Lip Service To Supporting the Military
The military is an important aspect of American life, and unfortunately necessary in a world that has still not figured out how to "just get along." So long as we have individuals who risk their lives and limbs in the service of their country, we, as a nation, should be willing to make certain sacrifices for them in return. Examples of these include maintaining adequate funding for military families to have proper health care, ensuring jobs are held for those who have been called to duty, and generally supporting the people and the job they do for us.
Unfortunately, it seems that at least one branch of the US Government refuses to make life just that little bit easier for those who want to support individuals in the military. The United States Postal Service states on its website that they do not support their Internet "Click and Ship" service to military addresses.
While it might be easy to say that this is not really a big deal since you can just march on down to the post office, wait in line for however long it might take, fill out the paperwork and ship the package, that isn't really the point. The point is that our government take that little bit of an extra step (in this case, providing scanners to post offices) so that we can more easily ship to our fighting men and women around the world, not to mention assist our disabled veterans to send packages and messages to their comrades by themselves, without having to ask someone to go to the post office for them.
It may be just a "little thing" to some, but to a business owner who wishes to fulfill orders made by members of the military, it means leaving work to stand in line. To a new mother it means packing up the baby and then standing in line and hoping he doesn't start crying. To the disabled it means having to ask someone else to go to the post office for them. All of these things CAN be done, but shouldn't our government try to make things LESS difficult to keep up the morale of the troops?
And before you say "use UPS or Fedex" they are prohibited from delivering to military addresses. The monopoly belongs to the USPS. Good try though :-)