THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 9, 1995 TAG: 9501050018
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 29 lines
Somewhere about the fourth grade, we start to be spoon-fed the pablum about our Constitution and how our democracy is a ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.''
Yet we have the U.S. Postal Service and shadow agency known as the Postal Rate Commission which pops up every couple of years as regular as a full moon with an automatic rate increase that goes into effect with hardly a whimper across the land.
Who are these people? How do they decide that the rate should go up 4 cents one time and 3 cents the next? Someone else out there must wonder what criteria they use to evaluate what the rate increase needs to be, or even if the USPS deserves an increase at all. What is certain is that ``we the people'' have no say in it whatsoever.
The final insult is that the whole thing is apparently given the grand imprimatur by 535 distinguished legislators who don't pay for their postage.
FERGUSSON BURGE
Virginia Beach, Dec. 30, 1994 by CNB