Random Nuclear Strikes

The waiting line at the bank took all day to get through.

Imagine if it was at the Post Office

A Public Option for Banking

Trying to get basic banking services to cash Social Security and disability checks was a persistent source of anxiety for Patricia Geary, a 65-year-old Philadelphia resident. She receives her payments in paper form, but since she didn’t have a checking account, she had trouble figuring out how to convert them into usable form.

“It was so stressful,” she told me. “It put me in such a fragile and depressive state that I had to seek out professional help at times.”

Commercial banks have too many hidden fees and minimum balances that are too high to help her. The check-cashing places she relied on require large fees for her to get cash and even more fees to convert some of that cash into money orders to pay bills. Keeping her money entirely in cash made it hard to budget well and left her vulnerable to theft.

Luckily, a public option became available. Geary received a Direct Express debit card that loads her government pension and disability payments. The card has low fees and none of her old financial hassles. “It was so much more flexible and allowed me to be much better at budgeting,” she said. “It’s like I have a bank in my pocket.”

There has been great interest in the idea of postal banking ever since the inspector general of the U.S. Postal Service released a white paper in January that went viral after Elizabeth Warren endorsed the idea. According to the proposal, the USPS would offer financial services, including a debit card much like Direct Express, to cater to the nearly 68 million Americans with limited or no access to a formal banking account.

How delicate a flower must one be to need therapy because you can’t cash a check?

But more importantly, who doesn’t have “access” to banking?

I can’t see a need that isn’t being filled by banks and credit unions.

On a personal note, when I moved into my neighborhood back at the end of 2008, it had one of those “combined” mailboxes. The USPS decided that because of a couple of mail thefts from individual houses, my neighbors would be forced to give up their personal mailboxes and accept three large combo mailboxes spread throughout our neighborhood.

Well, back in November these combo boxes were broken into. The thieves took a $5 pry bar and bent the large door the mail carrier uses to fill the individual boxes back about four inches. They were only able to get to two of the boxes, but now everyone in the neighborhood has to go to the sorting depot because the USPS refuses to deliver any mail to the big box.

It is now almost March and the USPS still hasn’t fixed the big box. I call every week and let them know it hasn’t been fixed. The employees at the sorting depot are tired of having to come out from behind the locked door separating the 8ft x 8ft waiting area from the sorting area to help those requesting their mail and have become slightly snotty about it.

The door on the big box that was bent is 10 gauge steel. I offered to fabricate a new door using a half-sheet of 1/4in plate I have sitting around, but I got told no so many times I stopped offering, and if I just go ahead and make the repair, I’ll be a felon (I was told this in no uncertain terms the last time I offered).

Now imagine these folks have your entire income.

Back on the 6th of this month I was welding in the overhead position and got a 7018 welding rod stuck pretty damn deep in the weldment. I tried wriggling it out, but that wasn’t working. I tried bending it severely from both the left and right side as well, with no improvement in the situation.

Then, instead of doing the smart thing and grabbing up my Lineman’s pliers to cut the rod off, I grabbed it with an upside down right hand and started yanking rather vigorously from side to side. It finally broke off as I shoved from the left, sending my hand up and into the 3/8″ steel plate table my weldment was attached to.

Yes, this is all a run-up to telling y’all I broke my hand at the base of the right metacarpal about 1/2″ from where it attaches to the right carpal bone.

This is only a small hindrance. It turns out that once you know the motions and how 7018 rod works it takes only a few days to train your other hand to make those motions. I’ve been welding with my left hand since the 9th and am doing well enough that I was going to test out on my vertical (3G) and overhead (4G) certifications this week. Until the new x-rays came through on Friday.

Apparently, the long piece of the carpal bone is popped up and won’t reattach. The Urgent Care folks didn’t bother with attempting to realign the bones, preferring to let the hand specialist I saw on Friday to do that. I’ve been in their splint since the 6th and that just kept it from moving from its current position. So now the specialist wants to realign the bones and then pin or screw them together. This will happen Wednesday afternoon.

As he was telling me about the how and what he stated that I wouldn’t be able to weld for at least six weeks. I chuckled and said that wasn’t going to happen. I explained about the time and money I have invested in this program and how I have exactly six weeks left to complete the program and about how I have been welding all that week with my left hand, using my right hand to grasp things while wearing a splint that immobilized my ring and pinky fingers with no pain. He tilted his head a bit, shook it and left it at that.

I go in on Tuesday for a pre-op physical and then Wednesday afternoon for some outpatient surgery.

This is going to suck. Obviously, I type even more slowly that I did before, so posting might sparse out even more than before. Also, I’ll be losing a day and a half of practice and I had a project going in the Fab Shop that was due to be delivered on Friday that won’t be.