Now that the U.S. Postal Service wants to raise the price of stamps again -- to 33 cents by as soon as July 1 -- a closer look at this organization would seem in order.

• The USPS is a corporation with 800,000 employees and revenues approaching $60 billion -- rivaling the size of Ford or General Motors.

• While it is now enjoying a $1 billion surplus, it pays no corporate income tax, no state or local property tax, no business or professional licensing tax and no business franchise fees.

• It owns 7,513 buildings with 178 million square feet and leases 26,988 buildings with almost 100 million square feet.

• Its vehicle fleet travels 1.1 billion miles a year, burning over 114 million gallons of gas.

The Postal Service can borrow from the Treasury at below-market rates, and it pays no dividends to shareholders. This kind of an operating set-up has prompted more than one economist to find it a strange kind of corporation indeed.

Free-market proponents would see it privatized before it sinks in a vortex of obsolescence.