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Are You the one who is to come, or shall we look for another? Matthew11:3. Portals of Prayer, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis

THE PRESS DAKOTANTHE DAKOTAS’ OLDEST NEWSPAPER | FOUNDED 1861

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OPINION | WE SAY

F RO M T H E B I B L E

YO U R L E T T E R S

By The Associated PressToday is Friday, Feb. 15, the 46th day of

2013. There are 319 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Feb.

15, 1933, President-elect Franklin D. Roo-sevelt escaped an assassination attempt inMiami that mortally wounded ChicagoMayor Anton J. Cermak; gunman GiuseppeZangara was executed more than fourweeks later.

On this date: In 1764, the city of St.Louis was established by Pierre Laclede andAuguste Chouteau.

In 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine mys-teriously blew up in Havana Harbor, killingmore than 260 crew members and bringingthe United States closer to war with Spain.

In 1942, the British colony Singaporesurrendered to Japanese forces duringWorld War II.

In 1952, a funeral was held at WindsorCastle for Britain’s King George VI, who haddied nine days earlier.

In 1953, Tenley Albright became the firstAmerican woman to win the world figureskating championship, held in Davos,Switzerland.

In 1961, 73 people, including an 18-member U.S. figure skating team en route tothe World Championships in Czechoslova-kia, were killed in the crash of a Sabena Air-lines Boeing 707 in Belgium.

In 1965, Canada’s new maple-leaf flagwas unfurled in ceremonies in Ottawa.

In 1971, Britain and Ireland “deci-malised” their currencies, making one poundequal to 100 new pence instead of 240pence.

In 1982, 84 men were killed when ahuge oil-drilling rig, the Ocean Ranger, sankoff the coast of Newfoundland during afierce storm.

In 1989, the Soviet Union announcedthat the last of its troops had leftAfghanistan, after more than nine years ofmilitary intervention.

In 1992, a Milwaukee jury found that Jef-frey Dahmer was sane when he killed andmutilated 15 men and boys. Benjamin L.Hooks announced plans to retire as execu-tive director of the National Association forthe Advancement of Colored People.

In 2002, a private funeral was held at

Windsor Castle for Britain’s Princess Mar-garet, who had died six days earlier at age71.

Ten years ago: Millions of protestersaround the world demonstrated against theprospect of a U.S. attack on Iraq.

Five years ago: Business tycoon SteveFossett, 63, was declared dead by a judgein Cook County, Ill., five months after hissmall plane vanished after taking off from anairstrip near Yerington, Nev. (Fossett’s re-mains were discovered in late October 2008in California’s Sierra Nevada.)

One year ago: Congressional negotia-tors sealed an agreement on legislation torenew a payroll tax cut for 160 million work-ers and jobless benefits for millions more. Indefiant swipes at its foes, Iran said it wasdramatically closer to mastering the produc-tion of nuclear fuel even as the U.S. weighedtougher pressure on the Tehran govern-ment.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Allan Arbus is95. Former Illinois Congressman John An-derson is 91. Former Defense and EnergySecretary James Schlesinger is 84. ActressClaire Bloom is 82. Author Susan Brown-miller is 78. Songwriter Brian Holland is 72.Rock musician Mick Avory (The Kinks) is 69.Jazz musician Henry Threadgill is 69. Ac-tress Jane Seymour is 62. Singer MelissaManchester is 62. Actress Lynn Whitfield is60. “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening is 59.Model Janice Dickinson is 58. Actor Christo-pher McDonald is 58. Reggae singer AliCampbell is 54. Actor Joseph R. Gannascoliis 54. Musician Mikey Craig (Culture Club) is53. College and Pro Football Hall of FamerDarrell Green is 53. Country singer MichaelReynolds (Pinmonkey) is 49. Actor MichaelEaston is 46. Rock musician Stevie Benton(Drowning Pool) is 42. Actress Renee O’-Connor is 42. Actress Sarah Wynter is 40.Actor-director Miranda July is 39. Rocksinger Brandon Boyd (Incubus) is 37. Rockmusician Ronnie Vannucci (The Killers) is37. Actress Ashley Lyn Cafagna is 30.Blues-rock musician Gary Clark Jr. is 29. Ac-tress Amber Riley (TV: “Glee”) is 27.

