Free Republic

Well, not apart from the smell, anyway...sorry!

No, Ulysses, you've got this kid mixed up with the owner/wearer of "Ol' Crusty!"

not only is she extremely easy on the eyes, she runs a kick-ass Italian place in the Chicago-land area.

Not to mention...she can kick yours (or mine!) too! (She's a boxer, also, right?)

It sure beats turning tricks on the street at $50 a pop!

Or in the Oval Office for NOTHING!

Problems revealed by Enron's collapse are rooted in recent changes in the legal, financial and accounting professions.

But of course, the real problem with the Enron collapse is...

What are they going to re-name the Astros' stadium now?

/sarcasm

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Notice how Helen has that lovely shade of "almost green" skin tone! Kind of looks like the witch in "The Wizard of Oz"!

Is that really her skin color? Or did you "adjust" it? Or is it just my monitor?

I found it kind of weird that Jerry Orbach of "Law & Order" fame was in the original cast of "The Fantasticks." It just seemed funny to me. But having heard the original soundtrack, I know that he did a great job!

Just one of those things that make you go, "Hmmmmmm....!"

Which end?

BOTH ends! But for ENTIRELY OPPOSITE REASONS!!!

YIKES!!!

What, no mention of Young Frankenstein yet?

"God! What knockers!"

"Thank you, Doctor!"

...and...

"I ain't got no body!"

Too funny!

Col. Jessup: "You want answers?"

Lt. Caffey: "I want the truth!"

Col. Jessup: "You can't handle the truth!"

YES!

This quote from the Washington Times account of CNN yanking the "Paula Zahn is sexy" ad...

"Sexy or not, the blond, svelte Miss Zahn turns 46 next month, is the mother of three and has spent 23 years before the camera as a correspondent for CBS and ABC, among others. If anything, the news that a woman in such circumstances is officially "sexy" should reassure middle-aged females everywhere, save die-hard feminists."

Again, I say, she is pretty easy on the eyes!

WOW! Check out that motorcycle in the background! The whole picture reminds me of an Indiana Jones movie for some reason!

I have been running WIN98 on my computer at home since 2d Edition came out and have NEVER had a crash. I use my computer for word processing, playing computer games, surfing the net, email, burning CD's, and other general type usage.

Ditto here, and mine runs continuously (unless the power goes out) without crashing.

I'm beginning to think I'm missing out on something here. :o)

Same here, too! Using Windows 98 since...well, since 98! I've had it crash exactly twice! Both times were when I loaded some, shall we say, "questionable" software. Took that off, fired back up, and away we go!

Here's the lowdown on this "ancient" hoax from snopes.com...

Post No Bills

Claim: The government is going to impose a 5¢ surcharge on every e-mail message sent via the Internet.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1999]

Dear Internet Subscriber: 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 bureacratic efficiency. 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 who's 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.

Kate Turner
Assistant to Richard Stepp
Berger, Stepp and Gorman
Attorneys at Law
216 Concorde Street,
Vienna, Va.

Origins: We must begin by pointing out that three similar but distinctly different warnings are making the rounds:

Congress is going to impose a 5¢ surcharge on every piece of e-mail sent.

The Federal Communications Commission is going to impose a per-minute access fee on Internet connections (or allow phone companies to do so).

Congress is going to allow state sales taxes to be levied on goods purchased via the Internet.

This page addresses only the first of the items listed above, which is nothing more than a hoax. (Congress has never considered any such scheme.) The other two items have at least been considered, but no legislation has yet been proposed to implement either one of them. (We have a separate page to cover the rumor that ISP customers will be charged per-minute long distance fees for Internet access.)

The "5¢ e-mail surcharge" hoax presents us with a new economic villain in place of the FCC and phone companies: the United States Postal Service. Beset by falling revenues now that people are sending more and more e-mail (and consequently less and less real mail), the USPS is supposedly going to impose a 5¢ surcharge on every e-mail message to recoup the lost postage fees.

The Postal Service is one of those essential government services that's so easy to bash and ridicule. We pay little or no attention to them when they do their jobs; the only time we notice them is when they do something wrong, and then we grumble and gripe about how bumbling and inefficient they are. "They can't manage the simple task of delivering mail reliably and on time, and now they want to raise the postage fees again?" is the standard cry. So, it doesn't require much stretching of public opinion to portray the USPS as yet another self-serving government agency more concerned with preserving its existence than with serving its constituency. If the Postal Service can't get more money out of people for using its services, it's going to start charging people for not using its services. Everybody's gonna pay the USPS 5¢ per e-mail message for a service the USPS isn't providing.

The whole thing is bunk. There is no Congressman named Tony Schnell; no Bill 602P (Congressional bill designations begin with either H.R. or S., depending upon whether they're House or Senate bills); no law firm of Berger, Stepp and Gorman; no such address as 216 Concorde Street in Vienna, Virginia; and no editorial in The Washingtonian. This hoax actually began with a Canadian version that was later Americanized:

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 Canada attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet. Under proposed legislation Canada Post 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. Toronto lawyer Richard Stepp QC is working without pay to prevent this legislation from becoming law.

The Canada Post Corporation is claiming that lost revenue due to the proliferation of email is costing nearly $23,000,000 in revenue per year. You may have noticed Canada Post's 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 Canada Post for a service they do not even provide. The whole point of the Internet is democracy and non-interference. If the Canadian 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 exhorbitant price for snail mail because of beaurocratic inefficiency. It currently takes up to 6 days for a letter to be delivered from Mississauga to Scarborough. If Canada Post Corporation is allowed to tinker with email, it will mark the end of the "free" Internet in Canada. One back-bencher, Liberal Tony Schnell (NB) 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 Toronto Star that 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 email to all Canadians on your list and tell your friends and relatives to write to their MP and say "No!" to Bill 602P.

