| Comment Number: | 529332-00002 |
| Received: | 5/2/2007 12:37:24 PM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Lynn Wood |
| State: | MN |
| Agency: | Federal Trade Commission |
| Rule: | United States Postal Service Study |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
The USPS was a established as a federal corporation to assume the functions of the Post Office Department in providing a basic federal government service to the population of the United States. There is a currently a difference of philosophy as to whether this entity should continue to be allowed the protections of federal sovereignty to best provide service to every resident of the United States or should be subject to local regulation and taxation and even possibly federal taxation. The USPS is an American Invention, an attempt to place a government service into the form of a corporation with the protections of federal sovereignty so that the mail would be under federal protection while paying its own cost without undue political intrusion. The current proposals stray far away from that original idea and seem intent upon placing this federal function into the hand of corporate individuals subject to local assessment and taxation and exemptions. The USPS does not produce mail, it acts as the courier protected under federal auspices to arrange transport, processing, and delivery of the mail. It is the one federal function that almost every resident of the United States has contact with almost daily. I fear however that this too will be stripped from the people in the unchallenged presumption that the private business world can provide every service better. I hold that the realm of private commerce cannot provide every service better, that sometimes it takes the scale of economy that the federal structure provides to create an entity that will work.