Tell me again why running government like a business is a good idea?

25,000 jobs eliminated by postal service
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID • Associated Press • May 19, 2009
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service has cut its staff by 25,000 this year as it struggles to reduce massive deficits, Postmaster General John Potter said Monday.

A very brief history lesson:

The Postal Reorganization Act signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970, replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with the independent United States Postal Service. The Act took effect on July 1, 1971.
[United States Postal Service, Wikipedia entry]

Unlike the Post Office Department, the USPS is a quasi-governmental agency, legally defined as an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States," (39 U.S.C. § 201) as it is wholly owned by the government and controlled by the Presidential appointees and the Postmaster General.

The idea was to create "a corporation-like independent agency with an official monopoly on the delivery of mail in the United States."
[Postal Reorganization Act]
... since, as we all know, corporations are intrisically efficient.

We've come a long way, baby!
Now we outsource National Defense to the likes of KBR & Xe (aka Blackwater).

[note: in addition to the sections cited explicitly, much of the rest of this note derives directly from the Wikipedia entry, United States Postal Service.]