Going Postal
The Wall Street Journal

`Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Hurricane Katrina was another story.

A week ago Monday the Times-Picayune reported that the U.S. Postal Service's New Orleans processing and distribution center would reopen the following day -- more than seven months after Katrina hit. The paper called it "a move postal officials say will all but eliminate maddening post-Katrina delivery times of a week or longer for letters mailed just across town." Not that things are completely back to normal. New Orleanians still don't receive magazines, "although that is expected within weeks."

Postal Service competitors fared better. Spokesmen for DHL, FedEx and United Parcel Service tell us that all three companies restored service in New Orleans on September 19, just three weeks after Katrina hit.

All three companies also joined in the relief efforts. DHL ferried international aid to Louisiana from Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas. UPS drivers "from as far away as Vermont hauled loads of donated supplies to FEMA sites in Mississippi and Louisiana -- on their own time," according to a corporate history. And FedEx, a spokesman says, "transported more than 1,000 tons of relief supplies to areas affected by hurricanes in 2005."

In Katrina's aftermath we've heard a lot about government "incompetence," mostly from people who have a bone to pick with the Bush Administration. But it seems likely that the private delivery companies would have outshone the Postal Service regardless of who was in the White House. Some things the private sector simply does better.
anonymous | 04.13.06 - 3:49 pm | #

That's disgusting.
Anonymous | 04.13.06 - 8:06 pm | #

Absolutely disgusting! To try to compare private companies delivering a few thousand parcels with the USPS delivering hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail is sickening! Here's another example of a rag trying to compare apples to oranges and showing their ignorance.
FTR | 04.13.06 - 10:33 pm | #

screw azaaley jafer,

Azeezaly? is he with bin laden?

he is just another over paid sluggo

it is called freedom of the press
Postmaster | 04.14.06 - 6:05 am | #

:freedom of the presss:
That's all well and good, but isn't the press supposed to check the FACTS before they report a story?
File you fool! | 04.14.06 - 6:21 am | #

Jaffer would not know a fact if it was a bass fiddle and hit him square in the butt. He is an overpaid flunky that does what he is told to do. Or, simply stated, he is a block headed puppet and responds to who or whomever pulls his strings.
BAMA | 04.14.06 - 7:00 am | #

Yes BAMA just like you.....you ignorant moron.Please keep you home spun "wit" and your intelligent comments to yourself. Bass fiddle? You are a complete ass. The company you work for and your fellow employees get slammed in the newspaper and you respond like a retard. Stay in BAMA you dolt.
RAZOR | 04.14.06 - 7:33 am | #

RAZOR, did we strike a nerve. Come on little fellow, tell the truth. You are one of those puppets. Your puppeteer has you going on-line to stir things up. Poor little fellow. Crawl back into the little wooden box.
BAMA | 04.14.06 - 9:24 am | #

Don't know what Bama's problem is, but whatever point he was trying to make got lost in his senseless and absurd diatribe. If he's a wit, he's only halfway there.
"Deadeye" Dick Cheney | 04.14.06 - 10:46 am | #

You'd think that ol' BAMA, and the Wall Street Journal, had run over everybody in management's dog. Truth be told, the PO has no contingency for these types of disasters. They just see Katrina, anthrax, 9-11, and all the rest, as an opportunity to try to exagerate their importance with propaganda and put their hands further into the public's pockets. (5 Billion to fight anthrax?) But I have to admit that ol' Jaffer did give me the equivalent of an emotional wedgee and I did run off an email to the Wall Street Journal and tell them how much I appreciated the article but I knew all that months ago.
Buford | 04.14.06 - 6:21 pm | #

BAMA is an ignorant redneck, and Jaffer is doing his job; quite well if I may say.

Can't you cretins recognize this?
Anonymous | 04.14.06 - 7:16 pm | #

again jaffer is an overpaid yes man who would be making minimum wage in the real world

although with spin like that he could be writing for our esteemed president gwb
carrier | 04.15.06 - 11:56 am | #

I get such a charge out of reading some of the crap posted by "regulars" on this site.
BAMA...
Get a life you hay seed you!
All you do is bitch about northern Alabama...who gives a rat's ass.
You point the finger at whoever it is you happen to have a hard on for.
GET A LIFE!!!!
QTPO | 04.15.06 - 5:51 pm | #

a3682a 112d107a03
lopez | Homepage | 12.15.06 - 5:29 pm | #