Justice For The Thurn und Taxis Defendants
Several times a day there is a knock at the door, and an email message is there pinned to the sash.
Dear Friend of HUMAN EVENTS:
But no matter how fast we run, we never catch more than a glimpse of the Mailer Daemon as he speeds on his rounds.
Ah, I wonder what Human Events wants this time. Usually when we hear from America’s most venerable1 right-wing publication,2 it’s about suppressed cancer cures, links to scary loud web pages about giant vegetables, or cynical attempts to gain one’s credit card information in the reassuring guise of the illiterate berserk ravings of a fellow conservative .
I mean aside from the shit-blast of notices about Hussein Obama and his Communist junta that wants to gay-marry blastocysts and abort your handguns.
It pains me terribly to write a letter like this, but a crisis that threatens the very existence of HUMAN EVENTS forces me to ask for your help.
Someone turned off the light switch when he left the office, and now they are all trapped screaming in the dark?
Let me explain… You may recall that, just over a year ago, the federal government’s taxpayer-subsidized mail-delivery monopoly — aka the United States Postal Service — hit us with a whopping 20 percent rate increase that drove up our annual delivery costs by more than $120,000.
We recall when postal rates increased last year by one cent. But maybe Human Events is still in the month of Schmuckuary, the thirteenth one of variable length in which you keep writing the old year by habit, for there was a notable rate increase on July 15, 2007. That’s the infamous one in which the USPS stopped socializing its rates, stopped so-called ‘spreading the wealth around’ like a big fat Communist Ho-Ho Santa Claus with a bulging sack of Soak the Productive, by charging the same for impractical, non-market–justified delivery services as for the more practical and evolutionarily fit ones that are ennobled by Natural Law — i.e. by ‘running the USPS like a business.’
Anyway, yes, it’s like when the tax-bloated defense monopoly sucked the veins of America for hundreds of billions with those Iraq War supplements — or, you know, however you want to put it. But hey, at least the Postal Service wouldn’t do that again.
Well, believe it or not, they’ve just done it again. That’s right: the USPS is hitting us with yet another postal increase that will jack up our annual delivery costs by an additional $51,568. Together, this one-two punch of rate hikes amounts to more than $170,000 in increased annual delivery costs — a staggering sum that we simply can’t afford.
Ooh, looks like the Invisible Hand of the Market just wiped them a Dirty Sanchez. Because if you can’t find enough people to pay for your magazine, that means your magazine is no good compared to successful magazines like Hype Hair and Maxim. Begging for handouts is just asking people to reward failure.
Wait, but that leaves out one possibility. What if it’s all a liberal conspiracy to punish success?
Now, it’s outrageous enough that the USPS can continually jack up our rates without fearing any loss of our business to more cost-efficient competitors — something it can do ONLY because federal law effectively protects it from private competition. But what really burns me up is that these increases are part of a new rate system that was designed in part by lobbyists for liberal media giant Time Warner and other large publishers to benefit themselves at the expense of smaller competitors such as HUMAN EVENTS.
Big business: notorious for crushing the productive and opposing economic freedom. The wet stretchy sound you just heard was the writer, editor-in-chief Tom Winter, stepping out of his own mouth and then pushing it up over his head, rendering himself entirely inside-out.
So instead of Time Warner’s mailing costs ratcheting up like ours, the cost of delivering liberal Time magazine and other Big Media publications will increase at about half the rate hike forced on HUMAN EVENTS (and that’s after some of those publications actually had a decrease in postage costs last year!). Economists call the kind of behavior that Time Warner and the Big Media conglomerates are engaged in “rent seeking” — using government to gain advantage over competitors.3 And that economic advantage obviously can translate into political advantage, as well. By “gaming the system” in their favor, these liberal media conglomerates have taken a big step toward silencing their conservative opposition.
Aha, so they’re the victims of a Time Warner conspiracy to silence [trips over lamp cord] — agh, liberal lamp-trip unfairness. [grabs shelf, chinaware falls] Shit, dish-crashing liberal victimizer scheme-plot, with the [cat dashes under feet] gaaah, [falls through glass coffee table] fnaaagh, Soros-funded sneak-assault on [shelf falls on head] nuh! [cat runs across wreckage pursued by dog] Vince Foster [cat and dog knock over brass pole lamp, clatter out of pitch-dark room; phone rings]
This means there’s much more at stake here than the survival of HUMAN EVENTS. Free speech, and the right of conservatives to get their message out on the same terms as liberals, is also at stake. And if the liberal media giants such as Time Warner get away with this ploy, the consequences for the future of our country — at a time when the Obama administration is trying to turn us into a European-style socialist state — could be catastrophic.