Thought for Today: “Nothing is mine, Ihave only nothing but it is enough, it is beau-tiful and it is all mine.” — Katherine AnnePorter, American author (1894-1980).

TO DAY I N H I S TO RY

MANAGERS Gary L. Wood

Publisher

Michele SchievelbeinAdvertising Director

Tonya SchildBusiness Manager

David JeffcoatCirculation Director

Tera SchmidtClassified Manager

Kelly HertzEditor

James D. CimburekSports Editor

Beth RyeNew Media Manager

Kathy LarsonComposing Manager

Bernard MetivierDistrict Manager

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BY KELLY HERTZkelly.hertz@yankton.net

I want to discuss the announcement made last weekthat the United States Postal Service (USPS) will be elimi-nating Saturday first-class mail deliveries beginning inAugust. This is a dramatic change by an en-tity that’s constitutionally mandated (Article1, Section 8, Clause 7, if you’re interested)and has served this nation well since the18th century.

But, before I go any further, some disclo-sures on my part are in order:

• First, even though I send numerousemails, I’m still a frequent user of our postalsystem, mostly to pay bills or receive pack-ages. When I have the option of how I want toreceive a package I’ve ordered, I always go withthe USPS because I know exactly what they aregoing to do with it. When I’ve used some ofUSPS’s competitors, it can be a crapshootsometimes, not to mention that they are not aseasily accessible as the post office.

• The loss of Saturday delivery is going tohurt this newspaper a bit. Most of our customers receivetheir papers by carriers, but where that mode of deliveryisn’t available, we use the postal service because the USPSis, at least for the moment, everywhere. The end of Satur-day delivery will hurt us because it’s going to hurt our sub-scribers, simple as that. In fact, many daily newspapersand their customers will be hurt by the loss of Saturday de-livery. And so will magazines and other periodicals that uti-lize the USPS and have a Saturday window for deliveries;

• I live in a rural community and I grew up in a verysmall town. In places like these, postal service provides avital connection to the rest of the world, the presence ofthe Internet notwithstanding. For us, it’s still indispensable;

• I sometimes get important mail on Saturday. I’m notsure why, but it just works out that way sometimes;

• And, for what it’s worth, I think some of the stampsare cool (particularly, for example, the Lewis and Clark bi-centennial triangle stamps that were issued about a decadeago).

So, with all that disclosed, let me say that I understandcompletely why the postal service wants to eliminate Sat-urday delivery. If you look at its books and the ocean of redink in which it’s drowning, you realize that some fiscal am-putation is in order. It’s estimated this move could save theUSPS $2 billion.

But that’s not the real issue here.Instead, the right question is, why are we letting this

happen?And we ARE letting it happen because the USPS’s finan-

cial chaos is a manmade disaster. We must certainly ac-knowledge the threats created by falling mail volume — it’sdecreased 25 percent since 2007 — and the correspondingdrop in revenue. But the real monster here is the Postal Ac-countability Enhancement Act (PAEA) of 2006, a surrealpiece of legislative sabotage that mandated that the postal

service must pre-fund 75 years worth of pen-sions by 2016. This means, as Think Progresspointed out, it’s required to pay for employees ithasn’t even hired yet. No other governmentagency or private entity must do this (andthere’s a clear reason for that).

You’ve heard of “too big to fail”? PAEA is tooridiculous to succeed. Without it, the postalservice wouldn’t have defaulted on its pensionpayments last summer, wouldn’t be faced withclosing offices, wouldn’t be cutting tens of thou-sands of jobs, wouldn’t be dumping Saturdayservice and would, according to one analysis, berunning a $1.5 billion surplus instead of losing al-most $16 billion — or about $36 million a day —in fiscal year 2012.

The postal service, which doesn’t run on tax-payer money, has long been a target of the “smallgovernment” apostles, who see bad things in

anything with Washington’s fingerprints on it. Also, PAEAtakes aim at the postal workers’ union, so this legislationwas probably seen as a magnificent silver bullet.

Perhaps, then, this serves as a good case study aboutwhat less government really looks like sometimes. In an ageof instant information and instant expectations, the USPS isscaling back its service, reducing its points of access, cut-ting staff, hurting small towns and hindering customers.Can it get any better than that?

There is still some hope for sanity. On Wednesday, a billwas introduced in the Senate to repeal PAEA, and some offi-cials — including Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and JeanetteDwyer, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ As-sociation — charge that the postal service’s decision toscuttle Saturday delivery is illegal. And perhaps the stran-gling congressional shackles may even be lifted to finallyallow the USPS to innovate for the times.

