Acting Like Scrooge Won’t Save the USPS

Reports have it that in parts of Florida, the U.S. Postal Service is reneging on its annual effort to deliver toys to needy kids for Christmas which it does as part of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Toys for Tots program.

That’s because some officials say doing is too expensive in light of the USPS’s dire financial picture.  Indeed the USPS did lose a record $15.9 billion for the year ended Sept. 30 , compared to a net loss of $5.1 billion for the same period last year http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_131.htm

But should poor kids be made to suffer for bad things some grownups do?

According to  the Tampa Bay Times http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/post-office-fails-to-deliver-for-toys-for-tots/1265789, local  USPS officials  stopped local letter carriers from collecting toys for needy children in the local area and publicizing these charitable   deeds as they had been doing since anyone can remember.

If this is true, does the USPS do itself any favors by acting like Ebenezer Scrooge by depriving needy children of something that could make their lives a little less bleak while the worlds is reveling in Christmas and all the other holidays?

Indeed everybody often has warm feelings about the postal service this time of year.

Take the old time movie “Miracle on 34^th Street” where one man saying he’s Santa Claus gets all letters addressed to him  delivered to Macy’s department store in New York where’s he working just before Christmas.

Or “Shop Around the Corner,” where one store salesman uses the mail to correspond with a young woman he later meets and falls in love with just before Christmas.

Cheating  poor and needy kids of Christmas toys  would only create more ill will against the postal service at a time when it needs all the good press it can get.

Remember Congress is also supposed to be grappling with another potential round of postal reform legislation right now. Postal measures could conceivably be shunted aside amid Congress’s obsession with the so-called fiscal cliff in which everybody’s taxes would go up and government programs would be cut if nothing is done before the end of this month.

In such circumstances shouldn’t the postal service be showing its warmer and fuzzier side?