PBS NewsHour: Rural Post Offices on Shaky Ground

[alp227]

Run time: 06:46 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCN5QbJpytg   Posted on YouTube: August 13, 2011 By YouTube Member: PBSNewsHour Views on YouTube: 12   Posted on DU: August 13, 2011 By DU Member: alp227 Views on DU: 1527

 
There are 3,700 mostly rural facilities that the U.S. Postal Service is now studying for potential closure. Tom Bearden recently visited one such site in Parshall, Colo. (Transcript)

This week is Pledge Week at PBS; this is a bonus story for PBS stations that chose not to take a pledge break while broadcasting the NewsHour, KQED in the San Francisco area among them. Parshall is about 100 miles west of Denver.

[Jkid]

1. Why didn't they make it as one of their top stories?

[alp227]

4. NewsHour always leads w/current events and puts feature stories like this later

if it were NOT pledge week this story would be shown on every PBS station

[RandySF]

2. If they close

All those anti-government teabaggers will scream about losing them.

[ChandlerJr]

3. The whole Postal Service is on Shaky Ground

I visit my mailbox at the end of the driveway once a week on the day I roll out the garbage bin, almost everything goes from one to the other.

If you want to save the Post Office kill the internet.

[alp227]

5. Cool story, and welcome to DU! n/t

[customerserviceguy]

8. How about simply doubling the cost of sending junk mail?

Since we're never going to kill the Internet.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

6. I have already been told mine is closing down and now I must travel 5 miles to get my mail and...

never mind the giant pain involved of notifying everyone/everything of the change of adress...this sucks!!!

[MuseRider]

7. We have not be told yet

but ours is on the list as well. I am sick about it. It does suck but it is going to suck a lot more for others who have to travel a longer way.

[Historic NY]

9. My town's. on the block serves 25k pop with 17 carriers.

we have 2 hamlets with po's and a mail processing plant but its the distance and convenience.Their game is to close the largest one which makes no sense. We got our first one in 1815 and the building still stands.

[fasttense]

10. You know, if the corporations and idle rich would just pay their taxes

we wouldn't have to close a single post office.

I noticed they left out that the Post Office is the only service specifically mentioned in our US Constitution.

When the Pony Express delivered the mail it was never a big money making proposition. A post office should not have to make money or even break even. The whole intent of the service was to provide for communication because the private sector saw no profit in it.

So you all get to give up your post offices because we are in a huge economic slump but exactly what are the corporations and idle rich giving up?