"We can no longer stay in business with these rates."

Pushing the envelope

Fate is sealed by the stamp that broke small business' back

Editor, The Times:

It seems that overnight the U.S. Postal Service morphed from a deliveryman into a highway robber.

Our small business shipping small quantities of books worldwide lost $16 on its recent mailings as a result of the postal rate increase. We could not get information on the new rates until the day of the increase, which meant we could not plan ahead. The Postal Service Web site still has no information on the increase.

The postal rate increase is so large as to be construed as a restraint of trade, especially on small businesses such as ours. We can no longer stay in business with these rates. The new rating system might make sense to a bar-code reader but it makes no sense to anyone in the real world. Take a look at some of the changes we experienced as of Monday:

• One book to Canada, Priority Mail, May 13, $9.50; May 14, $19.50, +105 percent.

• 20 books to the United Kingdom, Priority Mail, May 13, $92.78 ; May 14, $108, +16 percent.

• It now costs us $19.50 to send one paperback book to Canada, a two-hour drive north of here, and yet a package of 20 books to the U.K. is relatively much cheaper. Duh?

Let's face it, this is just a tax increase in disguise. But being good Americans, we'll find a way around this obstacle.

— Michael Read, Seattle

Just the right weight

Thank you for your two recent editorials against the planned rate hike proposed by Time Warner Inc. and accepted so swiftly by the Postal Regulatory Board ["Neither sleet, nor snow, but maybe postal rates," May 3, and "Big media's assault on democracy," April 27].

It would have been more elucidating, however, had you included the fact that the members of Postal Regulatory Board are presidential appointees. This would have explained why there was so little publicity and why it was approved so quickly.

Time Warner has a chummy relationship with the Bush regime. William Kristol and Peter Beinhart are now regular contributors to Time Magazine, even though Time has been laying off other reporters. In the run-up to the Iraq war, both these men appeared again and again as "experts" on CNN, a subsidiary of Time Warner, and on Fox News, shilling for our rogue government.

In a letter to the editor, James O'Brien, Time Inc.'s vice president of distribution and Postal Affairs, wrote that "this is not a free-speech issue." ["Highly rated reading: Lowly subscribers pay," Northwest Voices, May 2].Yet, for 215 years, the postal system has purposefully been operated in a way that does not favor a particular viewpoint. Not any more. The intentional effect of this policy is to burden small publications with rate increases that would put many out of business, thus dramatically decreasing the range of ideas and information critical to democracy.

O'Brien also says large publications like Time have been subsidizing smaller publications. Yet, for decades, Big Media like Time Warner have been the beneficiaries of friendly laws, regulations and huge government subsidies, all crafted secretly by the industry without public knowledge.

This is another example of super-powered robber barons taking what they want with alacrity and abusing the public's systems of mass communication.

— Suzanne Oelke, Seattle

One day priority

Why can't Congress make real solutions?

How much oil and gas would be saved if the post office simply stopped making deliveries of mail on Saturdays? Most businesses are closed or don't even open mail on Saturdays. Residential customers get enough junk mail and bills Monday through Friday, and wouldn't miss it on Saturday.

Gee, maybe the U.S. Postal Service could even reduce the cost of postage!

— Pauline Cornelius, Olalla

Farewell, Falwell

A voice silenced

I must speak out because I have been hearing Republicans and commentators on Fox News falling all over themselves saying what a great and religious man of God was Jerry Falwell ["Televangelist Jerry Falwell dies at 73," Times, News, May 15, and see "Death of a salesman," editorial, May 16]. He was actually an evil man. He founded the Moral Majority, which was neither moral nor the majority.

During the civil-rights movement, he said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not sincere. Falwell called the civil-rights movement the civil-wrong movement. During this period, he had anti-segregationists Lester Maddox and George Wallace on his radio show, "The Old Time Gospel Hour," and praised them for their work.

Falwell embraced the ugly apartheid regime of South Africa, even going to South Africa and embracing President P.W. Botha. He urged his followers to buy South African gold coins to support the government.

When it was no longer acceptable to scapegoat blacks, Falwell turned his hatred toward gays. After 9/11, he went on national TV and blamed the terrorist attack on feminists, pagans and gays.

I am never happy when someone dies [but] I will not miss Falwell, and am glad his divisive voice will never be heard again.

— Michael Schuppert, Seattle

A fitting sermon

I have no doubt we will soon see a flurry of sentimental remembrances celebrating Rev. Jerry Falwell, all filled with the same sort of revisionist history with which we were inundated after Ronald Reagan died.

Through it all, let's keep in mind a few important facts: This is the person who said, in the aftermath of 9/11, that gays, atheists, civil-rights activists and legal abortions in the U.S. had angered God and "helped this happen." Falwell also helped shape the Muslim world's perception of America by, in 2002, calling the Prophet Muhammad a "terrorist." And who could forget his deranged accusation that ["Teletubbies" cartoon character] "Tinky Winky" was gay? ["Jerry Falwell, polarizing preacher merged religion, politics, dies at 73," obituary, May 16.]

Like too many of his evangelical ilk, Falwell gave Christianity a bad name. It always appeared to me that he was more interested in sowing the seeds of hate he gleaned from Leviticus than spreading the (very specific) message of love, compassion and acceptance Christ delivered in the Sermon on the Mount.

I do not mourn his passing.

— Samuel Browne, Seattle

The eternal answer

The not-so-reverend Jerry Falwell hurt many people, including myself. For us, he will not be missed.

Just last week, Falwell was quoted on TV as saying that he was praying to God for another 20 years on this Earth so he could complete his "mission." I guess the Almighty gave Falwell His answer.

— Scott Carlton, Renton