Someone who would fall for this would be a good mark for yelling-at-you giant vegetables, I guess.
Please help us defray the cost of this outrageously unfair postal increase. The only alternatives we have are to cut our already down-to-the-bone editorial budget
I wonder if there’s anyone there who they could afford to get rid of.
Editorial Staff:
- Thomas S. Winter
Editor in Chief - Jed Babbin
Editor - Allan H. Ryskind
Editor at Large - Terence P. Jeffrey
Editor at Large - Ken Hanner
Managing Editor - John Gizzi
Political Editor - Michelle Oddis
Assistant Managing Editor - Elisabeth Meinecke
News Producer - Nicholas Vardy
International Economics & Investment Correspondent
Or maybe Coulter is the bone that they’re down to. The rest of these thinkers are truly indispensable.
— or to hike our subscription rates. Both alternatives are unacceptable. That is why I’m turning to you: frankly, I have nowhere else to go.
Except crying to mommy.
HUMAN EVENTS needs you to help us cover this shortfall, and we need that help now. Please send as large a gift as you possibly can. Our readers have never let us down in the past. We appreciate all your support over the years — and thanks in advance for your generous assistance today.
Sincerely, Tom Winter President and Editor in Chief, HUMAN EVENTS
We’ll send half of what we make in the coming stock boom.
Notes:
2 Although the Foundation for Economic Education has published a journal called The Freeman since 1950, it is only vaguely connected to Albert Jay Nock’s proto-anarcho-capitalist journal of that name from the 1920s, and differs as well from the esteemed original in that it is a gaily colored box with a crank on the side that plays a mechanical tune and pops up a clown.
3 Um, if I’m not wrong, ‘rent seeking’ is more like if Time Warner sought to control access to the mails, forcing Human Events to pay them a fee for the right to use the US Postal Service. But free-market economics just means whatever you want anyway, unless you’re one of those anti-Hayek Rothbardians or vice versa, in which case you’re taking it all too seriously and indeed may not be totally in on the con.
We await silent Tristero’s empire.
I didn’t see any offer of steak knives. Schmuckuary indeed!
What was liberal Time magazine’s liberal blog of the liberal year in liberal 2004, again?…
The liberal Time Warner?
Whadafah?
These days the House of Thurn-und-Taxi brew a damn fine beer, Roggen — a sort of dark weissbier with rye-bread / pumpernickel overtones. It is only a matter of time before the USPS moves into brewing; everyone will be happy then.
I also have a plan for resolving the banking-system / toxic-debt crisis that involves calling in the House of Fugger to sort it all out, but details are still sketchy.
Dammit, Gavin! You made me spew an entire lungful of Humbolt County’s finest all over my screen, and heave in paroxysms of hacking laughter.
Wow, who knew that at least some wingnut welfare was coming from the US Government, just like the welfare that the poor blackity-black crack addicts get.
So, are they asking for an invisible hand up, or an invisible hand out?
oh man, time to call the libertarians a wahmbulance! sucks for them too, because here in america we are gloriously free of the kind of socialist oppression under which europe labors, and where emergency medical care doesn’t bankrupt folks.
this will only contribute to their terrible, terrible financial woes. i think we should all chip in, don’t you?
Man, I wish I could just arbitrarily add the word “conservative” to anything I disliked.
Dude, I hit that last night, but she just lay there while I did all the work. Shit was so conservative.
Having no intellectual shame or accountability must be so fun.
The liberal media giants? Weird, because the various newsletters I have mailed to me under assumed names were all blaming the rate increase on the fascist government/media corporate complex’s attempts to suppress their vital watchdog role. I suppose HUMAN EVENTS thinks fascism is left wing, though, because they read it somewhere.
These cries of woe are pleasing to my ears, coming from this bunch. The ‘liberal conspiracy’ bit is total bullshit, as usual, but there may be something to the big publisher-vs-small publisher thing. I’ve received this same basic message from The Nation magazine – without the political conspiracy crap – which also claims Time-Warner successfully lobbied Congress for a rule change recently, that put low circulation publications in a tougher situation regarding postage costs. Never checked it out, but I do seem to recall some compliants from other publishers of small circulation magazines.
I report, you decide…
They didn’t have any vanilla Coke at the 7-11! Can you believe that conservative shit?
