Dear John: I know this is a little off your financial beat, but you have written about the post office before.
On Monday, Aug. 27, at 6:34 p.m., between 29th and 38th streets, the United States Post Office Express Mail service “lost” a $15,000 flute owned by a flutist for the Broadway show “Evita.” She is also in the New Jersey Symphony and on the faculty at NYU.
The circumstances suggest the possibility of internal theft, but the post office has failed even to open an investigation. The NYPD says it lacks jurisdiction over potential postal theft.
The flutist happens to be my wife, and I’m furious at the Kafka-esque runaround we’re getting from the post office.
Thanks for your help. P.S.
Dear P.S. As you know, I passed this letter along to postal inspectors, and they told me they were looking into the matter.
But my private assumption was that we’d all be whistlin’ Dixie waiting for the flute to show up.
And yet the post office on Friday told P.S. that the instrument miraculously had been found. I’m sure it was only coincidence that it was mere days after The Post called.
Dear John: I have been following your column since the early ’90s, and it is rare that I disagree with what you have to say.
The headline for your column “Why US Postal Service deserves to go broke” is supported by the facts you offer as evidence and by the assumption that the USPS is just another corporation.
However, the USPS is not your typical corporation. What used to be the Post Office Department, the second- oldest Cabinet position of the US government, was transformed in 1971 into a quasi-corporation that is saddled with the worst attributes of the government.
The president and Congress select the Board of Governors and the Postal Rate Commission, which means that politics have meddled with the operation of the USPS, much to the detriment of its mission.
You mention that people are counterfeiting stamps and that postal officials are doing nothing about it.
Put into perspective, the counterfeiting you refer to is petty theft when compared to the grand larceny committed by Congress.
If the USPS had been created as a true corporation beholden to the US government only for the “mission statement” and allowed to operate in a way similar to any other utility, it would have been far more flexible and able to meet the challenges of FedEx, United Parcel and the Internet. B.S.
Dear B.S. The problem is, the Postal Service has been set up as a quasi-government company, and it has to operate under those constraints.
It’s like saying, “If the sky were blue, it wouldn’t be raining.” But it is raining, and the sky over the Postal Service is cloudy — very cloudy.
My point was this: The post office has one main product, and that is postage.
If your one main product is being stolen (counterfeited), then you ought to do something about that. If you don’t — and show no interest in stopping counterfeiting — you don’t deserve to exist.
If Apple allowed people to bootleg its iPhones and other products, then it too would deserve the financial hardship that would occur.
If Apple happened to be a quasi-arm of the US government, with a service that was essential, then the company would be even more remiss in not acting against the bad guys.
Send your questions to Dear John, The NY Post, 1211 Ave. of the Americas, NY, NY 10036, or john.crudele@nypost.com.