write: Postal Regulatory Commission, 901. New York Ave. NW Suite 200, Washing- ton, DC 20268 or call (202) 789-6847. LarryDeNayeristreasurerof the American Postal Workers Union Area Local 960 in Red- ding. Larry DeNayer It's the people's Post Office; let's save it Cartoonist's take Continuing the Kraft Quest, I planned to address the Board of Supervisors last Tuesday regard- ing agenda item 33, which dealt with the moving of the Tehama County Library away from its present Madison Street location to somewhere East of Suez — a little humor there. A newly reconstituted ad hoc committee has once again ig- nored the concept of a down- town location and purchase of the former Kraft Free Library on Jefferson. The stated rea- sons have always been that it is too small and has no ade- quate parking. My maintain- ing the Kraft can be enlarged and on-site parking provided by acquiring the adjacent property to the north seems to have been shelved. There- fore, I was going to propose a feasibility study of my own, at no cost to the county, and that I be given until the next board meeting on the 17th to put up or shut up. The board would probably have granted my request as I have not chas- tised them about anything so far in 2015. However, I was not able to state my case as I did not reckon with Pot Apprecia- tion Day. The day began with a very full agenda, which required a lunch break. But when the board reconvened there were people lined up against the south wall, all waiting to say their piece about pot. Those speaking against laws govern- ing the farming of cannabis were greeted by applause from the left side of the audience, and those railing against pot growing in Rancho Tehama as reducing the value of their property were cheered on by those on the right side of the aisle. The bottom line is I did not get a chance to ask the Supes to delay their decision about the library relocation. Maybe I will hear from one of them and can get busy on a study to find what we can get in the way of space in this age of re- duced library expectation when it comes to research and so forth. ••• When early Sunday morn- ing, despite the ambiance of the dancing flames in the fire- place and her steaming cup of coffee, my lap top announced that it was the first day of March, and as I conveyed this to the missus she murmured, between sips, "Oh my." Yes indeed, I thought. For the young at heart, but old in years, weeks fly by like days and one hardly has time to catch one's breath. Of course having a breath is a positive sign that it will be a good day. Although the missus claims you can have a good day or a bad day as it is all up to you, not having or even being short of breath portends a bad start for the day ahead. Hopefully readers will not be subject to this condition and will be gifted with the spark of life. I did not write "blessed with the spark" for that is a theo- logical conjecture of which I am not equipped to encom- pass. ••• Speaking of theology, a re- cent e-mail from a reader took exception to a paragraph in my column last week about a devout Christian who had suf- fered a severe health issue, which however only reinforced her belief, was a case in point. I had stated that the vic- tim had admirably achieved the power of positive think- ing, whereas the reader ada- mantly believed it was no such thing and I, as a nonbeliever, could not experience divine guidance in this instance if it hit me in the butt, or words to that effect. After a brief ex- change of wisdom on my part, and dogma on the e-mailer's part, I decided I was not about to win this argument and elected to write about dogs in- stead, who, according to com- munication from our favorite Pope, are now at least eligible for a place in heaven, even if their masters are not. ••• Israeli Prime Minister Ne- tanyahu's speech before con- gress is in the news. Way back in 1997, the missus and I were friends with concert Pianist David Bar-Ilan. He eventu- ally became director of Policy Planning for Netanyahu. We corresponded with him and one time naively wrote him at 3 Kaplan St., Hakirya, Jerusa- lem that, in our opinion, the majority of Americans thought the Israeli's expansion into the West bank and the construc- tion of houses thereon was counterproductive to getting along with Arafat and the Pal- estinians. He responded to our letter, but made no comment about the expansion. That was 18 years ago, Da- vid is long dead and the solu- tion to the problem is far from being achieved. Tsk,tsk. ••• Welcome to our latest DN columnist W. Cornelius. He is the fellow who the late and much esteemed columnist S. Lindauer described, much to my chagrin, as the cleverest MC she had ever encountered, or words to that effect. Certain that he has lost none of his acumen, I believe his efforts will be much en- joyed by readers of all persua- sions, although his position as spokesman for the grand restored State Theatre may cause him constraint. How- ever, in his Wednesday col- umn he referred to me as "the self-esteemed Robert Minch." I take comfort, in that it takes one to know one. He may be prone, as are we all, to "misre- membering" — think NBC an- chorman B. Williams, now at liberty. In his inaugural col- umn he recalled early day se- rials at the State with the daring do of Buck Rogers. I remember said serials as fea- turing Flash Gordon, but that is nit picking. In conclusion, he asks to be addressed as "William," though his photo is captioned "Bill." This is one of the indignities he must suffer as a DN columnist. They took away the photo of me and my dog to head my column. Sigh. ••• A reader submitted this sad revelation: "I very quietly confided to my best friend that I was hav- ing an affair. She turned to me and asked, 'Are you having it catered?' And that, my friend, is the definition of old." Robert Minch is a lifelong res- ident of Red Bluff, former col- umnist for the Corning Daily Observer and Meat Industry magazine and author of the "The Knocking Pen." He can be reached at rminchandmur- ray@hotmail.com. I say Kra Quest continues in library hope The decision to cut service directly impacts the North State economy, which stands to lose 63 living-wage jobs as the result of the movement of mail processing operations from Redding to West Sacramento. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. The illegal grows were here before now and will be in the future. Why punish cancer patients? I can't afford big phama chemo nor a new building. Kelly Walen: On county ordinance to ban outdoor marijuana cultivation. The problem grows are already illegal and yet the sheriff can't get rid of them, why would this change anything? Grant Gould: On county ordinance to ban outdoor marijuana cultivation. Robert Minch OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Friday, March 6, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6