Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiDisseminate Information, Protect Democracy
The following is a shortened version of a letter drafted by Nation president Teresa Stack and signed by her and her counterparts at more than a dozen independent journals, including National Review, The American Spectator and Mother Jones. To learn what you can do to help, go to www.stoppostalratehikes.com.
James C. Miller III
Chairman, Postal Board of Governors
We write to you today on a matter of great urgency. The recent decision of the Postal Service Board of Governors (BOG) to accept the startling periodical rate recommendations of the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) undermines the historic foundation of our national mail system. These new rates will have grave consequences for disseminating the very type of information our Founding Fathers strove to protect and foster when they established the public postal service.
As the publishers of small national magazines that focus primarily on politics and culture, we share a common mission of providing the information essential to a flourishing democracy. We struggle to inform the national dialogue in a way the Founders believed essential to the health of this country. As journals of opinion and ideas, we do not do it for the money; we do it because, like the Founders, we believe it to be a public good.
As you know, in May 2006 the United States Postal Service proposed a rate increase for periodicals of about 11.7 percent, an increase that would have affected all periodicals more or less equally. Instead, in February the PRC recommended a version of the rate proposal put forward by Time Warner, which had previously been rejected by the PRC and strongly opposed by the USPS. This proposal would have a disproportionately adverse effect on small national publications while easing the burden on the largest magazines.
The decision was followed by an industry "comment period" of only eight working days, an impossibly short time for small publications to digest changes so complex that to this day there is no definitive computer model to fully assess them. Nonetheless, the new rates are scheduled to take effect July 15.
We now know that small titles will be devastated. According to an analysis by McGraw-Hill (but not, inexplicably, done by the PRC or BOG), about 5,700 small-circulation publications will incur rate increases exceeding 20 percent; another 1,260 publications will see increases above 25 percent; and hundreds more, increases above 30 percent. Some small magazines will no doubt go out of business. Meanwhile, the largest magazines will enjoy the benefit of much smaller increases and in some cases, decreases. To make matters even worse, editorial content charges will now be based on distance. The system of charging one price however far editorial content travels, which has existed since our country's founding, seems to have been summarily dismissed by the PRC, and then by the governors, with little thought of its future impact.
These increased postal rates will also raise barriers for prospective new publishers, thus destroying competition in the periodicals market and locking in the privileged positions of the largest firms. While it is understandable that Time Warner would relish the idea of making it more difficult for new competitors, there is no reason to think that it is in the interest of the American people or the market economy.
Since its inception, the US Postal Service has recognized small magazines like ours as serving a vital function in the American political system. And while the realities of the marketplace no doubt require some adjustments to postal costs, the PRC's new rates turn the ideals of Jefferson and Madison on their head. These ideals have been eloquently defended in all previous rate cases. Instead, we will now have an entirely cost-based system.
Even if the argument can be made that such a system trumps all other interests, the USPS remains in effect a government monopoly. We are small businesses, and to raise costs so dramatically without our input and with no recourse is devastating. Comments were heard only from companies that could afford to provide them, via expert testimony and top-notch legal advice. No one considered how a small business would accommodate a 30 percent increase in one of the most expensive items in its budget.
The PRC has managed to take a historically preferred class of mail and turn it into the most complex, cost-based and bureaucratically burdened of all mail classes in the span of a single rate case. Periodical rates ought to be the least cost-based, because that class exists for content.
In accepting the Time Warner rate plan, the PRC and the governors have allowed the cost-based proposal of one of the country's largest mailers to prevail over public and small business concerns. Small magazines that have historically contributed to the diversity of voices and opinions and have an outsized effect on our public discourse are now potentially silenced so that the likes of Time Warner can mail People more cheaply.
We appreciate that costs increase and mail technologies change. However, the mail system is a public system, and the dissemination of small magazines remains a public good. Accordingly, any changes should be implemented gradually and on a cost-averaged basis so as not to threaten the very existence of small magazines. We ask that:
1. the Board of Governors move quickly to delay the implementation of these new rates, allowing an additional period of public comment;
2. a full assessment and justification of the new rates and their impact on the public good be completed, and if the new rates cannot be adequately assessed and justified, that the decision of the BOG be revised and the new rates revoked;
3. whether the Postal Service exercises its right to file for another rate increase under the old postal reform law or moves directly to the new law's provisions, during the next rate case the Postal Service will shift some of the added burden away from the small-circulation publications that have survived until then.
Teresa Stack is the president of The Nation Company, L.P.
© 2007 The Nation
15 Comments so far
Show AllTo bobmark Yes I'm a working class citizen of this country as are many of us in this country and as citizens of this country we will work to protect our democratic ideals. How about you?
Get a real job and stand up for our democracy!
"Oh for crying out loud quit your whining".
Never mind bobmark's rant about , "don't you guys have jobs", he is right in the second clause of his statement . All other remarks are true about the unfairness of USPS's decision but truth without action is futile.
Millions of progressive Americans can send a clear message to the USPS by the simple task of cancelling a subscription to the Time-Warners of America and walking to a local library to read a favourite magazine.
Gandhi's simple gestures of hand-spinning-cotton and walking-to-the-sea to make salt were the catalytic and symbolic acts of law-breaking that eventually broke the resolve of the British Raj to stay in India.
Far more innocuous than hand-spun cotton or home-made salt , magazine-subscription cancellation is as easy as a few keystrokes and is completely legal.
There is the way ; now , do you have the will ?
Join the dots....