This is a vital issue to rural Americans, who don’t al-ways have the greatest broadband access and count on thepostal service to keep them connected to some very basicneeds. Yes, it’s just one day of service — and yes, I do havesome vested interests, as disclosed above. But so do we all,and that’s why we have a lot at stake in this. The loss ofSaturday service is really just a symptom of something farmore disturbing and shamefully unnecessary.

You can follow Kelly Hertz on Twitter attwitter.com/kelly_hertz

Failing To Deliver

Kelly

HERTZ

O N L I N E O P I N I O NThe results of the most recent Internet poll on the Press & Dakotanʼs Web site are

as follows:LATEST RESULTS:

Are you surprised by the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI?Yes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60%No . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40%TOTAL VOTES CAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .397

The Press & Dakotan Internet poll is not a scientific survey and reflects the opinionsonly of those who choose to participate. The results should not be construed as an accu-rate representation or scientific measurement of public opinion.

———CURRENT QUESTION:

Do you support raising the federal minimum wage?

To vote in the Press & Dakotanʼs Internet poll, log on to our website at www.yankton.net.

BY MICHAEL REAGANCagleCartoon.com

Our failure in chief gave us his annual blurred vision ofAmerica again Tuesday night.

Based on his State of the Union message,Barack Obama’s eyesight is as ideologically im-paired as ever.

Despite four years of failure, he still seesonly one road America can go down to regainits economic health.

Not down the capitalist road of free enter-prise and liberty that made us the richest coun-try in history.

He wants to continue down the socialistroad to more federal government — whichmeans more Obama taxes, more Obama spend-ing, more Obama debt and more Obama gov-ernment programs to fix problems governmentprograms caused in the first place.

The president and his hallucinating idolatersin the mainstream liberal media think his failedpolicies and bad ideas will work their magic ifonly we try them for another four years.

But look at reality. Look at the unemployment rates in2008 and 2012. Despite trillions of federal spending, they’reessentially the same.

Look at the federal debt in 2008 compared to 2012 —it’s much worse today. Look at America’s bungled foreignpolicy.

Look at the middle class. The president keeps boastingabout how he’s going to use the federal government to helpthem. The reality is that the middle class is being devas-tated by his administration.

Starting Jan. 1, 2013, Americans with jobs have hadtheir disposable incomes cut 2 percent because Social Se-curity taxes were returned to their normal level.

And because of the rules under Obamacare, millions ofemployees are going to have their hours cut by employerswho can’t afford to pay every full-time worker’s health care.

That speech Tuesday night was a national joke. Asusual, it was mostly hot air, bad ideas and tired platitudes.It delivered nothing sensible, newsworthy or brave.

What if Obama had turned to Senate Majority LeaderHarry Reid and said, “Hey Harry, how about passing a fed-eral budget this year? I’m tired of funding the government

with continuing resolutions.”What if he had said, “Sorry, my Green friends, you’re

living in a dream world. We need the Keystone Pipelineand I’m going to do everything I can to speed up its con-struction.”

What if Obama had turned to the survivorsof deadly gun violence in the audience and said,“I am not going to push for tougher new guncontrol laws because I know they would havedone nothing to save your loved ones frombeing murdered.”

No chance. Instead, the president stuck tohis socialist script and threatened that if Con-gress doesn’t cooperate with his latest brain-storms, he will get his way by using executiveorders.

The people of this country will soon rue theday they voted to re-elect Obama in 2012. Atsome point they’ll learn that his “progressive”way, the 1930s taxing-and-spending-and-regulat-ing way, is not the answer.

We’re in for four more years of slow growth,high unemployment rates, higher taxes and ris-ing prices. Not to mention more government

meddling in every aspect of our lives. The impaired vision of Obama and his party is wrecking

the economy, crippling the ability of our youth to get jobsand causing a decline in respect for America overseas.

My side — the conservative Republican side — is out ofpower. We don’t have the White House and the Senate. Thecourts rule against us most of the time. And the main-stream media are still in the tank for Obama.

All we can do for now is watch Obama’s HumptyDumpty America as it falls off the wall and breaks into amillion pieces.

