CARLTON FLETCHER: Thoughts of Newman, roving gang-bangers, and censored city/county employees

“I send my letters but my letters keep coming back.”

— Elvis

Removing a few items from my get-it-off-my-chest list:

♦ To all you squawkers and emailers who have complained to me (and other Herald employees) about the services rendered by the U.S. Postal Service, let me assure you that I feel your pain. I don’t like to paint with broad strokes and point a finger at everyone employed by the USPS, because there are some good, hard-working people who are a part of that agency.

But I guess this newspaper’s ongoing issue with finding capable delivery people who are willing to do a little work is an example of what today’s work force is like. Many of the people who deliver the mail — a pretty cushy job if you think about the work itself and the benefits of being a federal employee — obviously have come to the conclusion that they’re going to get paid whether they do their job well or do it poorly.

The correspondences I get on a daily basis include complaints about not only undelivered or damaged newspapers but days when mail is not even delivered at all. The USPS kind of did itself no favors when it came up with — and loudly trumpeted — the app that allows citizens to check and see what mail is supposed to be delivered to their homes on a daily basis. Lots of people have lamented the fact that mail shown due on a certain day shows up sometimes several days later and sometimes not at all.

I’ve heard horror stories of people awaiting valuable papers or even checks that took days and weeks to track and sometimes were never recovered.

I don’t have a solution, but I feel that if the big wigs at the various postal service offices in our city, county, state, country would start holding their employees to some kind of standards, evaluate them on their performance as most employees in the public sector are, perhaps they’d be more inclined to do their jobs at least adequately.

Because the simple truth of the matter is a large number of these people simply are not doing their jobs. (I can’t help but think of “Newman” at times like these.)

♦ In spite of comments opposed to my opposition of more lax gun control in Georgia and the nation, I defy anyone to explain to me how allowing unfettered access to guns is going to reduce crime. Sure, these Republican politicians who have gerrymandered themselves into power and are desperate for votes from their “base” in a state whose voters are now majority Democrat will construct any power-grab they can to hold on to their lofty positions. After all, most of these politicians are fat-cats who live in insulated, gated communities and know nothing of the dangers the access to unlicensed guns represent.

But in the real world, those “good guys” politicians say need guns to protect themselves are not really very likely to draw down on a group of gang-bangers who pose a threat. No, what they’d really like is adequate funding for law enforcement agencies to put away those gang-bangers and get the illegal weapons off the street.

All it will take, sadly, is for one of these politicians’ family members to be shot by one of these unlicensed weapons, and reality just might dawn on them.

♦ The city of Albany, and to a lesser extent, Dougherty County officials, have come up with this concept of stonewalling media in reporters’ attempts to find out about issues that are important to citizens. What officials are doing is telling city employees they cannot talk with the media without first getting clearance from their media relations people. (And, I should admit here, that this new silencing of city business may apply only to print media; I have not checked with electronic media personnel to see if they are held to the same restrictions. In the past, certain media relations folks have given information only to their personal friends.)

What happens with these new restrictions is that media outlets are being denied information through such means as “I can’t talk to you” (about a story with immediate interest to the community) “until approval is granted by media relations.” Media relations, though, are not always available, and when they are, they say things like, “I’ll see if I can set up something with (so-and-so) in that department.”

Often, reporters may already have spoken to “so-and-so,” and he or she is the person who said they couldn’t speak without permission. But the media relations person may call back and say, “You can speak with ‘so-and-so’ at 10 in the morning.” Which, in this business, renders the story a day or two late.

Certainly entry- and lower-level employees are not the right individuals to talk to about sometimes sensitive or costly issues. But holding a censorship threat over top-level employees and even department heads shows a lack of trust in those employees and also is an obvious attempt to control information so that the public is not aware of how its tax dollars is being spent.