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-Short Attention Span Theater-
A man and his mailbox: How Ohioan's dispute over rural mail delivery became a federal case
2024-12-20
[Cincinnati Enquirer] On a cold December afternoon, standing next to the empty wood frame where his mailbox used to be, Chuck Klein tried to explain why he’s spent so much time the past few years sending emails to government officials, writing letters to a president and a congressman, working with a private investigator and a lawyer, and, finally, suing the U.S. Postal Service.

"This is where it was," Klein said, motioning to a mailbox-sized hole in the frame. "This is where we want the box to be."

It's as simple as that, Klein said. He wants his mailbox back.

But after years of arguing with the Postal Service, the seemingly minor bureaucratic dispute over the fate of Klein’s beige stainless steel mailbox has become something more. It is now, quite literally, a federal case that challenges the mission and obligations of an institution as old as the nation itself.

What is the Postal Service supposed to be? What are its obligations to its tens of millions of customers?

Klein didn’t set out to ask those questions, but his years-long campaign to win back his mailbox is raising them all the same.

In Klein’s view, none of this was necessary. For several years, the Postal Service delivered mail to his old mailbox on the edge of his 130-acre property in Brown County, about an hour east of Cincinnati. If he received a package too big for the mailbox, the carrier brought it to his door.



Posted by:Besoeker

#4  Well, rural is different.
We get'em driven over, used for batting practice, shot full of holes or stuffed with sail skunks.
Packages left at the gate are also crushed or just disappear.

I use a box at the PO, a federal institution, and get to it once or twice a week.
Posted by: Skidmark   2024-12-20 15:04  

#3  ^ trying to hid the fact. Remember the 'old' days that the PO was pure political patronage. You knew exactly who to go to complain. Then they created the Frankenstein monster of a government/non-government entity to cover their behinds.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2024-12-20 10:23  

#2  
Gov. access to a property should stop at the Mailbox, and that box is located at the curb.

BTW: If the US Postal System is a Gov run operation. Why is their Web address USPS.COM and not .GOV?

"Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site.
We can’t connect to the server at usps.gov. Did you mean to go to www.usps.gov?"
Posted by: NN2N1   2024-12-20 08:37  

#1  Postal Service operates pretty much as a monopoly. Only their serviced mail gets into those mailboxes. Because the way the law is worded, those are not your mail boxes but belong to USPS. When some yahoo blows one up, its a federal offense, not local. Fundamentally, what the court is going to be asked is whether the USPS can operate as such. The court can punt on the issue in accordance with the powers of Congress per Article I, Section 8 to establish post roads and post offices.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2024-12-20 07:07  

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