Some Things Don’t Work Anymore
or
A Sense of Safety is not Safety
Is there really any need in these times to operate an expensive losing business,i,e; the post office. I know that there is a sentimental value among those of us who remember when a stamp cost a nickel, and all telephones were black, rotary and gave you a busy signal if the person you called was already on the line. Ah, those were the good old days!
85% of my mail 6 days a week is junk mail composed of advertisements, coupons, offers for purchases, credit cards, services and is also an unsustainable waste of oxygen, air cleaning, water recycling, trees which provide habitats food and homes) for millions of species of animals everywhere. The documents, bills and bank services that are important will soon go internet as well. We’ll be virtually “paperless”. So why not start now?
I received one of those “too good to be true” offers in the form of a stay home, staple booklets and earn 25000.00 or MORE weekly. Right. After the hook is set there is this line; we would love to get you started with no registration fee, but to make sure that you’re a serious home worker, we’re going to require a $99.00 REFUNDABLE fee. And it continues yada yada. An address to send your checks to, ostensibly the location of ummm. Maxwell Gates Enterprises in New Jersey is all you get. Is there a phone number on this “offer” of employment. Of course not.
What bothers me about this type of scam (and they go on constantly thru the mail) is that there are going to be plenty of trusting and/or ignorant folks who are going to fall for this come on. If that isn’t true, then scammers would not invest the money to have many thousands or more of these mailed to you. It costs them; they know what percentage of people are going to send them the money.
There is no way to monitor these crimes and no way to stop them. Which leads me to an even graver thought. Remember the old Anthrax scare immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attack?
We have gone crazy at the airports, escalating arduous security checks nearly to the point of strip searching in order to provide a sense of safety to people flying in planes. What, I have to ask-is keeping some twisted soul or an actual terrorist from locally mailing a small powerful bomb timed to go off in a predetermined amount of time to any business in any large building in the country? Or easier, set off by a cell phone or other remote device? What would stop a crazed angry nut from poisoning some locality’s drinking supply of water with a potent toxic chemical like arsenic and such?
I am not trying to scare you and ruin your peace of mind; I’m just trying to point out two true things. One, the post office has outlived it’s usefulness and is an avenue for petty crime at the least and potentially worse things. So close it! And two, all that our government, or our rifles, or home security systems and neighborhood watch programs can provide us with is a “sense” of security, not the reality of safety. Our best defenses might deter a perpetrator or a pipe bomb but it doesn’t stop a person determined to hurt others. Here in Az. we can carry loaded weapons displayed, even at political rallies. We already know how easy it is to shoot a politician or whomever the killer targets. And guns make it possible to do a lot of damage in a very short time. Maybe a little more investment and effort put into the health and well being of our citizenry as well as our relationships with foreign countries would result is a world that really is....safer.
