The post office is again raising rates, but I cannot understand why they could not solve their economic problems by just applying a little democracy and instituting a minimum fee equal to the actual cost of delivering an individual piece of mail without regard to content.

For example, I heard a tax consultant talking about how some nonprofits need to file statements, and he said Minnesota has 5,500 registered nonprofits. Not only charities and churches are listed as nonprofits, but also lobby groups like the NRA and ACLU, political parties, etc., and as long as the money is distributed to employees and for expenses, the status of a nonprofit is maintained, even if some wages are quite substantial.

I remember the flap about Elizabeth Dole getting a half-million-dollar salary as CEO of the American Red Cross and the complaint that the position was for political influence rather than expertise about blood extraction and sales, disaster relief, etc. Mail usually does not list postage charges but on rare occasion it does, and nonprofits pay from 6 to 9 cents a letter. If the post office delivered mail at no less than actual expense, the nonprofits would probably still survive and the post office would be solvent as long as they stuck to business and didn’t diversify into sponsoring drug-addled bicycle racing competitions.

I suggest a minimum fee for any mail equal to the prorated actual expense, and if that is too difficult, at least half the cost of the first-class rate we pay to send a sympathy or graduation card or a letter to our aging mother or some other charitable purpose we individuals perform routinely. We even pay more to pay our bills than the cable company does to send it, even though the window envelope return is machine readable and should be cheaper than first class. I know that presorted letters and boxholders take less work to sort, but I doubt the sorting costs seven times more than the distribution expenses. The worst that would happen is that fewer trees would have to give their lives for advertising circulars and the mailbag would be lighter for the carrier.

Don’t even get me started on franking privilege, whereby our legislators get free postage for noticing we are alive around election time and using the advantage to spend less than their opponent. And why is home delivery free while people pay rent on post office mail boxes that are so much less work to serve?

Thank you for the chance to voice my opinion.

Diane Kadrmas

Albert Lea