Who’s the filthy fucking conservative who deleted Real World from the DVR? This is so conservative!
Rogues are getting nerfed again?! That’s just fucking conservative.
Aw conservative, I locked my keys in the car! If this economy wasn’t so conservative I could get a job that wasn’t so conservative and buy a car that’s less than twenty conservative years old. Fuck.
Hah, here’s the May 2007 letter from The Nation’s publisher that I recalled, regarding onerous mailing costs for small circulation publications. Don’t know current status of this whole business. Among the co-signatories listed on that letter I did not see Human Events; thank the baby Jebus the patriots at H.E. are not risking contamination of their pure essence by signing on with dirty libruls, although several other righty publications did sign on to the joint letter.
Pre-sorting Scum!!1
I don’t weigh in here very often, and it’s usually to slam liberal shibboleths from the left, but here’s my two cents. The USPS has been subsidizing the periodic press for over two centuries. This is a good thing for those who believe in a hearty exchange of ideas. Human Events, however, has been hoist by their own petard in this instance and strike as about as sympathetic as that AIG exec recently whining about not getting his full bonus. They have been arguing that there is no reason for recognizing the social funding of the public interest such as, you know, encouraging the free flow of ideas through the public mails; that the magic free market will take care of the public good and that all social funding should be cut. But now, when the social funding that they depended on gets cut, they cry liberal corporate conspiracy. Please Human Events, suck it, if I may be so bold. These postal rate rises should be opposed, because they are cutting off many small presses and are helping to consolidate the print media market. But, at the same time, to the folks at Human Events, this is exactly the type of policy you wanted, so cry me a fucking river.
One teeny irony.
We have “the federal government’s taxpayer-subsidized mail-delivery monopoly” silencing the Conservatives.
–> BAD.
This whilst Hussein X “is trying to turn us into a European-style socialist state”.
–> Double BAD.
Yurp, meanwhile, is liberalizing – I mean, liberalising – its market for postal services.
http://www.cafebabel.com/eng/article/23654/why-the-eu-aims-to-liberalise-postal-services.html
–> The invisible hand, once again, flicks the bird to Human Events.
SocioLIBfacist!!1
1st and 3rd links are borked, by the way.
Human Events goes John Galt, alt.
The only way this could get any better is if they could get ManThraxx to do some teevee and radio commercials begging for the extra scratch for InHuman NonEvents.
I can ‘t see where they’re physically located, but maybe somebody could check for some Republican’t earmarks for these clowns buried in the budget?
Raaargh! Islamahomo make-me-piss-my-pants-and-choke-on-my-own-saliva conspiracy!
Holee shit, I did not no know it was possible to laugh so hard on a Monday morning.
But to be briefly serious: I work for a publishing company and we’ve managed to handle the rate hike for some of our smaller circ. pubs without whining or raising sub. rates. Of course, it requires extra work on our end so I don’t expect Human Events to imitate us. Ever.
Perhaps they should Go Galt. People would ask “What is Human Events?” No, wait, they do that already.
Can’t they just get sponsorship from AIG or GM’s CEO? How about Exxon Mobil? They’re still raking it in, right?
Time Magazine is what now?
So wait, his entire email is based on the implied premise that, were there a privately run corporation that delivered mail, rates would, never, ever go up.
Wow. It’s like he’s never eve heard of UPS, or FedEx. IF ONLY THERE WERE SOME PRIVATE CORPORATIONS THAT DELIVERED MAIL!!!!!!!
“Let me explain… You may recall that, just over a year ago, the federal government’s taxpayer-subsidized mail-delivery monopoly — aka the United States Postal Service — hit us with a whopping 20 percent rate increase that drove up our annual delivery costs by more than $120,000.”
20 Percent?
http://www.akdart.com/postrate.html
Last time the rates came close to 10% was 2001. So I’m guessing that you have an agreement with the USPS that allowed you to pay less then the usual going rate that the average public would pay, and then they changed your usual rate to something slightly higher.
Golly, private corporations would NEVER do that!
“the cost of delivering liberal Time magazine and other Big Media publications will increase at about half the rate hike forced on HUMAN EVENTS (and that’s after some of those publications actually had a decrease in postage costs last year!). Economists call the kind of behavior that Time Warner and the Big Media conglomerates are engaged in “rent seeking” ”
Really? Cause I’m pretty sure everyone else calls it “bulk rate”. You see, five million TIME magazines (with that liberal Ann Coulter on the cover. What a liberal cover that was!) a week at, oh say, $1.50 per magazine is greater then 5,000 Human Event’s a week at $2.
