Winston-Salem Journal LTE's SA 12/10/11

Reports do not mesh
They said what ? On its website, the United States Postal Service credits Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe with achieving "record levels of service and customer satisfaction, significant workplace improvements and a cumulative increase of productivity of over 50 percent since 2001, including seven straight years of productivity gains."
I have to wonder what they based that on. Certainly not on the "postal service" we have here. They raised the stamp prices, shortened the "open "hours and are closing some of their "stores" — hardly aimed at customer satisfaction. And that is the key to any successful business.
And "seven straight years of productivity gains" and "five years of red ink" ("Planned postal cuts won't affect Triad," Dec. 6) just do not mesh.
The USPS urgently needs a qualified business executive with a proven track record of profitability and customer satisfaction.

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ARTHUR GORMLEY
Winston-Salem

Rude liberals
The Journal's favorite columnist, Paul Krugman, has once again shown his arrogance and condescending attitude by lashing out at Newt Gingrich by saying he's not as deep a thinker as he thinks he is ("In GOP circus, send in the clueless," Dec. 6). It is amazing to me that he and the liberal talking heads on TV, such as Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Lawrence O'Donnell, get away with saying the meanest, cruelest things about conservatives. And people say conservatives are mean-spirited? They must be kidding.
There are two blatantly different standards out there. I have never heard Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity say such nasty or mean things about liberals as the above-mentioned say about conservatives.
Krugman disguises his contempt a little better than the others. He thinks he knows better than everyone else. Maybe he's not as deep a thinker as he thinks he is. His problem is he is not grounded in reality, but academia and media. He knows nothing about running a business or making a payroll. He knows nothing about what it really takes to fix this economy. Bigger stimulus? Higher taxes on the rich? More social giveaways? If nothing else, the last three years have shown how poorly the policies of the left work in the real world.
You can't create meaningless jobs, and give billions away, and think that there will be any long-lasting improvement to the economy. The economy will improve when government gets out of the way of small business.

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DAVID F. MOSER
OWNER, TRIANGLE WAREHOUSE
Winston-Salem

Patient public
John Stumpf, the top executive of Wells Fargo & Co., recently commented: "We want to return more capital to our shareholders. Our shareholders have been very patient" ("Wells Fargo chief hopes to raise dividend," Dec. 7). Well, so has the public.
With recent layoffs in the banking industry and rumors of more to come at the big banks, Stumpf is highlighting the problem that has generated the Occupy movements: Wells Fargo and other similar beneficiaries of past taxpayer bailouts have no loyalty to anything but their own bottom lines. When the right wing speaks of protecting the "job creators" from onerous tax burdens, they delude themselves in thinking that benefits will accrue to anyone other than the top executives and shareholders.
The Occupiers are raising the public's awareness regarding these unacceptable practices and deserve our support.

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ANTHONY VRSECKY
Winston-Salem

Legislative work
I've never known anyone over the age of 13 to be as obsessed with sex as the current N.C. Republican legislators. They were hired to create jobs and improve the economy, but they've done nothing except insert themselves into the private lives of citizens.
They've cut the budget so severely that the UNC system has had to cut more than 3,000 positions. This, they think, creates jobs? They've cut and closed government offices, putting many thousands of public employees out of work. Do they think moving people out of jobs and into unemployment lines is good for the economy? No, they know better.
Our N.C. Republican legislators have passed laws curtailing women's reproductive rights to a degree approximating those of the most restrictive theocracies. Not because they care about babies, but because they want to abolish the individual right to privacy.
And then there's their time spent on a marriage amendment to the N.C. constitution. Yep, not just a law, but a constitutional amendment. To strengthen it, I believe, against a future, saner legislature that would change that. And now the most recent assault on women: this absurd "unborn victims of crime" law.
And this is the party that claims it wants big government out of our private lives. It's clear its main goals are to cause damage to the economy so that our president will not be re-elected, and to control the private lives of individual citizens. How is it that they can fool so many voters?

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HELEN ETTERS
Winston-Salem