Click here to go to the Free Press site that makes it easy to protest this law and its implementation.The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA, P.L. 109-435) was signed into law by President Bush on December 20, 2006. Clearly this was passed in the final days of the previous (Republican) Congress before the current (Democratic) Congress took office, and signed by the President at a time when it would not get much publicity.
The act was quickly put together in December (after the election) from somewhat divergent bills previously passed by the House and Senate. It included a provision that had not been included in either:
No letter of such a class of domestic origin shall be opened except under authority of a search warrant authorized by law, or by an officer or employee of the Postal Service for the sole purpose of determining an address at which the letter can be delivered, or pursuant to the authorization of the addressee.I find a report noting that:
in the signing statement, President Bush said he would ignore the law and "conduct searches in exigent circumstances."This is one of many examples of signing statements made by President Bush in which he basically tells the Congress he is not interested in their laws. We now depend on Attorney General Gonzales to protect our mail from being read without a warrant!
About Postal Rates
The PAEA was the first major change in the law governing the postal service since 1971. There is a good (if bureaucratic) website on the new law created by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). It notes:
The Act also establishes two separate product categories: Market-Dominant products and Competitive products. It prescribes a new process for setting prices, with increases for Market-Dominant products capped at the Consumer Price Index, by class. For Competitive products, the law creates new pricing flexibility.Thus Congress removed the named competitive products (priority mail, expedited mail, bulk parcel post, bulk international mail, and mailgrams) from the pricing policies of the previous legislation and the objectives and factors of the new PAEA. The "competitive products" are those over which the USPS does not hold a monopoly, but are offered in competition with other commercial providers. The intent here apparently was a good one -- keeping the USPS from competing unfairly with the private sector by subsidizing its competitive products with excess profits from its monopoly services.
Prior to the PAEA, the USPS in theory set prices to cover the costs of its services. However, the USPS has not in the past provided detailed financial information including product-by-product financial statements. Consequently, there have been some questions that there have been cross subsidies (e.g. bulk mail payed less than its fair share and John Q. Public more than his fair share of the costs). Accuracy and transparency are still important according to this article in DM News (Direct Marketing News):
The Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) chairman Dan G. Blair stressed the need for service standards and performance measures that are transparent and accountable when he appeared in front of the Senate postal subcommittee August 2.The first rate increases under the new law for the monopoly services (Market Dominant Products) show that there are going to be real problems!
Blair talked about the steps PRC is taking to implement modern service standards as required by Title III of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.
“Ensuring transparency and maintenance of performance levels is more critical than ever, since future postal rate increases are capped at inflation,” Blair told the Senate postal subcommittee. “Congress, after considerable deliberation, specifically chose the CPI as the index for the rate cap.
The PAEA created a system by which the price of USPS monopoly services was to be capped and to grow no faster than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The Postal Rate Commission is to oversee the system. As one might expect, the administration then had to figure out exactly what the law meant. Specifically, the postal service designates difference classes of mail, and charges differently according to the classification of the mail. How then was the cap to be applied to the different classes of mail.
Extensive public consultation was held. Looking over the filings, not surprisingly, big companies with a lot of money at stake according to how postal rates were set were very active as were their trade associations. The only consumer advocate seemed to be the Office of the Consumer Advocate of the USPS, which offered helpful if bureaucratic comment. However, I did not see civil society consumer advocates, nor the representatives of others who are very important sources of "knowledge for development". Nor did I see small publlishers, charities or other affected "good guys" represented.
So, what are the results?
I was first alerted to the problems of this legislation by my son, who sent me a link to "Time Warner Destroys America and a Political Mag Near You" by Josh Marshal in the TalkingPointsMemo. Marshall writes:
The short and sweet of it is that Time Warner has proposed and postal regulators have accepted a proposal which is actually reducing postage costs for mega-mags like Time and Newsweek while dramatically raising them for small independent publishers. From small mags on the right and left I've been deluged in recent weeks by letters saying the new rates are tipping them into financial crisis.On the same theme,Stephen Lendman wrote "New US Postal Rates Undermine Small Publications" for the CommonDreams.Org News Center:
Such is the state of things today, and it’s led to first time ever changes in postal policy directly subverting USPS’ own 215 year history. That’s according to the urgent message just sent his Free Press supporters (including this writer) by the organization’s founder, author, media critic, activist, and noted professor of media studies at the University of Illinois’ main campus in Champaign-Urbana Robert McChesney.What is the new rate schedule doing to charities?
He noted how rarely he sends out messages to “everyone in (his) address book (but did it this time on a matter he finds) “of staggering importance and urgency (because) There is a major crisis in our media taking place right now; it’s getting almost no attention and unless we act very soon the consequences for our society could well be disastrous. And it will only take place because it is being done without any public awareness or participation (going against) the very foundations of freedom of the press (in all) American history.”