You see how this works, yes?
“Someone turned off the light switch when he left the office, and now they are all trapped screaming in the dark?”
You know, I thought you were kidding when I first read that.
Didn’t Ronnie Reagan get his various, um, truth-challenged anecdotes from Human Events? I remember seeing a story in the 80s that some of his staff would try and hide the latest issues form him because he’d see some BS in there, believe it, use it in a speech, and as a result his staff would be forced to issue a “correction.”
I know that when I think of *liberal* outfits that share my *liberal* values, Time fucking Warner is at the top of that list.
Unfortunately, this is the free market at work. In the halcyon days, when the NR was running in the red (and it always did, it always did run in the red), WFB would just shrug and cover the costs himself, or have a fundraising dinner at a thousand or so a plate to cover costs.
But Human Events can’t afford to do that, and the American people have been so dumbed down by decades of liberal piffle that they’re often not willing to support publications that stray from the accepted liberal doctrine.
To be candid though, I can’t feel too bad for them. If you don’t have a little money and don’t have friends who can help you raise a little money, what the hell are you doing in publishing? You can’t run a publication on bake sales and and box socials.
I don’t weep so much for Human Events, but it really is a shame how hard it is to break into the marketplace of ideas these days spewing anything Obama-rama friendly.
“anything NOT Obama-rama friendly” that should have read.
Don’t support capitalism by switching your preferred carrier when prices change? That’s not gGoing Galt, that’s Going Guppie.
This is hilarious. One of the more blatant outbreaks of hilariousity¹ that I have had the pleasure of S,N! bringing to my attention.
Shorter Human Events: “We love using the word capitalism as an excuse to be selfish children, but we hate capitalism. Why? I don’t know. THIRD BASE!”
——————————
¹ In the spirit of Internet-inspired linguistic gymnastics, YA shortened and/or verb-ized noun and/or noun-ized verb to saddle Mr. Webster’s pages with.
BTW, FYWP. That was ME (Mr. Lipstick) posting as Ronald Reagan.
It’s a relief to know that he didn’t use Nancy’s astrologer to decide everything.
I can see why you wanted to be sure to take credit for that Reagan post instead of, you know, not taking credit for parody posts the way everybody else does. It was a real knee slapper. I’m amazed you’re not being asked to submit articles to S.N! yet.
Good idea. S/he could put on a strip show for the perverts, AKA repigs. Only I’m afraid the act would fail because the cocktail dress s/he has been wearing for 20 years would be stuck like glue to its’ body.
I’m amazed you can wipe yourself.
Wait a minute, maybe I was wrong. What did you say your diaper bill was last month?
Now, it’s outrageous enough that the USPS can continually jack up our rates without fearing any loss of our business to more cost-efficient competitors — something it can do ONLY because federal law effectively protects it from private competition.
So Fedex and UPS just simply don’t exist, huh?
Or, is it possible that the USPS has artificially kept the rates for magazines and junk mail low in order to promote businesses, thus making it prohibitively unprofitable for private enterprise?
You decide.
Editorial Budget? Seriously? They just keep repeating themselves over and over anyways, it strikes me that the editorial staff is the most expendable.
It is particularly galling when you think that these folks think that, in this troubled economy, their cause should be the one worthy of our charity. They should stick to the meme that brung ’em here. If we don’t surrender our cash to their rag, we will be suicide bombed by rag-heads.
What’s up with the illustrations of the opium poppy pods on the Giant Tomato website?
Here’s an article suggestion for their editorial board:
The Free Market For Thee But Not For Me
The Post Office was founded in large part to promote the distribution of newspapers (which were party organs and not “unbiased” as now **cough**cough**) as well as business mail. Private letters were more expensive to send. The Post Office also kept branches in most every little town even as far back as the early 19th century, despite the cost, because they considered communication vital to a democratic-republic and to business and economic growth. Hell, they didn’t even close on Sundays–despite many religious protests–until 1912, and then in part for religious reasons and in part as a labor demand. Hell, the Constitution specifically says the Congress has the power to establish Post Offices and postal roads. So when the RW whines about the PO not being a legitimate government function then can go (bleep) themselves. The founding fathers intended for it to be a prime function of a national government…
You can’t run a publication on bake sales and and box socials.
