While news of a myriad of sex scandals in major American cities offers summer distractions, a few other items caught my eye:
With the US Postal service bleeding money after the explosion of social media, the agency is looking to end at-your-door mail delivery:
The U.S. Postal Service is marching towards a more “centralized delivery,” where residents pick up their own mail from clusters of mail boxes located in their neighborhood. Local postmasters are sending hundreds of letters to fast-growing communities, warning that cluster boxes will be the way mail will be delivered to new developments.In the past year, the cash-strapped Postal Service has been asking companies in industrial parks and shopping malls to also adopt this form of mail delivery.But Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican leading the House effort to save the postal service, wants more. He has made doing away with doorstep delivery a key part of his bill, which would require everyone to get mail at a curbside box or from a cluster box.
I think it is sensible to look at more cost-efficient approaches to mail delivery, especially as more people rely on email and other forms of social media to advertise and otherwise communicate. Contrast this with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which is spending millions to detail the racial diversity of every neighborhood in America as part of proposed new ‘fair housing’ rule.
As part of a proposed rule, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), would provide detailed demographic information on every single neighborhood in the country in an attempt to get a better understanding of segregation, integration and poverty, the agency said.This racial mapping will be done as part of the new Fair Housing rule proposed by the agency….The more modern approach to tackling today’s discrimination issues should be able to help HUD lessen disparities such as African Americans learning about 11 percent fewer available rentals and 17 percent fewer available homes to bu[y].This inequality comes from real estate agents showing fewer available properties to minorities than to equally qualified whites, Donovan explained, adding that “because of the subtle nature of this discrimination, often times, they don’t even know they have been subjected to this abuse.”
The fact that millions of taxpayer dollars are being plowed into an electronic citizen tracking system is extremely disturbing, especially when it is coupled with the recent discovery that the locations of millions of Americans are being tracked and stored via their license plates (regardless of whether they are involved in a criminal case or not).
Another disturbing aspect of the HUD plan: Given the Obama administrations penchant for race politics, what is to stop if from punishing cities and states for not meeting “diversity” objectives by selling homes “stupidly”?
As the age of Obamacare dawns, I can’t help but worry about our healthcare system as implemented by a bureaucracy that has less service and more tracking as its template.
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