Help the USPS, don’t hinder it

The U.S. Postal Service is in bad financial shape (Aug. 8, “Financial Losses Mounting at Postal Service”). That’s weird. Why is the Postal Service required to pay for itself when no other department of the government faces that requirement? The reason is widely purported to be that big business regards it as a potential cash cow and wants to take it over and that Republican legislators are helping with that by forcing the Postal Service into financial failure. Putting mail service into nongovernmental hands is a train wreck waiting to happen.

First and foremost, once mail service is in private hands, there is a high probability that — like many business operations in the U.S. — it will go bankrupt. When that happens, how many months or years will it be before the in-transit letters, documents, checks and packages are released to their intended recipients?

Equally probable is the possibility that foreign interests hostile to the U.S. — terrorists or communist countries, for example — will be the real owners of the companies taking over the operation. Having such things as census forms, mail-in ballots, paychecks, legal documents, confidential business documents and patent information under the control of our enemies is not in our best interests.

Congress needs, at long last, to put the nation before big business and put the U.S. Postal Service on a realistic footing, free from the rules and regulations intended to cripple it. PAUL ALTER

Wilkinsburg