When a stamp is a big investment

Well, the United States Postal Service has done it again, and being the 12th consecutive year, it is almost surely a record. Practice, practice, practice. Except, unfortunately, it’s about the USPS’s reported loss, this time $3.9 billion for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.

Officials cite declines in mail volume, but you sure wouldn’t think that from the volume of junk mail delivered. Nor from the number of charitable solicitations, almost all of which enclose (as their “gift”) a sheet of return-address labels. They must think we all send multiple letters daily. I know we have enough return-address labels to nearly camouflage a 727.

But here’s a word to the wise: Go purchase a roll or three of Forever stamps now. Your effective return will be 10 percent because the price of first-class stamps will increase from 50 cents to 55 cents in January. Where else can you get a 10 percent return on a government product?

America needs a new president

Donald Trump is divisive and a poor president. People say that he lies, and he does, but it is because he will use whatever tool is available to him with which to divide people and promote himself. He succeeds through division.

He also succeeds through insult and attack of his opponents, not through promoting better ideas.

He is a performer and entertainer and has promoted himself for years through his well-publicized celebrity life and television persona.

He is not a leader; he is a bully. Anyone who has been to high school knows the difference. He ruled his family business by demanding personal loyalty, which he continues to do because he doesn’t understand people who are driven by political positions over personal ego. He won the presidency by publicly ridiculing, taunting and insulting others, and he maintains popularity by continuing to do so.

The point is that, no matter one’s political stands, he is not what we need as a president. We need someone with a clear understanding of history and the political positions of both parties, and an understanding of the differences in perspective of people in different parts of the country.

We need someone with the ability to see the problems in Congress clearly, to unite and not divide, and to bring opposing sides together and to mediate differences. We have had enough of red states and blue states. We truly need to work toward a United States (and people) of America.

Trump’s success as problem solver is what is causing criticism

Have Americans grown tired of President Donald Trump? Perhaps. The primary reason could be that President Trump is a problem solver; and like it or not, when he became president he inherited many problems. The challenge we face, as everyone eventually does, is: Once the problems are solved, what do you do with the problem solver?

Problem solvers create turmoil and upset many values in their quest for solutions. And that is the problem. A problem solver needs to think “outside the box.” However, in the process, he or she will ruffle the feathers of the privileged who have grown accustomed to the same old rituals.

Too many liberals think that our current problem solver has been exceptionally active. He has created many new jobs for the unemployed: the kind of Americans who have been the down-trodden, people forgotten by the media and too many sophisticated liberals; people not normally invited to your holiday parties, but thankfully, remembered by President Trump. He put them back to work, restored their dignity, put food on their table, clothes on their back and presents under the Christmas tree.

Logically, the Trump administration did not give these folks any freebies. The president made them realize that self-worth came with hard work. According to President Theodore Roosevelt: “Nothing worth having comes easy.”

So, if you think America is “great again” and all the problems have disappeared, then maybe we do not need a problem solver: Goodbye, Trump; hello, Mr. or Mrs. Traditionalist.