EDITOR'S notebook

Davis also fears looming postal increases. He estimates that nearly 45 percent of the dollar volume of printed material goes through the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). The 5.4 percent rate increase requested by the USPS for 2006 would result in an annual reduction in mail-related printing shipments (currently about $72 billion) of nearly $1.9 billion. Even scarier, that increase would only go toward the civil service retirement system escrow fund for 2006 (read the "Congress Must Deliver" feature on page 36). Unless a reform bill passes Congress and survives a threatened veto by the President, the USPS may seek an even higher increase for 2007. With postage comprising up to 50 percent of the production costs for catalog and magazine publishers, for example, this could devastate our industry.