Post Office to the First Amendment: Drop Dead

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/17/575/

Post Office to the First Amendment: Drop Dead
by Robert W. McChesney

Everyone who visits the Common Dreams site is reading articles that were first published or commissioned by print publications. Without these print publications, there would be a lot less material for all of us to read, and some of our most important reporters and thinkers wouldn’t get paid to write.

Yet the independent magazines and small publications that contribute to Common Dreams are under attack by government bureaucrats and media conglomerates. Unless we take action now, the wide variety of voices and viewpoints available on sites like this one will become considerably diminished.

This crisis which could have devastating effect on new media revolves around Americas very first and arguably most visionary and progressive media policy: postal rates for periodicals.

Because the Post Office is a monopoly, and because magazines must use it, the postal rates always have been skewed to make it cheaper for smaller publications to get launched and to survive. The whole idea has been to use the postal rates to keep publishing as competitive and wide open as possible. This bedrock principle was put in place by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. They considered it mandatory to create the press system, the Fourth Estate necessary for self-government.

It was postal policy that converted the free press clause in the First Amendment from an abstract principle into a living breathing reality for Americans. And it has served that role throughout our history.
What the Post Office is now proposing goes directly against 215 years of postal policy. The Post Office is in the process of implementing a radical reformulation of its mailing rates for magazines. Under the plan, smaller periodicals will be hit with a much larger increase than the big magazines, as much as 30 percent. Some of the largest circulation magazines will face hikes of less than 10 percent.

The new rates, which go into effect on July 15, were developed with no public involvement or congressional oversight, and the increased costs could damage hundreds, even thousands, of smaller publications, possibly putting many out of business. This includes nearly every political journal in the nation. These are the magazines that often provide the most original journalism and analysis. These are the magazines that provide much of the content on Common Dreams. We desperately need them.

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We must keep all our many avenues of sharing/publishing information alive and accessible. I have long taken issue with the USPS's rate policies. They are is as bad a need of a makeover as any other government agency.

Though I understand that they're not really a government agency any more, but a private enterprise with a government cloak... Perhaps somebody else who understands can explain it.

Drip, drip, drip, and it all slowly disappears.

Thanks for the thread babylonsister

It's definitely close. Read the article, and take action at http://www.stoppostalratehikes.com/ , ASAP. Deadline is April 23.

Here's some history:
http://action.freepress.net/freepress/postal_explanation.html

Thank you for posting this.

His name gives this article tremendous weight. This is a very disturbing development indeed.

K&R