This isn't exactly true. Even with junk mail they aren't profitable. But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people, not to allow 3rd parties to harass them endlessly.
That's not really the point. If they didn't push junk mail so hard, they'd be insolvent and fail. Profitability is not the issue.
> But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people
Agree, but someone should probably tell Congress that.
The situation is trash (literally; 95% of my mail goes directly to the recycling bin), but conservatives want the USPS to behave more like a business, and its funding -- and need to do crappy things -- reflects that.
Sounds like they exist to serve big business pumping out tons and tons of land fill routed trash, subsidized by the federal government/taxpayers. Given they're unionized, they can just lobby whomever to keep this unicorn status. Federal agencies should not be allowed to unionize.
Not filtering, no, but I would like them to set bulk mail prices high enough to actually reflect the cost of the externalities of sending (and trashing) that mail. Fewer companies would send so much junk if they had to pay for its true cost.
They don't have to provide bulk-mailing services to non-government entities. This is where someone says "Mail one of these advertisement packages to every person in this district", and it's not actually addressed to you. This would raise the cost of mailing spam to the same cost as mailing real letters.
There’s been some back and forth about the sudden mandate for USPS the pre funding retiree healthcare out 65 years, which nominally created a great deal of debt to the government as they failed to meet that sudden obligation. However, by removing the obligation that ‘debt’ disappeared as the government hadn’t actually spent any money on USPS retirees healthcare.
The United States Constitution requires the United Staes Government to run a postal service. This means that the USPS must exist and it must be properly funded.
To be pedantic, the US Constitution simply grants Congress the exclusive power to establish post offices and post roads. Nowhere does it make any requirements about how Congress uses that power.
So much of the constitution is like that. Take the second amendment for example. "Arms" aren't clearly defined, affordability isn't guaranteed, taxation of such arms/ammo isn't restricted, and other amendment(s) can alter the provision of the amendment (ie, the fifth is why felons can lose their 2nd amendment rights)
The Constitution was never intended to spell out all laws of the country. It's a framework for how our government should work and a list of fundamental rights that should be protected at all costs.
The second amendment doesn't define "arms" because (a) at the time there wasn't much ambiguity there and (b) "arms" isn't actually the most important concept there. The second amendment enshrines the right for citizens to be able to stand up militias and defend themselves. The US didn't have a standing army until WW2, despite Alexander Hamilton's opinions on the matter. The second amendment was put in place because colonists lived under the thumb of a monarch and at the end of an army's barrel with nothing guaranteeing the people a right to defend themselves, their neighbors, or their fellow colonists (eventually countrymen).
The Constitution is a legal document and the foundation of all American law. It turns out a specific definition of "arms" would actually be very useful to the modern legal doctrines of the post-industrial society in which we actually live, as opposed to the pre-industrial agrarian society for which the British re-establishing their colonies, slave revolts and uprisings from Native Americans were problems worth worrying about.
The second amendment was a reaction to having lived under the oppression of British rule, not concerns over slave revolts or native uprisings.
That aside, the concept of amendments exist for a reason. It's totally reasonable for Congress today to amend the Constitution if a definition of "arms" is now needed. It wouldn't be the first time a new amendment modified or entirely voided an earlier amendment.
What we don't need is court rulings, executive actions, or even new legislation short of an amendment trying to modify or redefine an existing amendment. If an amendment needs to be changed or clarified that needs to happen at the level of another amendment, anything less is short cutting the system and, in my opinion, not democratic.
