List members,

        In case you have not heard of this bill, take a look at what the greedy
Postal Service is trying to do!!!

Bobby


Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and
continue using email: The last few months have revealed an alarming
trend in the Government of the United States attempting to
quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the
Internet.   Under proposed legislation the U.S. Postal Service
will be attempting to bilk email users out of "alternate postage fees".
Bill 602P will permit the Federal Govt to charge a 5 cent surcharge
on every email delivered, by billing Internet Service Providers at
source.   The consumer would then be billed in turn by the ISP.
Washington D.C. lawyer Richard Stepp is working without pay
to prevent this legislation from becoming law.   The U.S. Postal
Service is claiming that lost revenue due to the proliferation of email
is costing nearly$230,000,000 in revenue per year. You may have
noticed their recent ad campaign "There is nothing like a letter".
Since the average citizen received about 10 pieces of email per
day in 1998, the cost to the typical individual would be an additional
50 cents per day, or over $180
dollars per year, above and beyond their regular Internet costs.
Note that this would be money paid directly to the U.S. Postal
Service for a service they do not even provide.   The whole point
of the Internet is democracy and non-interference.   If the federal
government is permitted to tamper with our liberties by adding a
surcharge to email, who knows where it will end. You are already
paying an exorbitant price for snail mail because of bureaucratic
inefficiency. It currently takes up to 6 days for a letter to
be delivered from New York to Buffalo.   If the U.S. Postal Service
is allowed to tinker with email, it will mark the end of the "free"
Internet in the United States.   One congressman, Tony Schnell (r)
has even suggested a "twenty to forty dollar per month surcharge on
all Internet service" above and beyond the government's proposed
email charges.   Note that most of the major newspapers have
ignored the story, the only exception being the Washingtonian
which called the idea of email surcharge "a useful
concept whose time has come" (March 6th 1999 Editorial).
Don't sit by and watch your freedoms erode away!   Send this
email to all Americans on your list and tell your friends and
relatives to write to their congressman and say "No!" to Bill 602P.
KateTurner, Assistant to Richard Stepp, Berger, Stepp and Gorman
Attorneys at Law