🚀 go-pugleaf

Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1999 21:29:34 -0700
From: "audie emery"
To:
----- Original Message -----

Subject [Fwd: Senate Bill? 602P?? E-MAIL FEES??]]
Cc:
Reply-To: chick@aztec.asu.edu

Subject: E-mail fees
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 postagefees.
Bill 602P will permit the Federal Govt. to charge a 5 cent
surcharge on every email delivered, by billing Internet Service
Providers at the source.  The consumer would then be billed in turn
by the ISP.  Washington, DC lawyer Richard Stepp is working without
pay to prevent this legislation from becoming law.

The US 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 US Postal
Service for a service they do not even provide.  The whole point of
the Internet is democracy and noninterference.  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
efficiency.  It currently takes up to 6 days for a letter to be
delivered from New York to Buffalo.  If the US Postal Service is
allowed to tinker with email, it will mark the end of "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 who's time has come"
(March 6th 1999 Editorial).  Don't sit by and watch your freedoms
erode away!

Send this e-mail to EVERYONE on your list, and tell all your
friends and relatives to write to their congressman and say "No!"
to Bill 602P.  It will only take a few moments of your time, and
could very well be instrumental in killing a bill we don't want.

Chick's Note: Another example of Republicans screwing the rest of
us.
Daves Note:  You also need to raise Hell about the FCC imposing a
$0.40/mo tax on your phone bill to wire and install Internet access
to all the schools in the country.

1. The FCC does not have the Constitutional authority to impose
taxes, only Congress can do that!

2. Approximately 80% of all schools in the country are already
wired and connected.

3. It's another claim that VPres Gore wants to make as to how he
connected all the schools.

I know $.40 isn't very much to get upset about, but if you had a
business that could cheat people who don't even do business with you,
$.40 X every telephone X 12 months, what would your bottom line look
like?

If I could do that, I'd give up all my other business!








I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it left!