Kate Turner
Assistant to Richard Stepp QC
Berger, Stepp and Gorman
Barristers at Law
216 Bay Street
Toronto, ON
MlL 3C6

The same flaws appear in this version: There is no Canadian MP by the name of Tony Schnell; no Bill 602P currently before the Canadian parliament (parliamentary bills begin with either C. or S., depending upon whether they originated in the House of Commons or the Senate); no Richard Stepp QC; no law firm by the name of Berger, Stepp and Gorman; no such address as 216 Bay Street in Toronto; and no editorial in the Toronto Star.

This hoax continues to gain legitimacy because the media keep confusing it with the distinctly different issues listed at the top of this page. In May 2000, The Washington Post reported that bill H.R. 1291, introduced in the House by Rep. Fred Upton, would "block the idea" of Congress' imposing a surcharge on e-mail. The bill would (if passed) do no such thing -- it would merely prevent the FCC from imposing per-minute access fees on Internet connections "for the support of universal service":

H.R. 1291 Internet Access Charge Prohibition Act of 1999 - Amends the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from imposing on any interactive computer service or other information service provider any access charge for the support of universal service that is based on a measure of the time that telecommunications services are used in the provision of such interactive computer or information service.

There's nothing to this one at all, no matter how the newspapers may misreport it. The 1999 Human Development Report issued by the United Nations' Development Programme did suggest that a "bit tax" of one U.S. cent on every 100 e-mail messages sent worldwide could raise over $70 billion a year to fund the development of computer technology infrastructures in developing countries, but this was merely a pie-in-the-sky suggestion, not a concrete plan for member nations to adopt and implement.

Belief in the legitimacy of the "Bill 602P" hoax is so pervasive that a question about it was posed by WCBS newsperson Marcia Kramer during a 8 October 2000 debate between two candidates for a U.S. Senate seat from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Congressman Rick Lazio. Apparently none of the three realized that this bill is fictitious:

KRAMER: I'd like to ask you how you stand on Federal Bill 602P. I'm going to actually tell you what it is. CLINTON: I have no idea. [Laughter]

KRAMER: I'm going to tell you what it is. Under the bill that's now before Congress, the U.S. Postal Service would be able to bill e-mail users five cents for each e-mail they send even though the post office provides no service. They want this to help recoup losses of about $230 million a year because of the proliferation of e-mails. But if you'll just send 10 e-mails a day, that would cost consumers an extra $180 a year. So I'm wondering if you would vote for this bill. And do you see the Internet as a source of revenue for the government in the years to come?

CLINTON: Well, based on your description, Marcia, I wouldn't vote for that bill. It sounds burdensome and not justifiable to me. I have been a supporter of the moratorium on taxation on the Internet. I think that we do have to let loose this extraordinary communication device and see how far it can go in connecting people up. And I'd like to monitor this closely and take a look at it in the time when the moratorium expires.

But is important that we do everything we can do build the infrastructure of New York to take advantage of the Internet. I have been all over this state to all 62 counties and I've been in countless schools, and some of them are the best in the world and the most highly wired and others are not. If we're going to take advantage of the new information economy, we have to be sure that all of our citizens and particularly our children are well prepared. That's why I have proposed high-tech infrastructure bonds as part of my economic plans that would enable us to provide low-cost Internet access and broadband access around the state. It's why I hope that we'll do a better job in providing the computers and Internet access to all of our children and all of our schools so that no child gets left behind. And it's why we need to close the digital divide throughout the state.

New York should be as Silicon Alley is: a beacon magnet throughout the state for the new economy. And I want to be partner with local officials, business, labor and others to make sure that happens. So I don't want anything to interfere with that kind of opportunity.

KRAMER: Mr. Lazio, your rebuttal.

LAZIO: I am absolutely opposed to this. This is an example of the government's greedy hand in trying to take money from taxpayers that, frankly, it has not right to. We need to keep the government's hands off the Internet. It has a capacity for creating more jobs, more high-paying jobs for New Yorkers than any other potential sector in the future. That's why I have voted for a moratorium on taxes on the Internet. That's why I have a hundred percent record on high-tech issues because I know that's important to New York.

I've been building partnerships with local businesses to create jobs for our young people. And I'll tell you, it's very, very important for us to keep our taxes low. And I distance myself, frankly, from Mrs. Clinton's 15 different support -- 15 different tax increases . . .

In March 2001, an Australianized version of the hoax began circulating.

Blah-blah, you get the idea! ( The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/pending/email.htm Click here to e-mail this page to a friend Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2001 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson This material may not be reproduced without permission -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources: Goodman, Peter S. "Congress to Block Imaginary Internet Tax Bill." The Washington Post. 10 May 2000 (p. E1). Stencel, Mark. "E-mail Hoax an Issue in N.Y. Senate Debate." Washingtonpost.com. 8 October 2000. Wilson, Peter. "How to Hex a Hoax." The Vancouver Sun. 29 April 1999 (p. D17). AAP Newsfeed. "Government Quashes Email Tax Rumour." 29 March 2001. Computing Canada. "Remember Bill 602P When You Vote." 30 April 1999 (p. 33). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pending Legislation Inboxer Rebellion Search Send comments

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BTW, in my opinion, ol' Paula may be a dizzy leftist loon, but she is pretty easy on the eyes!