Word: postally
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...nightmarish great leap forward, Seymour Wenner, the chief administrative law judge for the rate-making Postal Rate Commission, has come up with a decision that would pile an even huger increase on top of all the others. His announced formula, which touched off alarm bells throughout the world of print journalism last week, is to cut first-class rates from a dime to 8½? and make up for the lost income in part by raising second-class rates yet another 122%. Added to increases already in effect or planned, Wenner's scheme would boost second-class rates...
...rates for local mailing of newspapers would shoot up 250%; books and records, 96%; third-class bulk advertising, 35%; and fourth-class parcel post, 67%. The inevitable result, say Wenner's critics: use of the mails would drop, Postal Service revenues would fall, and the entire system would be in a deeper hole than it is now with its $800 million annual deficit. The individual first-class user might save a few dollars a year. But, claims Coleman Hoyt, distribution manager of the Reader's Digest, the saving would be cancelled by increases for other classes of mail...
...decision, reached after 20 months of hearings, is by no means final. As administrative law judge, Wenner conducts the initial hearings in the Postal Rate Commission's cases. His decision must be approved or modified by the full rate commission, a five-member independent body, then go to the U.S. Postal Service's seven-member board of governors, which has final...
Beyond that argument, there is the historical issue posed by Postal Service rate practices. Prohibitive and therefore restrictive rates were never intended by the founding fathers when they set up the postal system. Its mission, they felt, was not to make money but to facilitate the diffusion of information throughout the young republic. That nation-building charter, said George Washington, was to bind "these people to us with a chain that can never be broken." Since then Congress has reaffirmed the principle as a national purpose...
Magazine executives assume that the largest publishing companies, like Time Inc. and McGraw-Hill, would probably be able to survive postal increases, even on the scale proposed by Wenner. Their circulation, advertising revenue and earnings would all decline sharply, with some inevitable effects on editorial quality. Smaller publications would die by the hundreds, and the founding of new magazines would become more hazardous than it is today...