Homeland Stupidity
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 12/29/08 @ 6:03 pm - Filed Under Featured, Uncategorized
I absolutely hate it when the government makes stupid rules. They made another one a few months ago.
Homeland Security has dictated to the post office that packages weighing more than 13 oz must be taken to the post office. What a stupid rule…
Check out this post.
You can get around this rule by going online and printing off a label. This ends up costing you more in postage and you have to pay for it online and place a check mark next to an agreement stating that “I agree that I will present any items that are liquid, perishable, or potentially hazardous to a postal employee for acceptance and that all fragile items are properly pacakged.”
This was done in the last few months to protect us from terrorists.
Do you feel safer?
Give me a break.
Mike Sylvester
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9 Responses to “Homeland Stupidity”
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…or you can send the package by UPS. What has Brown done for you lately?
Well for one thing, they require you to describe the content inside the package!
This has been a policy since 9/11 started by the FAA.
The Postal Service uses commercial aircraft to move a lot of its mail. Since commercial aircraft also have passengers on them, it was decided to introduce this rule. The reason it doesn’t apply to meter strips or online postage is because those can be traced back to the meter that printed the postage. With stamps pasted on the front, they could come from anyone or anywhere.
The Unabomber case also had a little to do with increasing scrutiny of packages.
I dealt with this issue back in August - luckly the post office wasn’t far from where I worked on Wayne Street.
Apparently my pack of papers was over 13 ounces, but what would have prevented me from sending a 12 ounce liquid bomb?
It’s like checking for bombs at the Colts game - you could easily hide something under a thick coat.
All this protection doesn’t really make us all that much safer. If someone really wanted to attack they could send 20 suicide bombers into the mall on Black Friday and wreck havoc on the country.
I definitely don’t like to brag about this, but I work for USPS. John Brown’s explanation is correct. Sadly, government regulations always follow far behind the actual need for them. Thirteen ounces is the cutoff in the price structure between first class and priority mail. Stamped mailpieces can be given directly to your letter carrier also. That qualifies as taking it to your post office. You think the rules are ridiculous for the customer, try being an employee! Jeesh!
So… according to the explanation by Mr. Brown, the object is NOT to provide protection, just to provide a means of tracing the origin of the package. Now, correct me if I’m wrong. The package taken to the post office-the one with the stamps on it - doesn’t that go on the same plane as the ones with the more costly on-line postage and the “check mark” box or the “postage meter strip? So…what’s been gained? And..according to Steve G. (postal worker), if your rural carrier hauls the package to the post office, it gets put on a plane and blows up among several other stamped packages, will investigators have enough left to track it back to the sender? It’s all “feel good” BS anyway!
Usually when someone sends a bomb through the mail, the target is the addressee. The intended victim is a specific person, not a random group of people. So these rules would be a good idea if the package was being sent to a corporate executive or government official. But it doesn’t make as much sense if all I want to do is mail a box of cookies to my grandma. Nobody wants to blow my grandma up.
So I think the best solution is to have certain restricted addresses where you have to jump through extra hoops to send a package to. People who think they have a high risk of getting a bomb in the mail can ask to be on the restricted list, but they also must take into consideration that they are that must less likely to get cookies from Grandma if she has to drive all the way out to the post office.
All well and good Mr.Enders. However, I don’t think the folks that flew jets into the world trade center were addressing any particular Grandma. If the people at homeland security are trying to protect a corporate excetuive or a government official, hand carring the package to the post office will not necessarly prevent the mailing or the resultant detonation. Just as taking off your shoes for TSA at the airport will make you or I any safer if some madman is intent on indiscriminate killing.
It seems to me that the intend of the rule is to make it easier to track a package from sender to recipient. So if someone mails a package, it arrives at the destination, the recipient opens it and suffers shrapnel wounds, the authorities can track down the sender easier.
Some of the post 9/11 airport rules seem geared towards making the public feel safer, rather than making them actually safer. There are actual members of the voting public who feel safer after a TSA worker gropes them and deprives them of their nail clippers. These people are idiots, but the new rules are intended to please them.
Boy….. Have you got that right! I know I feel safer because TSA opened my luggage and check my shorts and socks. Then the airlines lost my shorts, socks and the cute little sticker TSA stuck on the bag that I paid an extra $25 bucks to have them lose. The airlines didn’t do any better at tracking my things than the post office has. If you fly… ship your bags by UPS or FedEX to the hotel. Might cost a little more but…damn.. they were there when I got there (and nothing was stolen from them!!!