Project Blue Beam
HAARP
Chemtrails
FEMA Prison Camps
Poisons and toxins in food and drink
So-called Vaccinations
Brain Drugs/Bad Medication
VeraChip RFID
Mind Control
Subliminal Messages
Division
Endless Wars
Corporate Greed
Raping of the planet
= The end of the world.
The mind boggles at this...
Don't believe anything but what your own minds tells you. Look at all the pieces and join them together, and this is what we faced with a small number of greed filled psychopaths leading us all to our demise.
Let's join together as one and resonate our love as one to help heal the world right now, love is the only force which is capable of nurturing and growth and we owe it not just to ourselves but to our beautiful home our mother Earth and everything we co-exist here with. Love conquers all.
"These increased postal rates will also raise barriers for prospective new publishers, thus destroying competition in the periodicals market and locking in the privileged positions of the largest firms."
Wall Street wants to destroy all small competitors since they can only make money trading on businesses that are listed on the stock exchange.
"The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the gowth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey
bobmark April 21st, 2007 10:34 am
"Oh for crying out loud quit your whining. Do any of you people have jobs?"
Yes, bobmark, we do have jobs and we also have minds that can see through propaganda, abuses and usurpations.
Oh for crying out loud quit your whining. Do any of you people have jobs?
As Daniel Borgstrom noted, an administration such as the current one can't endure a wide, varied, opinionated and curious press. The control of information is vital to their survival. That's why, over the past six years, it has been almost impossible to get this administration to release documents. They always bring up the red herring of "national security." Also, as many of us know, more documents have been clasified as secrect under the Bush regime than any other. Even documents that were once in the public domain are being removed from the shelves and being reclassified as secret.
The FCC tried to pull a fast one with net neutrality a couple of years ago but enough people spoke up in time to stop it from going ahead.
Now they are after the Postal System as a way of hampering the flow of ideas. Hopefully, this time enough people will speak up again before it is too late.
I have one final question: who is the Post Master of the United States? Is he/she appointed by the president? I would like to know because there has been this terrible practice of putting foxes in charge of different hen houses in the US government.
W's momma can really be scary, with her being such a brilliant political strategist as i pointed out above. It's the woman behind the creature in the White House. She's the "Don't worry my pretty head" delusional" one at the head of that gangster family. This woman needs to look in a mirror. On second thought, how many mirrors can Poppy afford to have replaced?
"The postal service has been a joke from its beginning in the Nixon years. Return the U S Post Office to department status and government workers can deliver first class mail and packages for all of us. Let the Federal Express Company and United Parcel Service deliver the junk mail that we throw away in larger and larger amounts.
Ah, remember those blue boxes with the red tops. Yes, the post office also knew who Kris Kringle was and where he lived. When profit is the motive, service and good work stand far, far behind.
Perhaps, we will one day awaken from our "free market" nightmare." - Matt Drayton
Let us keep the postal rates for these various publications where they are and keep the press and oppose with all our might the fake gay marriage that W's momma, the brilliant political strategist that she is, is trying to get for her son with the "Terminator" to unite the muscular buttocks wing of the GOP, the USA's official fascist party with the storm trooper wing headed by W even if W's momma shall have already sent that "pretty white dress" to the governor's mansion in Sacramento to fool gay people, a fine and decent people and Democratic base constituency group into believing, falsely obviously, that W and his gang are pro gay. Even with Jerry Foulwell coming in as the "lovely flower girl" at this fake gay marriage, let no gay person be deceived in the least. These dawgs are just atrying to fool you. "Don't fooled again.. ."
Corrupt, abusive Cheney/Bush-type regimes CANNOT COEXIST with free, independent sources of information.
RT Drury and Thomas More are right--this is our post office (corporation to the contrary notwithstanding) and it is past time that they serve all of us. This should be just as much a hot button issue as the mideast wars, global warming, and immigration.
So far you guys are missing the continued assult on small business and the private citizen by Big Business supported by the unfortunte type of people in charge of our government right now.
we don't need alternate methods of delivery, we need to all contact our representatives at every level and express our opposition.
Many of these folks are coming up for re-election very soon and if you don't think they are sensing the way the wind is blowing......you haven't been paying attention.
Just one more attack on our Republic by the Bushista's appointees.
The USPS should be forced into compliance with the public will. A multi-pronged approach is most effective, e.g. mass boycotts, pressure on representatives, and establishment of alternate distribution for progressive media. The farmer's market is an excellent place to distribute media. We also have public communications satellites on the drawing board.
Like a cancer that has metastasized, like a chancre upon the lip of liberty, like undies filled with hemorrhoid pus and blood, our so-called Government is always on the prowl to stamp out life and love and the sharing of ideas and ideals. Perhaps, in addition to the normal avenues of outcry over this latest assault, each and every one of us could call our local postmaster and announce a personal boycott of the Post Office until it lives up to its original purpose. Pay bills online or in person. Send packages via UPS. Instead of letters, send email or fax. And to REALLY drive home the point, seal or fill our mailboxes so all mail has to be taken back and stored at the PO. Let the system choke on its own vomit! By the way, did anybody ever figure out why the counters of OUR Post Offices, built with OUR money, were filled with stacks of AOL install CD's?
CLARIFICATIION-- The last sentence should have the words at the end, "Don't get fooled again." By all means, don't go there! The W's momma just wants to split the gay vote down the middle, then in a close contest the GOP, with Diebold on the job stealing like crazy has a good shot at holding the presidency.