McChesney goes on saying (unless stopped) the US postal system is implementing “a radical reformulation of its rates for magazines” to place a much larger cost burden on smaller periodicals than on the largest ones standing to benefit from the policy change. Up to now, postal policy “converted the (First Amendment’s) Free Press clause….from an abstract principle into a living breathing reality for Americans,” and it’s been that way “throughout our history.”
All that’s about to be scrapped with new rates scheduled to take effect July 15 under which small publications will pay postal rates as much as 20% higher than the largest ones in a willful plan to undermine them, weaken media competition further, and as McChesney explains: “make it almost impossible to launch a new magazine (or other publication) unless it is spawned by a huge conglomerate” wanting to get huger. This new postal policy, crafted “in the dark of night,” will adversely affect every small political journal in the nation including those providing the only print source of real news, information and analysis of vital world and national issues many readers rely on but may lose.
That’s the whole idea with the nominally independent US Postal Service (USPS) in bed with big media to stack the deck in its favor and in the process subvert the sacred First Amendment moving flank speed toward the dustbin of US history unless derailed. That’s no small statement with this policy less than 90 days from taking effect along with the still unresolved battle in Congress over Net Neutrality allowing readers access to this article they may not have if telecom and cable giants gain control of the internet so it’s no longer free and open.
McChesney notes the new postal rates “were developed with no public involvement or congressional oversight (in a scheme) drafted by (media giant) Time Warner, the largest magazine publisher in the nation.” McChesney believes responsible postal bureaucrats failed to consider how adverse their action is to a free and open press. This writer has darker thoughts, however, believing it’s another example of dirty political machinations with corporate America telling government and bureaucrats to jump and their responding how high.
McChesney continues saying how hard it is to exaggerate the “corruption and sleaziness of this” whole business with a big media lawyer he quotes admitting: “It takes a publishing company several hundred thousand dollars to even participate in these rate cases. Some large corporations spend millions to influence these rates.”
Another result is described in "Increase in Postal Rates Hits Some Charities Hard" by Peter Panepento in The Chronical of Philanthropy.
Under the new rate structure, nonprofit groups are paying an average of 6.7 percent more on postage for fund-raising letters and other types of so-called nonprofit standard mail.For a final tidbit, how about "Book charity priced out of doing good" by Mike Cassidy in the San Jose Mercury News:
The increases, however, are much steeper for organizations that mail calendars, annual reports, and other large pieces under the category of standard flat mail — a classification that now costs many nonprofit groups 20 percent to 40 percent more than before, says Anthony Conway, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers in Washington.
And a new mail category that covers bulky pieces that are not easily processed by automated Postal Service mail-processing equipment means that some pieces will cost far more to send, in some cases as much as four times what nonprofit groups paid in the past.
Lobbyists for nonprofit organizations unsuccessfully attempted to get the Postal Service to delay the introduction of the new category so that charities would have time to adjust their strategies and could move forward with already scheduled mailings without paying the higher costs.
Some organizations have decided to forge ahead with mailing plans.
Among the organizations that expects a major cost increase from the postal change is the Dollywood Foundation in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., which runs the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, a literacy program that mails about 5.5 million books to preschool children annually. Those books — which are distributed to nonprofit organizations and government agencies and are then mailed directly to children — must now pass a flexibility test to avoid being placed in the non-flat machinable category.
Those that pass the test — which involves bending the books by an inch or more while dangling them over the edge of a table — will cost about 10 percent more to mail starting today than they did in the past.
Those that fail will cost 60 percent, or nearly 25 cents per book, to mail says David Dotson, the foundation's executive director.
"Our hope is up to half of them can make it. But all you can call it is hope," Mr. Dotson says. "We have zero time to respond. It will take us nine months or more to change material and format and do anything else we'd have to do to research whether our books will bend an inch."
For years, Alice Gosak has been quietly collecting books and mailing them off to book-starved teachers and students in developing countries.....Cassidy posted more related to this article on his blog, with stories from others whose book efforts were adversely affected.
Gosak has joined an ad hoc group of do-gooders nationwide who say recent changes in postal rates have crushed their efforts to spread goodwill, literacy and learning.
They've come together on the Internet, where they've posted a petition asking Congress to roll back a book-rate hike that has increased mailing costs by up to four times.
"I have a garage full of books I was going to ship before this happened," Gosak says. And a car trunk full. And a basement full.
"I can't afford to do it."
Remember when a first class letter went up to 41 cents in May? At the same time, the post office boosted the cost of shipping books in bulk to a local address in, say Africa, from $1.05 a pound to $3.95 a pound.
Gosak is a global citizen from way back. In the 1960s, she served in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia. In the 1970s, she lectured in Serbia.
She knows Maryknoll nuns in Chile and Bolivia. She admires those helping in Romania. She's traveled to Poland, where she has relatives. And since the 1990s, at least, she's been sending books to those places......
The 500 or so books she's mailed so far might not sound like much. But there are many Alice Gosaks in the United States and a substantial number of bigger non-profits that exist to send books to the poor overseas.
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