Thinking about that Time Warner deal with the postal rates -

[54anickel]

After seeing Al Gore discuss his latest book on Charlie Rose last night and all over the Internet today, and hearing him reiterate how important the print media has and continues to be - I just wanted to bring this up one more time. Even if you tend to rely mainly on the Internet and blogs for your info - a lot of what they put out there is drawn from the smaller magazines and it seems someone is out to stifle them.

Please check out Moyers' Postal SOS video
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05182007/watch.html

Then follow the link to Free Press from that page or this link - http://action.freepress.net/freepress/postal_explanation.html

It just seems so much more important now after listening to Al Gore on his latest book tour.

Thanks

[napi21]

1. The PO is trying to put the screws to the smaller magazines, but it's

worse than that.

I sell on Ebay. Not a lot, but I manage to make about $1,000 a year. The new Priority Mail calculations are absolutely insane!

I was selling an item that weighed a little under 5 pounds and I started out with an inventory of 10. Before the Postal Rate change, the shipping was $12.50 to the most distant zone from here. After the rate change the cost was $24.95!!!! Because NOW they measure the weight, AND dimention of the box. I switched to FedEx. They've always calculated the cost of your shipment based upon seight and dimentions of the box, but they didn't get CRAZY with their charges!

Whoever put this rate structure together was a really greedy bastard, and he's destroying the PO business by his actions!

[Mind_your_head]

3. Sounds like willful destruction of one of our primary governmental

services. The PO was doing really really well - one of the few institutions that was running in the black (after a lot of hard work to pull it back from the red-zone just a few years ago). The neo-cons and NWO guys can't reward success, instead they MUST destroy it!

Whoever put this rate structure together was a really greedy bastard, and he's destroying the PO business by his actions! <--- they're doing it ON PURPOSE so that we must become reliant on the corporate structure (with PROFITS to the shareholders, nothing for the 'common good' ONLY)

[54anickel]

5. Try stifling smaller magazines and the public discourse they tend to

lend themselves to. Not to minimize your financial pain, but this has the same stink to it as when corporate conglomerates first started taking over the media. Seems what they couldn't buy out, they're gonna run out.


Hope you don't mind, I'd like to add the transcript from Moyers:

BILL MOYERS: It's time to send an SOS for the least among us—I mean small independent magazines. They are always struggling to survive while making a unique contribution to the conversation of democracy. Magazines like NATIONAL REVIEW, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, SOJOURNERS, THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, THE NATION, WASHINGTON MONTHLY, MOTHER JONES, IN THESE TIMES, WORLD MAGAZINE, THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, REASON and many others.

The Internet may be the way of the future, but for today much of what you read on the Web is generated by newspapers and small magazines. They may be devoted to a cause, a party, a worldview, an issue, an idea, or to one eccentric person's vision of what could be, but they nourish the public debate. America wouldn't be the same without them.

Our founding fathers knew this; knew that a low-cost postal incentive was crucial to giving voice to ideas from outside the main tent. So they made sure such publications would get a break in the cost of reaching their readers. That's now in jeopardy. An impending rate hike, worked out by postal regulators, with almost no public input but plenty of corporate lobbying, would reward big publishers like Time Warner, while forcing these smaller periodicals into higher subscription fees, big cutbacks and even bankruptcy.

It's not too late. The postal service is a monopoly, but if its governors, and especially members of Congress, hear from enough citizens, they could have a change of heart. So, liberal or conservative, left or right, libertarian, vegetarian, communitarian or Unitarian, or simply good Samaritan, let's make ourselves heard.

[Mind_your_head]

2. Interesting......I didn't follow this all the way through, but when Moyers

said that the BIG publishers, like Time-Warner could get breaks on their postal rates for sending out their publications that SMALL publishers would not be able to take advantage of.....well, that's not fair. New, 'non-mainstream' ideas wouldn't be able to 'get out there' b/c they would be at ANOTHER disadvantage than the big guys.

Thanks for posting. My personal "outrage capacitor" has had a total blowout b/c of this past week. Hopefully a k & r will prompt some more folks to have a look at this.

K & R :kick:

[54anickel]

4. It seems to tie into what Gore's been saying is so important for our democracy.

Part of that exchange of thoughts and ideas. And yeah, when I saw Moyers picking up on the issue I figured it's pretty important.

I hope others will pick up on it, I dont' think there's a lot of time left to fight this one. Thanks for the K&R.

[54anickel]

6. Sendin' out an S.O.S. (and a kick)

If you maintain a blog or site, would you consider helping to promote this?
The latest blog to sign on has been John Edwards on May 20. He and Sanders are the only politicians on the list so far.





http://action.freepress.net/freepress/postal_swag.html