To the editor:

I have a post office box that I go to in order to get the morning business mail. In the lobby, our little post office used to have large round metal wastebaskets where unwanted mail could be tossed. Lots of people do this. Most of what is tossed these days is junk mail and political advertising – political junk mail – where unknown organizations trash each other’s candidates. I toss the trash in the bin.  So do most everyone else.

Today these round bins are gone. My local postal superintendent said it is because the “campaigns” – primarily for President and for the U. S. Senate – are whining that it was the post office tossing the political junk mail in the bins instead of distributing the mail. So all the post offices have been instructed to remove their waste baskets.

Candidates – it is not the post office tossing your junk into the bin. It’s the postal patrons. The citizens and voters. Your stuff goes in the bin because we’re not interested in reading the biased and usually ludicrous attacks.

My background is in the state legislative process. There was a time when Democrats and Republicans could argue all day about issues, and go out together in the evenings for dinner. Sort of like Justice Anton Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who were bitter rivals but close friends.  

Now in our civil society we can’t even throw our junk mail in a waste basket at the post office.

Ron Smith

Larned