It’s time to end ridiculous talk of privatizing the Postal Service
The ongoing conversation about privatizing the United States Postal Service is ridiculous and ludicrous, as one simple example will show.
If you live in Maine, and want to mail your favorite cousin a postcard, it will cost you 36 cents postage. If that cousin lives in a tiny village in California, the cost is 36 cents.
For UPS or FEDEX to deliver that card would be, what? $5? $10? More?
Privatization would mean either Americans pay that price, or they don’t send postcards. Costs of everything regarding mailing would go up, in some cases by many multiples.
Two more points: We don’t expect the highway patrol to make money; it is a service provided to citizens. We should expect the same from our postal service – delivery of mail at a reasonable cost, not to generate a profit but to be a benefit of living in this country. And finally, there is a reason UPS and FEDEX have never made a move to acquire the postal service, that reason being it is not and can never be a viable for-profit venture.
Edward M. Krauss, Grandview Heights
SALT LAKE CITY – Utah is canceling about 7,200 coronavirus vaccine appointments after an error in the state health department’s registration website allowed people without qualifying conditions to register for the shots.
Department spokesman Tom Hudachko said in a statement that the error allowed residents who are not 65 or older or who don’t have an underlying medical condition to sign up.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday those appointments are being canceled.
People who meet the state’s conditions can keep their vaccine appointments scheduled through Vaccinate.utah.gov. Public school teachers and first responders also are eligible for vaccines.