Those who depend on the USPS for checks, prescriptions have become collateral damage

USPS delays

Stop the debacle with the U.S. Postal Service now. It is bad enough that the Trump administration is refusing to provide much needed funding, but now malfeasance is at work.

Evidence has been substantiated that the postmaster, a Trump appointee, has ordered the removal of as many as 671 mail sorting machines, some capable of sorting at least 30,000 pieces of mail per hour. Some U.S. drop boxes are even being removed.

It’s a blatant attempt to thwart voting by mail and throw the election into disarray. Citizens who depend on timely mail delivery, including 90% of veterans who get their prescriptions by mail, are just collateral damage. Even the angst knowing this is happening can dampen participation in an election where too many voters already believe their vote doesn’t count.

Gloria Boone, Fuquay-Varina

USPS ‘losses’

I’ve read headlines that claim that the U.S. post office “loses” billions of dollars a year. These “losses” are actually paid out to hard-working Americans — many of whom are veterans — to provide the public service of delivering the mail across the country.

These “losses” save small businesses enough money to flourish instead of falter. These “losses” connect every rural neighbor to their big city neighbor. They allow us to safely and securely cast our ballots during a global pandemic. These “losses” are actually priceless.

The postal service must be protected. The cost of losing it would be too great.

Sarah Vrla, Garner

WWII-like response

Here’s a reasonable solution to the post office crisis and mail-in ballots: Why couldn’t Congress provide funds to have drop boxes installed outside polling places where folks could simply drop mail-in ballots?

There are nearly three months to do this. If our country could turn out the kind of equipment needed to win WWII, we certainly could find options to get ballots to polling places.

Congress could indicate that postage is not necessary to drop mail-in ballots into these special drop boxes, and folks could drop their ballots in the entire time of early voting until Election Day.

Let’s get busy and creative during this emergency. Isn’t this the USA?

Michael Rakouskas, Raleigh

Ban junk mail

If there are not enough resources for the USPS to ensure that absentee by-mail ballots will be delivered on time, let’s ask the president and postmaster general to ban unsolicited mail for 60 days leading up to the election. That should create more than enough capacity to allow anyone wishing to vote by mail to do so.

Robert Grove, Raleigh

Trump and TikTok

It was the job of the so-called Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to scrutinize the TikTok deal to be sure it’s not a national security risk. But the committee, chaired by Stephen Munchin and composed of Trump-appointed government officials, was a kangaroo court whose decision was a forgone conclusion.

TikTok, TikTok is the sound of Trump’s “fiddle” while the death toll from the pandemic rises above 170,000 Americans.

President Trump uses the ruse of “in national security interests” when he wants to do something that is clearly an abuse of his office. National Security? Seriously, Microsoft constantly issues security updates for its Windows software. How are they expected to find the “trap doors” built into software they didn’t develop.

Louis Giglio, Raleigh

Mike Pence, jobs

Vice President Mike Pence recently tweeted: “We’ve created more jobs in the last 3 months than Joe Biden and Barack Obama created in their 8 years in office.”

While technically close to the truth — give or take a couple of millions jobs — it seems like the vice president considers the populace at large so stupid as to ignore the insignificant detail that if 9 million jobs were “created in the past three months,” 20.8 millions were lost in the one month before those.

A little more respect for our collective intelligence would be greatly appreciated.

Renato Chiavatti, Raleigh

All I see is trash

In years past, one of the saving graces of my lengthy commute on I-40 was seeing the flowering crepe myrtles and various flowers offering spots of color and symmetry along the way.

Now, I see trash. Bags of trash, construction materials, even a chair and mattress have now graced the highway shoulder. Car bumpers and parts from accidents also litter the roadway. The quantity of garbage is incredible.

It pains me to see such a mess. It also poses a hazard to those who drive this highway on a daily basis.

I know it’s a dangerous proposition to get crews out to clean the roadways, but something needs to be done to change the scenery.

Isabel Van Toorn, Clayton