Why not? That’s how we pay for our health care.
and also HELL, and pie. pie is good. a series of stamps honoring great American pies would be wonderful…
Shorter: “What do you mean I can’t make big money stuffing envelopes at home? ZOMG!!!!!!111!!!!leventy-leven!!! It’s a liberal plot!”
“Someone turned off the light switch when he left the office, and now they are all trapped screaming in the dark?”
Yes, and you can read all about it, and enjoy an “artist’s conception” of what panicky conservatives trapped in the dark look like (when they believe themselves to have died), here:
http://tinyurl.com/cd7o42
Way recommended, esp. for parents of young kids.
(Gav: The tomato is a fruit. HTH.)
I was steamed to learn last year the USPS eliminated Book Rate for international mail, and I’m trying to ship my stuff out of storage stateside. Normal potsage overseas is prohibitive. Bastidds. But I showed them. I dumped all my boxes of books in the nearest WASTE barrel. I expect them to turn up at my door any day now.
Those two links near the beginning are fixed, btw.
Having no intellectual shame or accountability must be so fun.
I keep thinking so, but then I realize none of these dimwits sound very happy.
To be fair, the USPS rate hikes for magazines really are an outrage, even if Human Events has no philosophical basis for their complaints.
Dear Human Events: care to guess how much Salon, Slate, NRO or Huffington Post pay the Postal Service? Of course, you can’t line the birdcage with them but otherwise, there’s your answer…
The USPS is not a monopoly. These asshats could just as easily have UPS or Fedex deliver their shit. Miraculously that would actually cost more than old “tax-payer subsidized” variety of letter/parcel delivery, go figure.
FYI The Nation magazine is also being killed by the very same increase. katrina van den heuvel is in my inbox begging for help with this on a weekly basis.
this is a paradigmatic example of how these guys work. i happen to know that human events is part of a group that includes The Nation in trying to fight these changes (and gavin, i must say i totally disagree with the analysis of the changes themselves–i think you are being very Kos-like by allowing your hatred of the messenger to effect your analysis of the message). other small pubs are involved as well–mother jones, the new republic, weekly standard and others.
that human events can get on a conference call with all the others in the above list and THEN send out an e-mail pretending that this is a liberal conspiracy is just hilarious. it tells you they know how rube-ish their readership is and that the whole thing is schtick. just like hannity. just like tucker carlson (that i can say from personal experience). just like glenn beck.
they’ve moved the catskills into some right wing thinktank.
and as a result his staff would be forced to issue a “correction.”
This is the part of the story that I find difficult to believe.
how rube-ish their readership is and that the whole thing is schtick.
You didn’t get that from the “Obama-proof your portfolio” or “Extend your penis” emails they regularly send out?
Hell, if the rising mailing costs are so profoundly harming these purveyors of thoughtful insight and opinion™, why the HELL haven’t they decreased the blizzard of pulp pizza coupons, supermarket flyers, local insurance brokers and Pennysavers that pile up like so much used paper behind The American Thinker?
‘Cause a significant reduction in the amount of CRAP I take directly from mailbox to dumpster would not cause me any anguish at all…
mikey
Wet stretchy sound?
Ewwwwww.
Sometimes the sarcasm is a bit layered, but I took care not to do that, incl. linking to four pages that explained the rate increase in terms of alternative media (Dischord Records, In These Times, NTRM, and Infoshop)…
Hey, Gav, didn’t The Coroner try this stunt just a few months back? How’d that work out for them?
I guess that evil capitalism keeps them from sending their magazine out via, I dunno, email or UPS…
I don’t get it. Why can’t Scaife just donate a billion or so?
Does anyone actually need 60 lbs of tomatoes per week? Those things scare me. ortunately, they won’t survive a New England winter so if any of my neighbors fall for the scam, they will be foiled in their attempt to take over civilization.
Gavin, Don’t Even Antagonize The Horn.
Er, Ever. Don’t Ever.
Well mute my horn and call me Charley.
Dear Human Events:
Please, PLEASE go Galt on us. You won’t be missed, except for the entertainment value you often provided at your own expense.
Sincerely,
The World
Shirley you gest.
Get Glenn Beck to do the plea for you. I suggest one or two tears, and a rousing reprisal of his all time best: “WAIT, there’s more…”.
Fantastic and interesting forum will look through more a little later, i drive a taxi in Portugal so if anyone from this forum comes on holiday to the Algarve Portugal, come and have a coffee with me, and i can also let you know lots of history from the area…
Just like to say hi will come and chat a little later just finishing off some homework, and believe me it is not easy writing in the heat here at the moment.