Your soggy Valentine
by Albert Paschall

     The approach of Valentine’s Day reminds me to mail early. During the Holidays last year somebody added me to their list and now I feel obligated to send them a greeting. I haven’t been able to respond yet though because after six weeks the Christmas card still isn’t dry.

     The ad-circular or pre-printed supplement as it’s known, for smart advertisers is a staple of their newspaper advertising budgets In the 70’s newspapers made great strides in automation and full color printing to become quite successful at delivering pre-printed advertisements. So successful that by 1980 they had attracted one of the most awesome competitors any industry can have: The United States Government. The US Postal service created a sweetheart deal that turned a quarter of a million hard working mail carriers into the prime purveyors of junk mail.

     Primarily designed for political advertising the Postal Board of Governors inadvertently invented the concept of shared mail. Shared mail is wrapping a bunch of ad circulars together and charging by the pound for delivery. The Governors really went the extra mile to get the ads by substantially discounting the prevailing rates. The Postal Service’s management even invented a new system of addressing through those little obnoxious white cards with blue-faced kids that really should say "have you seen your mail lately?"

     Meanwhile the newspaper industry struck back with innovative home delivery programs, competitive rates and enhanced graphics. Top of the market retailers stayed with the newspapers’ more select marketing leaving the Postal Service to handle the junk end of the business.

     The fixed costs of the United States Postal Service were guaranteed by a resolution of the Continental Congress in 1774. Two hundred and twenty four years later this means that the rest of us are supporting an advertising system that interrupts and frustrates the delivery of important mail. US Postal management, more than 100 of whom received $10,000 performance bonuses last year, deny these discounts are subsidized by those who pay first class rates. On the surface of the numbers that’s true, by like so many government truths these days, its as they say a "narrow" interpretation.

     What the Postal Service doesn’t talk about in public relations literature is the affect that 3.3 million tons of advertising fliers clogging the system each year has on the department’s infrastructure. That averages more than 27,000 pounds for every mail carrier in the system in addition to about 666,000 letters that mail carriers deliver each year. Conveyors, sorting machines and trucks take the beating of 128,000,000 pounds a week of dead weight and the mailing public pays for that every time they buy a stamp. Who can dare blame the innocent carrier for the occasional mis-directed magazine or even a wet letter?

"Some days" © Calvin-Graham Enterprises, distributed at no charge to selected newspapers in the the Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania by the Lincoln    Institute of Public Opinion Research, Inc., 453 Springlake Road Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17112.  Receipt of distribution is permission to publish as bylined op-ed only.  Not available as letter to the editor.   The Lincoln Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation dedicated to promoting the ideals of free market economics and individual liberty through the conduct of public opinion research.  The opinions expressed in "Some Days" do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the institute its officers or directors.