I read with interest your correspondent’s letter in the March 1 Redmond Reporter about the congressional “attack” on USPS. The writer evidently believes passionately in the post office.

However, the question I have about USPS is “who needs it?” I haven’t been in a post office for years, all my bills come over the Internet and are paid the same way. I have not received a paper letter from anyone I know, or want to hear from, in this century. Every time I clear my mailbox, I discard 90 percent of the contents directly into my recycle bin. Most of the rest gets there after a cursory once over.

Obviously there was a need for USPS in the past, just as there was for stagecoaches, steam trains and typewriters. Nowadays it seems to me a partner in a vast and costly exercise in uselessness, converting trees into waste paper and consuming fuel and other resources doing it. I wish Congress would give it a lethal injection. As for its employees, those with initiative would find something useful to do in another occupation. The rest could shovel piles of gravel from one place to another, doing little environmental harm and keeping fit.

As for the constitutional mandate for a postal service, perhaps we could have a token post office in DC, where elderly folks in old-fashioned uniforms would perform their ancient tasks, rather like colonial Williamsburg or the British House of Lords. School groups could visit it.

Chris Starling, Woodinville