At the end of the game, it’ll be up to the RepublicanParty, the conservatives, to put the country back together. Ionly hope we can live long enough to do it.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan,a political consultant, and the author of “The New ReaganRevolution” (St. Martin’s Press). He is the founder andchairman of The Reagan Group and president of The Rea-gan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites atwww.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Sendcomments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.

A Blurred Vision Of America

Michael

REAGAN

‘So God Made A Farmer’Janet Goeden, Crofton Neb.

Thank you, Rita Brhel, for your article on Dodge’sSuper Bowl ad (Press & Dakotan, Feb. 9).

Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer” should notbe lost in the soufflé of today’s nonsense. I was disap-pointed not to hear or read about the impression itmade on any of our local, Midwest radio or televisionstations, so thank you for bringing it to the foreground.

When you mentioned how it got our attention, mid-motion, that was so true. I’m not a sports fan, so washalfway out of my chair when it called for our full atten-tion and we barely took another breath, fearing itwould disappear. How great it was to hear that familiar,down-to-common-sense voice and the content justtopped any other effort. We so wish to see it again sowe could record it.

Thank you, Rita, for always putting us back in thefarmers’ work boots.

A Job Well Done!THUMBS UP to the Press & Dakotan sports staff for winningnational honors in the Associate Press Sports Editors con-test, results of which were announced Tuesday. The staff wona top-five award in the under-15,000 circulation category ofthe Special Sections category for “A State Divided,” a sectiondevoted to the renewed University of South Dakota-SouthDakota State University football rivalry. The staff — which in-cludes Jilanne Doom, Emily Niebrugge, Chris Riley, Nick

Robinson and correspondent Vance Janak — is headed by Sports Editor JamesD. Cimburek and Assistant Sports Editor Jeremy Hoeck, and they put a lot oftime and energy into this outstanding product. Congratulations to their contin-ued excellence in covering the area sports scene. They’re the best!

Showings Of SupportTHUMBS UP to Yankton High School and the University ofSouth Dakota for the support given to former Pierre HighSchool basketball player Conrad Adam. The young man wasdiagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer,and underwent the amputation of his left leg above the knee.YHS has joined other high schools in supporting Adam, andfans are encouraged to wear green (Pierre’s school color)and “Conrad’s Clan” T-shirts when the Governors come to

town for Saturday’s game. USD is also sponsoring “Conrad Adam Night” to raisefunds at Saturday’s game against Fort Wayne. USD and KVHT-FM are also spon-soring a basketball “Dribble-A-Thon” to raise money. The Adam family has indi-cated the support means as much as the funds.

InspirationalTHUMBS UP to the Mount Marty College athletic depart-ment for sponsoring a raffle to raise funds for MMC head soft-ball coach Albert Fernandez, who is battling Stage 4 lungcancer. Fernandez will draw the names of the prize winnersduring Saturday’s home basketball games at Cimpl Arena.Tickets can still be purchased at the game and also at theMMC bookstore, Hy-Vee in Yankton and radio station KYNT-AM. Fernandez has returned to MMC as admissions coun-

selor as well as coach, inspiring others with his mental and physical toughness.

TakedownTHUMBS DOWN to the International Olympics Commit-tee’s (IOC) decision to drop wrestling as an Olympic sportbeginning with the 2020 games. Wrestling was a part of thefirst Olympics in Athens in the 1800s, but the committeestill decided to nix the sport. At the IOC’s meeting, the com-mittee was expected to drop the modern pentathlon, but in-stead decide to remove wrestling. Members of the localwrestling community are in shock about the decision and

say the IOC removed the sport for financial and political reasons.

A Different AgeTHUMBS UP to some creative self-interpretation, courtesy oficonic UK vocalist Bryan Ferry. Having spent 40 years in themusic business, Ferry decided to cover some of songs thathe and/or his old group Roxy Music made famous with a newinstrumental album called “The Jazz Age.” But these are morethan jazz re-makes: They are done in a 1920s pop style —complete with banjos and ukuleles serving in the rhythm sec-tion — and they even have a ghostly low-fi, mono sound so

that they seem like something you may have pulled out of your grandparents’(or great-grandparents’) attic. It’s rather jarring to hear 1980s tunes like “Don’tStop the Dance” and “Avalon” done this way, but it’s also rather interesting. Thealbum, released this week, is nothing more than a curiosity that won’t find uni-versal approval, but it does have an inventiveness that anyone can admire.